Suddenly Frugal Blog

Don’t let the summer slip by before you take advantage of some of these summer freebies, such as the free bowling and movies listed below.

FREE FOOD

• Wear orange to Whataburger on August 3rd, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., and get a free burger!
• Use FourSquare and like to eat at Chili’s? Then you’ll love this: when you check in on FourSquare when you’re at Chili’s, you’ll get a free appetizer of chips and salsa.
• At participating Wendy’s locations, you can purchase a Dave Thomas Foundation keychain for $1 and then enjoy a free Frosty Jr. (with purchase) through October 31st. Yum!
• Get free Breyers ice cream in Jacksonville on Saturday, July 31st from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Riverside Arts Market (near the Round House stage). You can choose between Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough or Homemade Vanilla.

• To celebrate the opening of its Kansas City shop, Yogurtini will be giving out FREE self-serve frozen yogurt on Friday, July 30th from 4:00 – 8:00 p.m.

FREE FUN

• Madame Tussauds Washington D.C. is offering free admission to all Washington D.C.-, Virginia- and Maryland-licensed teachers (must show license) through August 28.
• Kids can hit the lanes for free games this summer at all 93 Brunswick Zone and Brunswick Zone XL centers. Every day this summer, students age 18 and younger can bowl one free game whenever lanes are available. Shoe rental is not included. To claim their games, students just need a Student Ball Pass, which you can get for free at any Brunswick center or online here.
• Take your kids to the movies for free this summer at Regal Cinemas. Every Tuesday and Wednesday at 10 a.m., you will be able to see a selected G or PG movie for free. (Note: Tickets and seating are first-come, first-served and are limited to theatre capacity.)

MISCELLANEOUS FREEBIES

• Earn free gas cards by helping the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society raise money for its Light the Night Walks doing online fundraising during July and August. You can earn $50 worth of free gas for every $500 you raise , or $15 gas cards for every $250 raised online (while supplies last). (Since one of my daughter’s classmates was just diagnosed with leukemia, this cause means even more to us now.)
• Uninsured residents of Washington D.C. can get free health screenings on August 4th 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, 801 Mount Vernon Place, N.W.. Screenings include: medical exams (including physicals), EKGs, cholesterol blood tests, glucose tests for diabetes, blood pressure tests, muscular skeletal exams, urinalysis, pregnancy tests, hemoglobin tests, HIV/AIDS tests and strep tests. Patients should call 1-877-233-5159 to make appointments. The National Association of Free Clinics is sponsoring this event.

Live in a state that normally taxes clothing or other purchases? Then you’ll want to note which dates and states offer tax-free shopping holidays. (This was a topic I wrote about in my Good Housekeeping story.) With tax-free holidays right around the corner–the next one begins July 30–I figured you’d find it helpful for me to list when and where these holidays are happening; it might help you save some cash on back-t0-school shopping. (This listing is courtesy of CCH, a leading global provider of tax, accounting and audit information, software and services)

