Frugal Friday: Money Saving Weekly Recap

Well, this week has been eventful on the being sick front.  The kids came down with a cold last weekend, especially the son, who started feeling pretty ucky by Monday morning.  He missed therapy all week and the return to home school after the holiday break was definitely a scattershot affair this week just because there was no way I was going to make the son do school work with how horrible he was feeling and the daughter and I did school work on her end when she had breaks in feeling yucky and wanted to get stuff done.  We did manage to get tests done this week and concepts buttoned up, which I give her a lot of credit for doing as I know how difficult it is concentrating when you have a cold.  The son ended up going to urgent care today as he just wasn't getting well it seemed and he has an ear infection so for the first time since he was about three he's going to have to take antibiotics starting tomorrow.  I'm praying that this goes well as he doesn't take medications well at all.  Bright side is I have the garlic willow ear oil and I put some of that in his ears early this afternoon, which seemed to lead to immediate relief for him.  He then passed out after that and slept all day, so hopefully that's at least a positive sign.

So, yeah, this weekend was a loss on getting anything done in the way of painting or other house types of things as I was cuddling sick kids, which was way more important anyway.  

There were, however, some money saving things that I got done this week, so let's get to those.

1.  Since I was monitoring kiddos and things, I sat down and cut up all of the Christmas cards we got this year and turned them into gift tags for next year.  Since we completely ran out of gift tags by the end of Christmas, I figure this will give us something special to put on gifts next year and I don't have to go running and try to find any Christmas clearance sales that might still be going on to try and find some gift tags (with the kids getting sick that wasn't really an option).  A shot of the "as finished as they are going to get until next Christmas" gift tags are seem up top :).

2.  The husband got his cell phone switched over from a business plan and got it switched to a prepaid plan.  It will run us 30.00 a month, but will have unlimited talk and text on the phone and will be covered by the company with the best cell phone coverage in the state.  We will have to set up auto pay to get the 30.00 a month versus 35.00, but I don't mind doing that to save 5.00 :).

3.  I needed to get bar soap for the first time in years and I was thrilled when I had a 10% off soap coupon that I could load onto my Carrs card.  

4.  I had a coupon that if I spent so much on cold and cough medication that I would get a free two pack of chap stick.  With the kids being sick I DEFINITELY spent more than the allotted amount on the coupon and I ended up getting the free chap sticks.  All the of the store generic cold medications were also buy 2 get 1 free.  Since I needed a decent amount to get the kids through their colds, I took advantage of the sale and saved a bunch of money doing so and will also have a little bit of cold medication put up for the next cold.

5.  Before Christmas I had ordered a two pack of Glogg from Amazon, but the package got lost in the mail.  I had requested a replacement, but the Glogg was back ordered, so Amazon gave me a refund.  Then, suddenly, I got a notice that they had sent my replacement order this week (and recharged my card for it, but I was like, "Eh, I wanted the Glogg anyway, I suppose, so no big deal.").  Turns out they had put the Glogg into a box with an 8 pack of dinner plates I had ordered (I'll get into that more later) and a wiggle cushion I'd ordered for my son, both things heavy and they just put everything loose in the box.  I ended up getting a Glogg saturated box in a plastic bag and a box full of broken glass.  I called Amazon and complained and they actually refunded me the cost of the entire order, which I kept telling them wasn't necessary as the Glogg was the only thing that actually broke, but the guy was insistent as I'd been waiting for the Glogg for a long time and then to get it broken like that was just awful and he felt terrible about the mess I had to deal with because of it.  He also asked me straight out if I was 100% sure the cushion and the plates were okay and I couldn't say that as I hadn't really been able to assess how those things were when inflated (on the cushions part) and washed (on the plates part), so he insisted that they could be damaged and I should get refunded my money.  So, hats off to Amazon for doing excellent customer service on their end on this one.  I just wish their shipping department would get better about packing things logically together or not, but oh well.

6.  I don't know if it saved me money, but I was lucky to go shopping last week for milk and the few things we needed at the store before the ship that was carrying all of the grocery store restocks didn't make it into port, so I didn't even have to pop into the store to find the empty shelves and no produce around, chicken being completely gone and other issues.  Times like that being stocked up on meat in the freezer, making sure you buy ahead on good storing fruit (like apples) and keeping boxed milk and things around becomes invaluable up here.  

7.  I went and applied for PFD's this week.  I'm not sure if we will even get a dividend this year the way politicians are going, but I applied anyway.  We'll see how it goes.

8.  I went to Alvah's IEP and his three year ESER at the home school this week.  Goals are set for him for the year, they were able to double up the meeting for both events to save us all time and I was able to combine my trips into town to pick up a technology order at the home school, which saved me gas. 

9.  My check card got nailed with fraud right at Christmas and someone had charged nearly 100.00 worth of charges to Apple.com with my card number.  I called the Visa fraud hotline and got the card immediately shut off and then called Apple the next day and they were VERY nice about immediately refunding me my money on the card and they even double checked my I-tunes account to make sure that only the card had been compromised and the people hadn't hacked into my I-tunes account to get there.   They warned me it could be nearly a month before refunds could process, but I looked at my bank account a couple of days after Christmas and the refunds had gone through.  Thank goodness for that!

And how did this save me money...well with the exception of not having 100.00 charged to my card that I didn't do?  Always keep track of your bank account, even if you only have checks and no check card or anything.  It's amazing what random numbers hackers can come up with and use for their own selfish means.  I was really glad that I check my bank account nearly every day in this case, because God knows what the people who hacked my card were going to charge on it the next day when they discovered that it worked.

10.  I went and registered my stove before I completely forgot about it.  I now have a limited warranty through the manufacturer and a full warranty for five years from the store I bought the stove from (and if I don't use the the warranty in five years I can go in and get my money back from the store that I paid for the initial warranty), so hopefully now the stove will feel pressured to keep working and work well for at least five years.

And there you go folks.  Some of the ways I saved money this week.  How about you?