CNA's Have to Be Thrifty......How Do You Stretch a Dollar?

I thought of a couple more

When my husband and I are driving around showing clients(He's full-time realtor, I'm part time and full time student) we will often drive all day showing houses. We stop first thing and get the largest sweet tea at McD's. It's $1.00. Then we drink on it all day instead of paying money for bottle drinks at the gas station.

We also will pack a cooler with waters and Cokes to give our clients if they get thirsty.

When you make a meal that is a 2, 3, or 4 night meal, and you have some leftover, but nobody wants it because they are tired of that meal, freeze it in a plastic container. I like margarine, sour cream, and the glad throwaways from lunch meat(purchased marked down and frozen) I don't know how many times we kept from buying a fast-food meal for dinner because we had individual meals already frozen. We call it "clean out the fridge night"

We only rent movies from redbox, and if you sign up online, you can reserve movies for pickup and get free rental codes. Really handy on new release day.

I also color my own hair and cut my 3 boy's hair. I don't get manicures or pedicures, I buy new makeup at a thrift store by the bag, and purchase what makeup I need at Wal-mart with a coupon. If something is really cheap, I stock up. I bought 5 boxes of name brand dish washer detergent for $1.39 recently and then got powerballs for free because there was a coupon the next week. But it beats paying $3.00 when I run out.

We go through alot of ink for copies, so I purchase ink refills through 4inkjets.com at $4.00 each instead of $20 at Wal-mart.

Just today we went and bought some school clothes for the kids. I purchased shoes for my daughter at Ross for $5-$8 each, and t-shirts from Aeropostale for my boys for $6 each and $4.99 for some at Macy's. Most of their clothes come from my favorite thrift store, but we mix in a few new items bought cheap as well.

We cancelled our home phone 2 years ago, and use our cell phones instead. T-mobile gave us a great rate because we've been with them so long. 3000 anytime minutes for $39.99 a line(we have 2)

When you know someone is going to be moving, drive by their house on trash day around the time they move out. It might sound funny, but we got a brand new Kodak printer, a brand new dog cage, a vacuum, gaming chairs, and lots of other stuff just by doing this. People will throw out nice things, if they are moving to a smaller home, or they are kicking out tenants. I used to feel embarassed by this, but not anymore. Last winter we ran out of firewood and a neighbor had cut down a dead tree into fireplace size pieces and put it on the curb. I went up to the door and asked if we could have it, they were more than happy to let us take it. We didn't have to run the furnace hardly at all last winter which saved us about $300 a month on electricity.

Look up cooking for a month on Google. I lost the actual links, but there are websites that tell you how to cook a month's worth of dinners in one day and freeze them. I've done it before and it saved me a lot of money. You spend one day shopping and prepping ingredients and the next doing the cooking. That way you don't have to worry about your fresh produce going bad while you're waiting to cook it. I saved something like $100 by doing it that way but I'm too lazy to do it again and don't currently have enough freezer space.

The downside is you feel like you're eating leftovers all month.

We only rent movies from redbox, and if you sign up online, you can reserve movies for pickup and get free rental codes. Really handy on new release day.

You can also find codes all over the internet. Some that work are DVDonme and breakroom.

OH! Also, I hang onto my kids clothes when they outgrow them. Price them when you do your end of the season closet cleanout. Store in cardboard boxes and write 50 cents, $1.00, $1.50 on the flaps of the box. We also have a clothes rack that I put clothes priced $2.00 and up on. They are already folded and priced and when garage sale time rolls around, for us it's October and April, your stuff is already priced. All you have to do is set it out. I have my kids watch the garage sale, and pay them a small amount for the work. We make $150-$400 this way twice a year. Since I buy almost all my clothes for $1.75 at a thrift store, it almost pays for what I spend at the thrift store in a year. Also, my family that doesn't like doing garage sales gives me stuff to put in my garage sale, and lets me keep the money. Those are $400-$600 garage sales.

I have to use my dryer because I have such bad allergies to almost every tree, schrub or flower. But I will use it for maybe 5-10 minutes on the clothes I can hang up such as scrubs, husband's work shirts, casual slacks, etc. It also stretches the clothes "new look" by not drying til dry.

We freeze our raspberries and shredded zucchini to use year-round. We have a garden hubby oversees.

Love the tips on no happy meals & garage-sale-ready sorted clothes!!

Libraries may have movies for free or small fee. Get out the puzzles to do as a family also.

I've never done this but, as you may know, if bring in a sales ad from another store Wal-Mart will honor it. I saw a woman in line ahead of me the other day that had printed an ad online and brought it with her. For all I know, she may have had potatoes on sale from Idaho or oranges from California. She had a bunch of pages anyway.
Anyone have a comment on this? I thought it was brilliant.

I buy Great Value brand everything from Wal-Mart. It's usually still cheaper than name brand with coupons and I *think* it's made by the name brand companies anyway. I know the Ranch dressing tastes an awful lot like Kraft rather than Hidden Valley. Chili tastes like Hormel rather than Wolf brand. There isn't too much that I don't like actually.

Be sure to change your A/C filters in your house.

There is a great website I recently found: www.budget101.com Lots of make your own dishwasher soap, etc.

Dondie

Comment on bringing in ads from other stores to wal-mart... Yes you can do this. It is the ads from other stores in your area. I actually was behind a lady the other night that had a couple pages of the ad prices written down. The cashier said she does it all the time and they don't even make her bring the ads in anymore becasue she does this so often. She had a cart full of name brand items and it was under $100. She was getting Kelloggs cereal for $1.97 a box!!! I have to say I am the person that drives to three different stores to save a few bucks, but now I am gonna try the Wal-mart thing. Anything to save some

( HOW DO YOU DO THIS !!! Great advice !! Hard to do I'm am going to school part time and working. As of next year my income is going to be cut in half. I plan on only working weekends after I get into nursing school. We would like to start to prepare for the loss of income now. But it seems so hard. My dh is salary so he can't get extra time. Any great advise would be appreciated. I don't want to give up my dream of being a nurse. I do love being an aide but I want to help more and I'm limited in what I can do.

I also used to go to the college and public libraries for NCLEX books to practice for my tests (our college had used NCLEX-type questions on tests since first semester). Get current ones. I also bought a Tabers cyclopedia for $1 at a rummage!

Some students would share books...Maternity; Peds; Psych. They would purposely take different rotations so they could share the books.