Note: List is in alphabetical order, not chronological order

1. Alabama: On Aug. 6-8, the following are exempt: clothing with a sales price of $100 or less per item; single purchases, with a sales price of $750 or less, of computers, computer software, school computer equipment; noncommercial purchases of school supplies, school art supplies and school instructional materials with sales price of $50 or less per item; noncommercial book purchases with sales price of $30 or less per book are exempt from tax. Does not include clothing accessories or protective or recreational equipment.
2. Connecticut: On Aug. 15-21, clothing and footwear costing less than $300 per item are exempt. Does not include accessories or athletic or protective clothing.
3. Florida: On Aug. 13-15, the following are exempt: books, clothing, wallets or bags (including handbags, backpacks, fanny packs and diaper bags) with a sales price of $50 or less per item; and school supplies with a sales price of $10 or less per item. Excludes briefcase, suitcases and other garment bags. Also does not apply to sales made within a theme park, entertainment complex, public lodging establishment or airport.
4. Illinois: On Aug. 6-15, footwear and clothing with a sales price of less than $100 per item and school supplies will be exempt.
5. Iowa: On Aug. 6-7, clothing and footwear with sales price of less than $100 per item are exempt. Does not include accessories, rentals, athletic or protective clothing.
6. Louisiana: On Aug. 6-7, the first $2,500 of sales price of noncommercial purchases (not leases) of items of tangible personal property (not vehicles or meals) is exempt. Does not apply to local taxes (may be allowed in St. Charles Parish).
7. Maryland: On Aug. 8-14, clothing and footwear with a taxable price of $100 or less per item will be exempt. Does not include accessories.
8. Mississippi: On July 30-31, clothing and footwear with sales price under $100 per item are exempt. Does not include accessories, rentals, skis, swim fins or skates.
9. Missouri: On Aug. 6-8, noncommercial purchases of clothing (but not accessories) with taxable value of $100 or less per item; school supplies up to $50 per purchase; computer software with taxable value of $350 or less; computers and computer peripherals up to $3,500 are exempt. Localities may opt out. If less than two percent of a retailer’s merchandise qualifies, the retailer must offer a refund of sales tax paid if the customer requests one, in lieu of the tax holiday.
10. New Mexico: On Aug. 6-8, footwear and clothing with sales price of less than $100 per item; school supplies; computers with sales price of $1,000 or less per item; and computer peripherals with sales price of $500 or less per item are exempt. Retailers are not required to participate. Does not include accessories, athletic or protective clothing.
11. North Carolina: On Aug. 6-8, clothing and school supplies with sales price of $100 or less per item; school instructional materials with sales price of $300 or less per item; sport/recreational equipment with sales price of $50 or less per item; computers with sales price of $3,500 or less; and computer supplies with sales price of $250 or less per item are exempt. Does not include clothing accessories or protective equipment.
12. Oklahoma: On Aug. 6-8, clothing and footwear with sales price of less than $100 are exempt. Does not include accessories, athletic or protective clothing or rentals.
13. South Carolina: On Aug. 6-8, clothing (but not rentals), clothing accessories, footwear, school supplies, computers, printers, printer supplies, computer software, bath wash clothes, bed linens, pillows, bath towels, shower curtains and bath rugs are exempt.
14. Tennessee: On Aug. 6-8, clothing (but not accessories), school supplies and school art supplies with sales price of $100 or less per item and computers with sales price of $1,500 or less per item are exempt.
15. Texas: On Aug. 20-22, clothing, footwear and school backpacks with sales price of less than $100 per item are exempt. Does not include accessories, athletic or protective clothing or rentals.
16. Virginia: On Aug. 6-8, clothing and footwear with a selling price of $100 or less per item; and school supplies with a selling price of $20 or less per item are exempt.

Would love to hear how you benefit from tax-free shopping days or have benefited from them in the past!

Even though it feels like summer just started (or at least it does to me), soon enough school bells will be ringing. So will the cash registers, as parents stock up on back-to-school necessities. According to Huntington National Bank the average cost to send a child into the classroom armed with school-recommended supplies this fall is approximately $474 for elementary school, $545 for middle school and $1,000 for high school students.

Despite these figures you don’t have to go broke getting the kids ready for the first day of school. Here are five ways that you can keep your back-to-school shopping in check.

1. Get your school supplies list early. The idea here is two-fold. First, you’ll be able to review the supply list to see if you have any leftovers from last year–which will save you from unnecessary spending. And, second, many office supply stores offer penny sales during the summer. By having the school supply list handy, you can get what you need at the cheapest price possible.
2. Remember that kids grow quickly. Clothes that fit in August may not fit by next year. Make sure to stock up on the basics before buying trendier items, and try shopping at discount and secondhand stores instead of the mall, suggest the experts at InCharge Debt Solutions, a national nonprofit organization that offers free financial counseling sessions.
3. Use gift cards whenever possible. Hopefully, you have a gift card wallet at this point. If not now would be a good time to gather up all of those gift cards you have left over from holiday and birthday gifts, and see if you can use them towards any back-to-school purchases. Rewards checks from stores with affinity programs can help cut your costs, too. I’m thinking specifically of Staples Rewards and Famous Footwear’s Rewards, too. (Speaking of Staples Rewards, you can get $2 back for every ink cartridge you recycle at the store so your “savings” can build up fast, just by remembering to bring your empty ink cartridges with you when you buy new ones.) In addition, giving your child his or her own gift card to buy new clothing and supplies can help teach a valuable lesson about budgeting money.
4. Don’t forget hidden fees. This is a good one and one I hadn’t considered until I needed a health form filled out for my daughter and I needed it before her annual well-check. By asking the doctor to fill out this form outside of a normal appointment, I had to pay a $10 fee. However, if I bring forms with me to an appointment, the form-filling is free. (Truth is with how my co-pay has gone up, paying that form fee is actually cheaper than paying for the appointment.) But if a form fee is going to blow your budget, make sure you plan accordingly to avoid one. Also, set aside funds for any sports registration fees or equipment, or figure out a way to save on those. For example, in my town if you volunteer to coach, the town refunds your kid’s registration fee at the end of the season.
5. Keep your receipts. Many stores offer price-adjustment allowances if something you bought goes on sale within seven or 14 days of your purchase. If you’re vigilant about tracking prices, you can get some money back, too. Also, many receipts include information on them about taking an online survey, which gives you an additional coupon that you can use at the store in the near future. For example, we just bought some end-of-season bathing suits at Old Navy (super cheap, in case you need any). On our receipt was information about an online Old Navy survey, which, when completed, would give us a 10% off coupon to use at the store the next time we were there.

