Giveaway: $15 Starbucks gift card.

by

It’s darned hot in the Lower 48 right now. Anyone up for a cold drink? I’m giving away a $15 Starbucks gift card.

What you use it for is up to you, of course. Maybe a mango dragonfruit lemonade, or a caramel ribbon crunch Frappucino, or a chocolate cream cold brew.

Those all sound like desserts to me, but hey, whatever floats your boat. And cools you down. It’s punishingly hot down in the States, and in Hawaii, so let me buy you a Starbucks beverage.

Maybe you’ll go for an iced Americano, an iced toasted vanilla oatmilk shaken espresso, an iced cinnamon dolce latte or an iced caramel macchiato.

Whew. Complicated! 

Read more

Being an adult: What they don’t tell you.

by

I keep seeing a meme along the lines of, “No one ever told me that being an adult means having to decide what to fix for dinner every single night for the rest of your life.”

You know what else they didn’t tell you? That you’d also have to shop for that food, and to pay for it.

And for extra credit, that if you’re the main cook in the household you’ll have to listen to other people’s complaints/criticisms regarding the food.  

However, once you pass the age of 18 (or in some cases, never) you’re supposed to start acting like an adult. And being an adult isn’t always fun.

It can be fun, and it can even be great. But no one tells you that it’s also by turns terrifying, irritating, annoying, depressing, occasionally gross and often overwhelming.

They say that the trouble with life is that it’s so damn daily. Ditto adulthood. No one warns you that being an adult means a daily parade of stuff that sometimes you are not equipped to face, from the hazmat quality of an overloaded diaper to the daily drumbeat of, “How am I going to keep the lights on, the kids out of jail and my retirement secured?”

Am I complaining? Not really. Being an adult is what adults do. But sometimes you just want to be seen, as the kids say. You want someone to notice when you’re on the ragged edge, and you want that someone to say, “You know what? Siddown and eat this cupcake. I’ll handle things from here.”

Read more

How I got $50 worth of free food.

by

Like many of you, I’m very nervous about fast-rising food prices. That’s why I was thrilled to get $50 worth of free food recently.

It was pretty simple: I cashed in some rewards program points for a $25 Kroger gift card and a $25 Safeway gift card. And I can’t truly explain just how happy that made me.

It felt a bit silly, to be honest. After all, the cupboard was by no means bare and I had money in my checking account. No one would have gone hungry had I not cashed in; as the king and queen of the stealth stock-up, DF and I are good for the basics. (So many basics.)

Fresh fruit and certain vegetables, though, and eggs, and milk for my oatmeal and to use for making yogurt? Those kinds of things need to be bought regularly. Hence the gift cards.

Flashing this scrip at the cash register felt great. Instead of spending money on the fresh stuff, I’d be sending those food dollars to the account where I keep my saved savings.

But I’m not writing about this to brag. I’m writing it to suggest that those of you with smartphones download some shopping apps and start earning. And if you’ve got a credit card that isn’t a rewards card, consider shopping for a new one.

Rewards points matter. My $50 head start at the grocery store says so.

Read more

Giving Cards: Want $20 to share?

by

The other day I was offered a great opportunity to share with readers: the chance to do something wonderful on someone else’s dime. Giving Cards, a movement designed to inspire thoughtful giving, will gift five readers each a $20 prepaid Visa card and a specific mission: “Think ‘big’ with ‘small’.” You might think $20 isn’t … Read more

Meet a reader: Cheryl from Florida.

by

Recently I announced my intention to borrow a strategy from The Frugal Girl, who posts a regular feature called “Meet a Reader.” This seemed like a natural fit for my site, since (a) I like talking with readers and (b) you guys are always talking to one another in the comments.

(Love it when that happens, by the way. And long may it continue!)

So I asked who might be interested in participating* in this feature, and was delighted that a dozen people either volunteered, or suggested a reader they hoped I’d interview. In addition, I made my own list (there was some overlap).

Random number generator decided that Cheryl would be first. Some of you may remember her from a previous piece I wrote, “Cheryl paid off her mortgage.” I was fortunate to meet her in person when visiting my dad, and figured a phone conversation would be as stimulating as the one the three of us had in person at a Dunkin Donuts in Tarpon Springs, Florida.

It was.

Here, edited a bit for brevity and clarity, is how it all shook down.

Read more

Monday miscellany: Cheapest ways to be dead.

by

Recently a friend of my daughter’s suffered the unexpected loss of a family member who lived in another state. Her friend’s mother is unemployed, and the friend herself doesn’t earn much money. Abby offered “to do what I do best: comparison shop to find them the best deal.” The best she could find had a … Read more

Anatomy of a frugal meal.

by

It was close to suppertime, and no supper was in sight. We had three or four ounces of leftover pork tenderloin, bought deeply discounted and frozen until needed. I thought to slice it thinly, cook some rice and steam some peas from last year’s garden.

