For millions of people, Amazon is a way to get whatever they need, whenever they need it – and wherever they are. (More on that in a minute.) That’s why the rebranding of the “Prime Student” program is worth noticing. Amazon is offering six months’ worth of Amazon Prime for free to people aged 18 to 24, plus half-price Prime after that.
That means not just free parcel delivery, but also:
(In honor of Labor Day, I decided re-run this post from Sept. 5, 2010.)
When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait to earn money. Penny candy was only part of the reason. Working was a sign of being grown-up. I’d already figured out that being a kid was for losers. Adulthood was where it was at.
That’s why in elementary school I would pick and sell flowers and strawberries. It’s why I rejoiced when it snowed — the local doctor would pay a dollar to have his steps and sidewalk shoveled. It’s why I started baby-sitting at age 11, when I was hardly older than some of my charges.
It’s the only possible reason I could have enjoyed my first “real” job, at age 13: Picking tomatoes in a greenhouse that felt like an incinerator. It was a half-hour bike ride away, through temperature and humidity that raced each other into the high 90s. The plants were taller than I was and their leaves brushed me on all sides. I came home slimed with sap; the shampoo bubbled green when I washed my hair.
But oh, the joy of making $1.35 an hour.
A $25 Amazon card means different things to different people. Summer is winding down, so for some it’s time to buy crayons or school clothes. The child-free might be pricing new winter accessories, or restocking hobby supplies.
Gardeners could be on the lookout for canning supplies. Thrifty folks may be doing a little early holiday shopping (if they aren’t already done). And since summer’s not completely over, possibly you’re in the market for sunscreen or new flip-flops or a good beach read.
Whatever you want, my latest giveaway will fund the first $25 worth.
Let me be clear: In no universe would I mix tomato paste with strawberries. I’m simply using the can to illustrate the size of some of this year’s fruit. Aren’t they lovely?
How I wish blogs could share aromas, because our house smells marvelous right now. We are eating all the strawberries we want – and we want a lot of them – yet still have leftovers. The question was, “How can we preserve them without freezing it or turning it into jam?” The answer was, “Dehydrate them.”
Thus far we’ve dried a quart of these little beauties (see below), which means we sliced and dried about four quarts. That sounds onerous, but it really wasn’t. DF and I sit across from each other at the table, slicing and chatting, until the dehydrator is full or until we run out of berries, whichever comes first. Some people sit around watching TV or playing board games. We slice berries.
Why do this? Because we want every berry to have had a reason to ripen. I have never tasted berries like these before, either in New Jersey (where we picked them ourselves) or from Seattle farm markets. They’re as sweet and tender as the memory of first love and, as DF’s younger son marveled, “They’re red all the way through!”
I discovered a great frugal hack the other day while trying to use a “weekly digital deal” coupon at Fred Meyer. The store, which is part of the Kroger chain, offered six-packs of 16-ounce soft drinks* for $3.49.
Some days I don’t drink soda at all, and some days I’ll have two. Lately I’ve bought bottles rather than cans, so I don’t have to drink an entire serving at once. Tightly capped, a Diet Pepsi will hold over until the next day.
When I see a price like this one, I limit out until the next big sale. Unfortunately, the store didn’t have any Diet Pepsi. It had every other Pepsi flavor imaginable (and some I don’t like to think about**), but not the one I wanted.
No Diet? No problem! I headed off to another Fred Meyer and found the same empty spot on the shelves. A grocery manager looked everywhere and sadly reported they, too, were out. Damn those weekend barbecues and salmon-fishing trips!
The German language has the best words. Kummerspeck (“grief bacon,” or the weight you put on from eating your feelings). Sehnsucht, or the deep and emotional craving for something far away or unattainable. And frühjahrsmüdigkeit, which I’ve been experiencing lately.
Frühjahrsmüdigkeit is translated as “spring lethargy,” the fatigue that some people feel in the springtime, particularly after a hard winter.
We’ve had two particularly crummy winters in a row, and a lousy spring/summer in 2023. For the most part, spring 2024 has been cold and cloudy.
Sure, we’ve had a few spectacularly sunny days – the kind that make me think, “I can live here despite the winters.” Mostly it’s been…frühjahrsmüdigkeit.
The boneless/skinless chicken breasts featured at the supermarket entrance made me feel a little queasy today. Not because they looked bad; on the contrary, they looked fresh and appetizing. It was the $8.49-per-pound price tag that made me want to lie down with a cold cloth on my eyes. After all, it was Senior Tuesday and I’d hoped for some low prices to go with the extra 10% off store brands.
Good deals – really good deals – were about to be discovered, in two batches. That led DF and me to a new rule for bargain hunting, which I’ll explain below.
The total bill was $77.83 for a shopping trip that included 51 pounds of fresh meat, 23 cans of corned beef hash (more on that in a minute), salsa, sour cream, three pounds of bacon and a big bottle of creamer.
It was the meat that made us happiest, however. DF was so tickled by the markdowns that he added up the weights and noted the original prices vs. what we paid. Here’s how it all shook down:
The 51 pounds of meat (excluding the bacon) would have originally cost $233.72. After the senior discount, we paid $17.97 for 51 pounds of animal protein.
(Happy Throwback Monday! It would have been Throwback Thursday per usual had Earth Day been responsible enough to occur on a Thursday. This post originally ran on Earth Day 2023, which was April 19.)
Everywhere I looked online this morning were reminders of Earth Day 2023. My initial reaction was to remember my high-school Ecology Club. That’s when I believed, truly believed, that we’d have this all figured out pretty soon.
Boy, was I young.
That thought was followed by this one: Frugalists are eco-warriors.
Because we are. We really are! Although our goal is to be good stewards of our finances, we wind up being good stewards of the Earth. The steps we take to save money help us ameliorate our impact on the environment.
Here are seven ways we do that. Note: These aren’t universal. Few people likely do all these things or even most of them, but I know that my regular readers do at least some of them.
It makes me happy to do these “Support the reader economy” giveaways. Yet it also makes me a little bit sad because $25 just doesn’t have the impact it once did.
Back in the day, $25 covered my child care for the week. (Dang, I’m old.) But I try to remind myself that I keep reminding myself how excited finding a penny makes me – and more than a few of you readers.
Since finding 2,500 pennies would be even better, I keep going with the giveaway. As I once noted, $25 might not fix all your problems but it’s better than not having $25.
As always, the winner gets to choose the type of card they receive. One exception: I won’t give a Visa or Mastercard prepaid debit card because of the fees. Other than that, if I can obtain it electronically, then I will send it to the winner.
Prefer a physical card? I’ll do that, too, if I can.
Greetings from Phoenix, where I have keys to my daughter’s new locks. In fact, I had those keys when I arrived, thanks to KeyHero.
She recently replaced those locks due to how “old and beat-up” they were after who-knows-how-many years of service. (Hint: Abby didn’t change them when she and her now-ex husband moved in 12½ years ago.)
The locks still worked, but looked pretty terrible – and like me, she saves where she can so she can spend where she wants. In this case, what she wanted was new locks.
This meant my old keys were kaput, and since I was arriving at almost 11 p.m., she would likely be asleep. I make it a point never to wake up a hostess with chronic fatigue.
Hence: KeyHero.