What are some of the other ways that you save when shopping for back to school or take advantage of back-t0-school sales when you don’t have kids?

Suddenly Frugal founder Leah Ingram

What does it mean to be suddenly frugal? It’s when a family realizes that everything they understood to be financially sound turns out not to be so and they have to reinvent how they spend money–and reconsider the financial lessons they are passing down to their kids. This was the epiphany I had in 2007 when I started my Suddenly Frugal blog.

Through daily blogging I could hold our family accountable for the financial changes we were making in our lives. For the first time ever, I took an interest in our finances–previously, my husband had handled all the bills and I had stayed happily in the dark–and we worked actively to decrease spending. We started using online bill paying so that we’d never pay a late fee again, and we drastically altered how we fed our family.

Along the way life threw us a couple of curve balls, such as when our car died three months into our frugal lifestyle. We had to take out a loan to buy a new car and that felt like instant failure. But thanks to the frugal habits we’d already put in place, we were able to save enough to pay off that three-year car loan in 12 months. Then the economy tanked and I saw my income drop 50%. Once again our frugal habits helped us know how to tweak our spending so that this difficult time became a little less painful. While things are still tight around here, we’re in a pretty good place psychologically.

Good things happened along the way, too. My fashionista daughter developed a sense of buyer’s remorse, and both of my daughters learned to budget their money. I embraced the challenge of cooking dinner at home every night, which helped to cut spending (natch) but it also brought us closer as a family. Because being able to sit down together for a meal provides benefits way beyond saving money.

In addition, I was able to attract a literary agent and get a book deal based on my blog: Suddenly Frugal: How to Live Happier and Healthier for Less. Then I got a second book deal: Toss, Keep, Sell: The Suddenly Frugal Guide to Clearing Out Clutter and Cashing In.

Truth is we’re not out of the red completely yet. My oldest daughter is a sophomore in high school. My younger daughter is two years behind her. So in the very near future, we’re going to have to find a way to pay for college, and I’m not quite sure how we’re going to do that. This would freak out most people. I’m excited about the challenge. I’m confident that having developed a frugal point of view, we’ll figure out creative ways to find cash for college–and you can be sure I’ll be blogging about it as we go along.

This blog post is part of the submission/audition process for a new reality TV show about mom bloggers.

FREE FOOD

• Thursday, July 29 is officially National Lasagna Day and Buca di Beppo will celebrate by offering FREE lasagna. Valid at all Buca di Beppo locations throughout the country, guests who purchase any Buca Small or Buca Large sized pasta or entree will receive a free lunch-sized portion of lasagna. (Even the Atlanta Bargain Hunter covered this promotion!)
• According to Crazy Coupon Mommy, McDonald’s is giving away free fruit smoothies July 22-24, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (CANCELED)
• At participating Wendy’s locations, you can purchase a Dave Thomas Foundation keychain for $1 and then enjoy a free Frosty Jr. (with purchase) through October 31st. Yum!

FREE FUN

• Madame Tussauds Washington D.C. is offering free admission to all Washington D.C.-, Virginia- and Maryland-licensed teachers (must show license) through August 28.
• Kids can hit the lanes for free games this summer at all 93 Brunswick Zone and Brunswick Zone XL centers. Every day this summer, students age 18 and younger can bowl one free game whenever lanes are available. Shoe rental is not included. To claim their games, students just need a Student Ball Pass, which you can get for free at any Brunswick center or online here.
• Take your kids to the movies for free this summer at Regal Cinemas. Every Tuesday and Wednesday at 10 a.m., you will be able to see a selected G or PG movie for free. (Note: Tickets and seating are first-come, first-served and are limited to theatre capacity.)