That would have been okay, but dull. Instead, I started pulling things out of the freezer:

A bag of chopped celery, also from last year’s garden

A bag of chopped red and yellow peppers, bought from the produce manager’s “ugly but still good” shelf

A bag of chopped onions – DF recently noticed an onion was starting to rot, so he cut and froze the still-good parts

A bit of turkey fat, from a bird we cooked a couple months ago; we save the fat from all pan juices, for cooking vegetables and making white sauce

Next, I put on a pot of rice (bought by the 50-pound bag at Costco) and melted the turkey fat, announcing that I planned to caramelize the vegetables and then add the diced tenderloin and some kind of sauce. DF diced the meat, then thinly sliced some carrots while I considered potential sauce ingredients.

What immediately jumped to mind was a bottle of General Tso’s sauce that I’d gotten free from our neighborhood’s Buy Nothing Facebook group. I poured maybe four tablespoons into a glass measuring cup, along with some rice vinegar (from an ancient bottle lurking in the lazy Susan) and a shake of powdered garlic (another Costco buy).

The slowly cooking onions, peppers, celery and carrot were making the kitchen smell divine. Maybe this olfactory distraction was what caused me to overdo the vinegar somewhat. It didn’t quite drown out the General Tso’s, but it didn’t do the sauce any favors, either. A few splashes from a jug of Langer’s pineapple-orange-guava juice (bought on sale, with a coupon) brought the vinegar into line and added a sweet hint of citrus.

Just typing this is making my mouth water. How about yours? 

Read more

Support the reader economy: Giveaway #3.

by

It’s Friday the 13th, but maybe this will be your lucky day: Time for another giveaway in my “Support the Reader Economy” series. 

Longtime readers know I’ve been giving things away since I started this site* back in May 2010.  Often the giveaways are things like books, gift cards, fun stuff from the Financial Blogger Conference, or combos that I make up, such as the “Coffeehouse Cliche Giveaway” (a fancy notebook and a Starbucks gift card, so you can be one of those folks writing the Great American Novel in a coffeehouse.

More recently I’ve been focusing a lot more on giveaway prizes made in Alaska, in an effort to support our local economy. But with inflation nibbling (or gobbling) at people’s financial well-being, I decided to create the Support the Reader Economy giveaway series.

The prize is a $15 gift card of the winner’s choosing. That could be a physical or virtual card, depending on your preference.

Sure, $15 won’t do much. But sometimes it’s fun to have $15 to play with – or to use to put a few gallons of gas in the car until payday. 

Read more

Stamp Out Hunger: Can you help?

by

This Saturday, May 14, marks the return of the “Stamp Out Hunger” campaign. The food drive was canceled for two years due to the pandemic. But this Saturday (May 14), the National Association of Letter Carriers will once again be collecting nonperishables to distribute to area food banks.

Can you help?

The country’s largest single-day food drive, Stamp Out Hunger will take place in 10,000 towns and cities across the United States. Given the scary-high price of food lately, it might feel harder to contribute. But let’s reframe that: Given the scary-high price of food lately, donations are needed more than ever.

If you can spare a can for your fellow man, I promise you that you’ll feel good about it. But only if you can afford it. You should not donate if you’re having trouble keeping food on your own table.

Or maybe your pantry is pretty secure, thanks to your frugalvore tendencies. Could you part with a box of mac ’n’ cheese or a can of tuna?

Tuna is a much-requested item, as are any protein sources. Here’s what the NALC is asking people to leave by their mailboxes on Saturday:

Read more

“Stealth stock-up”: A budget saver.

by

Food prices rose 8.8 percent between March 2021 and March 2022 – and the latest wrinkle is a mix of labor issues and “idle trains,” according to Reuters.

One way to fight food inflation is to stock your pantry and freezer with the most affordable food you can find today, before prices go up tomorrow.

Not everyone can afford to buy a side of beef or 50 pounds of pinto beans all at once.  But a tactic I call “stealth stock-up” just might save your food budget.

It’s pretty simple: Watch the sales flyers, and when your favorite brand** of pasta or cereal or tuna goes on sale, buy two instead of one. Buy three, if you can swing it.

That’s not to say you can’t also stock up on non-sale items, especially if they’ve been hard to get due to supply-chain issues. But the idea is to stretch available dollars and stash as much food as you can. Sale prices let you do both.

Already shopping this way? That doesn’t surprise me, since frugal people tend to read this site. It just makes sense to pay less.

Read more