Frugal Living... Best Kept Secrets of living a Frugal Life? Please Share!

I like audiobooks, so I can listen to them whenever I am in the car. The library doesn't seem to carry a lot of books that I like on audio, so I trade them through www.paperbackswap.com. It saves me a fortune.

Actually I use paperbackswap.com. I just found out about it not long ago. And I've already traded my first book. I find that pretty neat. And I do try to save as much as I can in the grocery line. But are problem is the going out to eat way to often. We both don't care for cooking so pretty much every night we go out to eat. So I know if we stay home and eat we would save a lot. So this new year we are going to eat out only once a week. And cook the rest of the time. So I need to start cooking bigger meals and freezing them. I also like resale shops. My favorite here iN South Carolina is the Goodwill that is only 99 cents a pound for clothes. Usually I get most of are clothes there. But the problem I find with the good wills is that I end up spending a lot there too. When we had two cars I would go every day and spend $20 a day. Luckily now we only have one vehicle so I only spend when I get out of the house which is more like once a month. So now we are saving more money. Also I found this on my trails another couple of great website some of the sites work really good others are quite stupid but it has a lot of great info on it. I hope it helps. beingfrugal.net coolfreebielinks.com keep me updated on site that you find too.

I didn't know they actually have a site out there that you can cook once a month or even a couple times a month to create meals for a family... How neat.. Thanks for the words of advice!! I honestly didn't think about googling it before. But I have been googling things i would normally not and I've found so many new things! Thanks for sharing!!

I didn't know that about the coin sorters, what a good deal, thanks for sharing.

If you save your coins, be sure to check out coinstar.com for promotions. They run the coin sorter machines that you see at a lot of grocery stores. If you use your coins for gift cards, they don't charge you a percentage. At the end of the year, they had a promotion that they would give you and extra $10 gift card if you cashed in more than $40 in coins. I did it and I'm hoping that by the time I get another $40 saved up they will have another promotion.

When we have change we do the same thing. Except the only time we go into it is if we are in need to take the big blankets to the laundry mat or if we need some extra cash for things. But that does work nice. Most of the time I just use my debt card so I don't get any change back. Oh well. Thanks for he suggestion!

I like that... Find contentment in things we already have. Hmmm some how that sounds religious in an aspect too. I love that.. find contentment in things we already have and find content within ourselves. I really do like that. So maybe that's why I'm a self proclaimed "shop acholic" because I'm not content within myself that I find a need to fill it with things that I honestly do not need. Thanks for the insite! Truly!!

I just found out about this site last week. Thanks for sharing to let others know too :)

Thanks for the advice. I can see mostly the items I pick out end up being wants to rather than needs. And I love kohls too. Also did you know you can buy $5. kohls coupons on ebay. Definately worth wilded!

Another couple of things to pass along. First, in one of my business classes the lecturer made a statement that really struck home. "Live mean, lean and clean". It works for business as well as in real life. I am currently sorting out (becoming clean) and getting rid of things that are unnecessary. I am curbing my spending by deciding if it was a want or a need. I also am cutting back on other spending too (becoming lean) and I have learned to say no to people wanting to borrow money or give me unnecessary things that are just clutter (becoming mean). I say my no's in a polite manner, but I do say no. It is helping a lot already. I also am a big recycler. I collect aluminum cans, glass bottles, and plastic water bottles. I take them in every three or four months for recycling and I usually earn between $25 and $50 depending on the time of year.

That's a huge savings! I would love to do that but right now living in an apartment there's not a whole lot of space. Even though I've cleaned out a lot of stuff and it actually feels good and organized and make me a lot happier. But still I don't have room for cans or other recyclables well not yet.

We do the coupons and such also, my husband enjoys it as much as I do. And we just love going to places like Walgreens after a holiday and buying discounted candy and decorations. We get a huge charge out of reading a Walgreens cash register tape that says we saved $70.23 and our total will be under $5, and that happens a lot! We freeze a lot of candy, and often use it in home baking.