MISCELLANEOUS FREEBIES

• Earn free gas cards by helping the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society raise money for its Light the Night Walks doing online fundraising during July and August. You can earn $50 worth of free gas for every $500 you raise , or $15 gas cards for every $250 raised online (while supplies last). (Since one of my daughter’s classmates was just diagnosed with leukemia, this cause means even more to us now.)
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Hurricane season officially started June 1st and goes through November. And just as expected a Tropical Storm is brewing in the Gulf of Mexico right now. That means that anyone that could potentially be in the path of this or any other tropical storm or hurricane ought to have a “disaster” plan in place.

But you know what? You don’t need to live in hurricane territory to need such a plan. Every household should have a plan, albeit unofficial, for what they would do in a fire or another kind of emergency. This is for safety’s sake. But there are also financial ramifications for not being thoroughly prepared for a disaster–man made or Mother Nature-inspired–and that’s why I want you to consider these four ways to prepare (and be prepared) for a disaster. (I got these ideas from The Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.), a non-profit educational, research and communications organization funded by the insurance industry to explain what insurance is and how it works.)

STEP #1: Review Your Insurance Coverage
Be sure you have the right kind and amount of insurance, enough to rebuild your home and replace your belongings. A house in my town got struck my lightning last week and burned to the ground. The homeowners lost everything inside. I hope they had enough insurance to cover this disaster. Also, ask about flood insurance, which is not covered under a standard homeowners policy.

STEP #2: Create a Home Inventory
An up-to-date home inventory will speed up the claims process by substantiating losses and may provide documentation for tax purposes. It can also help you determine how much insurance to purchase. The I.I.I. offers free web-based software that makes the process easier. I’m definitely going to check this out, since I wouldn’t even know where to begin documenting what’s in my house.

STEP #3: Protect Your Property
Keeping wind and water out of your home is critical. Invest in storm shutters and reinforced garage doors. Secure roof shingles and seal any openings, cracks and holes. Gable end walls and roof sheathing should be strongly attached and braced, and double doors should have heavy duty anchors at the top and bottom and a dead bolt at least 1″ long.

STEP #4: Have an Evacuation Plan
Decide where you will go and how you will get there, and have more than one option. Keep a map, phone numbers and addresses handy. Think about what you’ll need to take with you – items like medicines, important documents, clothing and food – and have them ready to go.

Have you taken the necessary steps to prepare yourself for a disaster? If not, maybe it’s time to add that to your “to do” list.

Bill decided that he wanted to try to stock up on more items this week, based on what was on sale at Stop & Shop. So I went to this week’s Grocery Game link for the store and made sure I didn’t forget to get the GG (or Grocery Game-specific) coupons associated with this week’s sales.

Except I discovered two things I didn’t expect.

1. GG coupons actually link to external coupon sites, such as the ones I already use–Coupons.com being one of them.
2. GG-linked coupons or rather the microsite that they link to don’t seem to work with a printer affiliated with an Apple computer. Because when I clicked on all the coupons I wanted, at the Coupons.com and SmartSource.com site that GG brought me to, I couldn’t print them out. I expected that the Coupons.com site would. But it didn’t. So I went back and tried again and I got an error message telling me that my “print limit reached.” That had never happened to me before. So I tried logging into my account at the Coupons.com site, and it still wouldn’t let me print out the coupons I was looking for–even though they never actually printed. (Eventually, I got them to print but I was still locked out of my account.)

What this means is this: I don’t need the Grocery Game-specific coupons in order to take advantage of the deals I find, as long as I go to Coupons.com or another site on my own. That’s OK, since I’d hoped that the Grocery Game-specific coupons would have somehow been linked up to that week’s outlined specials, but they weren’t. Once I got to the site, I still had to search for them, then click on them, and then print them out. Well, assuming I could print them out, which in yesterday’s instance, I couldn’t.

Another lesson learned.

I’m munching on leftover pizza for lunch as I write this blog post. But the pizza didn’t come from my local pizzeria. Well, not really. However, it was on last night’s dinner menu, which, like many of the dinners I’ve planned for and cooked this summer, it was a real money saver. How? Let me count the ways.

