Thursday, May 22, 2008

Our more-frugal-than-normal Week

Although many would call my us a little odd for our normal frugal practices, this week was unusally frugal. We saved on car expenses by taking the car to a tech college and walked everywhere while it was repaired, learned to cut hair ourselves, and kept our phone bill from spiraling out of control. Let me walk you through our week.

Cheaper auto expenses: We found our that our car needed a rather expensive repair so we didn't rush to the autoshop to get it repaired, but rather took it to the local auto college for a repair, saving us several hundred dollars (we still pay for parts and shop time, but the shop time is very cheap). While the car was in the shop I walked the 2 miles to work and Daniel brought the baby to me to nurse halfway through the workday (thus getting lots of fresh air!).

Home haircuts: We are also on the path to cutting all of our own hair and a wonderful lady from our church offered to teach me how to cut Daniel's hair. She came over and gave me a lesson yesterday! We'll see how it goes next time when she's not doing the majority of the work;)

Keep our phone bill in check: Another thing that we did that was frugal in a strange sort of way was to keep track of our cell phone minutes. We have been making an unusually high number of calls this past month due to traveling and a major unexpected change in our future plans and we thought it would be good to check our phone minutes (something we usually don't do). We found out that we were already over by several hundred minutes (an additional $150 was about to go on our bill!). Instead of just paying for it, Daniel was able to temporarily add minutes with a new plan for an additional $10 per month. Although not cheap, its certainly better than $150!

For more frugality fun, visit Biblical Womanhood!

4 comments:

CC said...

You are very brave. I do not try myself to cut anyone hair at all. Even my daughter (which should in theory be a straight cut in back) has only had one haircut b/c I won't do it and we're too cheap to pay...

The Chavez Family said...

Hi there-your future plans have changed? Are you no longer going to the original area you were planning? You daughter looks so cute in those pics you posted-I bet she is crawling soon! Adrian is now walking all over-I can't believe it!

Rachel said...

Those are some great ideas. I never thought about taking a car in to a school instead of the shop.

For haircuts, we have started trading services for them. I love trades!

The Chavez Family said...

You know I just realized you may not be able to talk much about where you are headed. I remember when Shiona and the church were going to China I think she couldn't say much about where or what she was doing-so sry for asking the questions, but good luck to you!!