Frugal Friday

Happy New Year!  I have a feeling that 2020 is going to be my best year yet.  This will be the year that my youngest graduates from high school and oldest graduates from college.  We are starting the year with a new puppy, which has been so much fun.  We have wonderful friends and family who we see on a regular basis.  We both have jobs we love and aside from the typical conditions associated with getting older, we are healthy.  Life is good.

Even though the last few weeks are generally very expensive, we still found some ways to save money.

1. I had all of my Christmas shopping and wrapping done before Thanksgiving.  This was intentional.  I do not enjoy last minute Christmas shopping and the crowds associated with it.  I enjoyed the month of December without the pressure of preparing for the holidays.
2. We spent New Years in, separately, which was kind of sad.  I was with my parents for several days and spent New Years with them and some of their friends.  Eric enjoyed the silence that comes with having the house to himself.  My understanding was that he watched a movie and enjoyed pizza.  Neither of us made it to midnight.
3. We have enough food in this house to feed an army.  January is going to be devoted to shopping the freezer and pantry.  I will need to purchase fresh produce, but it will be easy to spend very little at the grocery store this month.
4. I have started the long process of decluttering this house.  We have so much stuff.  Too much stuff.  My goal is 10 items a day, out of the house.  I appreciated that so many of our gifts this year were either consumables or items we can actually use.  We received a very large bottle of local maple syrup and lemon olive oil, among so many other things.
5. I found some very old gift cards.  Make sure to look up the balance because some do not expire.  I found an old theatre gift card from 2014 that still had $10 on it.  I used it while visiting my parents.  Proof that the small things add up.

I plan on sitting down in the next few days and really figuring out our 2020 budget.  Fall 2020 will be an expensive one for us, all 3 of our kids will be in college.  We are going to need to do even more belt tightening this year.  As always, I look at it as an adventure and not something to stress over.  What are some of things you plan on doing to save in 2020?

One of my gifts this year.  My daughter had a portrait made of Luna in the  attire that proves her royalty in this house.