1. We had pizza for dinner but we made it at home. I’ll admit that I purchased the pizza dough from the local pizzeria ($9 for three gigantic balls of dough) but the rest of the magic came from our own house. We used sauce and mozzarella cheese we’d purchased when grocery shopping. However, one day I’m going to learn to make my own dough, especially since my dad got us a bread maker for the holidays. (I’m hoping it has a pizza dough setting.)
2. We shredded our own mozzarella. As I wrote in a long-ago blog posting on my cheese grater, buying whole blocks of cheese (versus the shredded kind in a bag) can be a huge cost savings for your budget. The shredded stuff, while convenient, is often twice the price as a whole block of cheese.
3. Any vegetables we served came from our garden for free. Well, it’s not exactly the garden at my house but the garden I started with three friends when we decided we didn’t want to rejoin our CSA. Except for our seed money–literally and figuratively–to get the garden going, the only thing we’ve spent so far has been our time to keep the plants watered, the rows weed-free and the tomatoes standing upright (they fell over after some torrential rains). Even the stakes we used with the tomatoes were free–bamboos spikes that my husband cut down from the bamboo patch in our yard.
4. We continue to cook at home every night. I’ll admit that meal planning and cooking at home gets old, but I continue to insist that we do this in order to save money. It helps that my daughters are now interested in cooking dinners and can contribute on that front. In addition, on days like today–when I don’t feel like cooking but I know I have to–I turn to my trusty slow cooker to get dinner on the table. (I’m cooking cubed chicken breasts in barbecue sauce, which I’ll serve with rice and fresh vegetables from the garden.)

What about you? Do you find any special challenges of continue to cook at home each night during the summer? Or is it easier than the rest of the year?

Bill and I spent about two hours cutting out coupons the other night–the night before he was going to do our first real food shopping off The Grocery Game list, since our week one attempt was a failure. (Yes, that’s why I love my husband–he gladly does the food shopping.)

The first difference I noticed in this coupon-cutting event was that we were pretty much cutting out every coupon we came across that we’d found in the Sunday newspaper. In the past I would cut out coupons for only the brands that I was used to buying. However, we’ve quickly learned that the secret to making The Grocery Game really work for your budget is not only buying things when they were on super sale or practically free but also not being so brand loyal that you would miss out on these great bargains that a Grocery Game list points out.

In addition to cutting coupons and organizing them by category in our coupon holder, I printed out our standard grocery shopping list (which I’d finally collated in a Word document). Bill grabbed The Grocery Game shopping list from Stop & Shop (his target market for this week’s shopping, since it was on his way home from the office), and off he went to work. I couldn’t wait to get his feedback when he got home after work and grocery shopping.

“What I should have done is taken The Grocery Game list and made my own shopping list from it,” Bill reported, when he returned from food shopping that night. So while our preprinted shopping list was a great tool in the “old” food shopping days, now we needed to be just a bit more organized in how we did the list and approached food shopping. “I’d also organize it by section so I didn’t have to do all the poking back and forth in the aisles that I had to do.”

In addition to feeling as if our shopping list didn’t do our savings justice, Bill also discovered an important trick in how you save the most using The Grocery Game: having enough coupons on hand to take advantage of all the stocking-up savings you might find at the store that day.

Though we’d stockpiled about two weeks’ worth of Sunday coupons,  “I think we would have been better off with four weeks’ worth,” Bill said. Plus, while I’d had the forethought to print out online coupons from CouponMom.com, Coupons.com and RedPlum.com (SmartSource.com doesn’t seem to work with my Apple computer) and sent them along with the traditional coupons, we hadn’t paid enough attention to the deals with “GG” marked after them. That meant Grocery Game-specific coupons that you can print out from the site. So lesson learned on that one.

I’m glad that The Grocery Game gives your four weeks to try out the service before committing for real, because as Bill and I are learning, you really do need a couple of weeks under your belt to take full advantage of this service–not to mention a couple of weeks of hoarding coupons.

So my advice to you is this: if you’re considering signing on for this service, stock up on at least a month’s worth of Sunday coupon circulars before you get going. This way you’ll start out better prepared than we were.

Bottom line on our week two grocery shopping: we didn’t spend much less than we would have on a “normal” weekly shopping pre-Grocery Game. Our bill was about $220. However, we have enough breakfast cereal and other package goods to last us through the rest of July. And best of all: Bill saved $60 on the overall grocery bill, just from applying the Grocery Game techniques he’s learned. This includes the bag credits of five cents each that Stop & Shop gives to those who bring their own reusable bags (we do). Finally, he estimates that except for buying perishables, such as milk, fruit and vegetables, we may not have to do another “big” food shopping until August. I’ll let you know if that turns out to be true.

I mentioned in today’s Freebie Friday post about the McDonald’s smoothie freebie happening July 22-24th. I guess this promotion, which is still days away, was more popular than the restaurant chain expected: McDonald’s has canceled the giveaway, “due to unprecedented demand.” So if you were making lunch plans for next week that focused on that free smoothie at McDonald’s, fuggedaboutit.