Simply Saving

Although window coverings are expensive we are generally willing to spend money on them as they fulfill so may purposes in a room, adding warmth and privacy as well as decoration. Rooms simply look unfinished without them. If money is tight you will be wondering how to add effective window treatments without breaking the bank but you can definitely achieve a lot without a huge budget. Here are some ways to save money:-

1. Make Your Own Curtains

You can save a lot of money if you can sew simple straight lines with a sewing machine. If you are inexperienced start with short sill length curtains such as those for kitchen windows and progress to full length curtains for your living room. Choose a light washable cotton fabric for your kitchen curtains and add a heading tape of your choice. If you work neatly and measure accurately you will have no problems at all. Later you can progress to using lining and making fancier items such as window valances and tie backs.

2. Choose Cheaper Fabric

Fabrics vary enormously in price but you can make very effective curtains with simple cream calico or cotton. You can create more effective window treatments by being generous with cheap fabric than you can by creating curtains from expensive fabric where you can not afford enough to create a full effect. You will find that plain fabrics are often cheaper than patterned ones. If you think they are too plain you can always add interest with trimming.

3. Buy Ready-Made Curtains

If you have standard windows you will usually find ready-made curtains work out cheaper than having curtains custom made. Your choice will be more limited but you will usually find something to suit if you check out curtain sites online.

4. Go Simple

It can be enough in a contemporary home to put up simple cream or gray window blinds which you can buy very cheaply. You do not have to get carried away creating elaborate window treatments when “less is more” is often more effective.

5. Add Layers

If you would like elaborate window treatments (and they suit your home) but you can not afford them purchase items over time. For example you could start with a simple blind and then later add dress curtains and then later still a window valance or wooden cornice.

Tags: budget, make your own, save money, saving money, ways to save money

This book isn’t for the gourmet chef who enjoys cooking with expensive and unique ingredients – it’s for the rest of us. *LOL*

Save money with once a month cooking and frugal recipes

Have you ever spent money on fast food because it was quick and easy?
Do you have your local pizza delivery place on speed dial?

If so, then you will be thrilled by how much money you save when you start cooking once a month. Your freezer full of meals saves you money by eliminating the need for fast and easy solutions. You won’t be tempted to buy the expensive pre-packaged food at the grocery store. Instead, you’ll be preparing nutritious meals at a fraction of the cost.

Perhaps you’ve heard of once a month cooking and would like to try it, but you don’t know how to begin. Frugal Mom’s Guide to Once a Month Cooking, written by Candace Anderson, will show you how.

Enjoy once a month cooking with easy step-by-step instructions

Candace has put together an easy 5-step plan to once a month cooking that will set you off on the right foot, and hold your hand through the entire process. The 5-step plan uses forms that she created to help you plan, and keep you on track. The forms that she included in this book will be your road map for your cooking session. It will organize your cooking day, your grocery shopping, and give you a plan for cooking.

Here are some customer comments about her book:

“The Beef Fajita marinade was very simple to prepare and took about 5 minutes” – Judy

“We will definitely do the Mexican Beef Casserole again – it was easy to prepare as well as put together for dinner. We all enjoyed it – there wasn’t enough leftover to have for lunch the next day. I would say that tells how much we all liked it!” -Cindy

“The Stuffed Burger Pockets were very easy to put together. They were tasty and easy. -Julie

“The Crock Pot Beef was great! Very easy recipe to follow and the whole house smelled great. My kids ate every bite.” -Keri

“We had this Sweet & Sour Chicken and it was yummy – everyone love it! I do have to say that I had never made sweet & sour sauce from scratch before and this is delicious, quick, and easy!” -Lisa

Once a month cooking support

Not only will you have a large variety of delicious meals to prepare for your family, you’ll also have an online community where you can turn to for help. Candace, and others just like you, will be walking right beside you, every step of the way.

~ Complete step-by-step instructions for giving you a freezer full of meals.
~ Over 70 family-friendly recipes tested by Frugal Moms.
~ The ability to save money with once a month cooking.
~ A simplified life that gives you more time to enjoy the things you love.
~ Once a month cooking forms that will organize your cooking sessions.
~ An online community to support you on your new journey.
~ Instant delivery! Since this is an ebook, you won’t have to wait for it to arrive in the mail.

Click The Book To Order Today! Only $12.95

BONUS: With your purchase of Frugal Mom’s Guide to Once a Month Cooking, you’ll also receive Bulk Cooking for the Freezer: Ground Beef. Save time and money with this detailed guide to bulk cooking 20+ meals with ground beef. This eBook has illustrated plans that include step-by-step instructions to guide you through the entire preparation process. The ground beef plan includes 14 different ground beef recipes for your freezer along with recipes to make your own seasonings. Bulk Cooking plans include both printed grocery list and Shopping List software (windows) grocery list file.

Tags: cooking once a month, easy recipe, food budget, freezing food, Frugal, frugal books, frugal meals, frugal recipes, frugal shopping, grocery bill, grocery budget, grocery shopping, make it yourself, make your own, menu planning, Money Saving Tips, once a month cooking, save money, saving money, simple cooking, spending money, tips for saving money, ways of saving money, ways to save money

Written by Carol, one of our readers:

We’d all like to save money each month, but how to go about it is another story. Start by making a budget; that scary, imposing, restrictive plan that keeps you in line. Only it doesn’t have to be that way, a budget is really only putting down on paper your priorities and recognizing you absolutely cannot spend more than you make in any given time period. It also, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t have to come together in one sitting, start the first month with just writing down general categories and amounts. Over time you can refine and fill it out more completely. It took us three months to get a good handle on our budget, each month getting more and more detailed, even today we are constantly adjusting the numbers.

Once you know where you money is going it is now time to start trimming the fat. If you look at your monthly expenses, looking to saving $500 it will seem overwhelming and impossible. But what if instead you looked at shaving a few dollars off each item? As we began looking at our budget we decided to go through and renegotiate each item we could. After knocking out the cable and downgrade our cellphone plan – saving $65, reviewing our car insurance and changing our coverage – $25 less and changing our restaurant habits to only twice a week. This all totaled approximately $125 a month in savings. Besides the mortgage payment, food and general merchandise are our biggest expenditures.

Even with the constant coupon clipping and avoiding the pricier groceries stores we couldn’t make the budget numbers and the real world numbers agree. That’s where web surfing finally began to payoff. There are plenty of websites out there that can multiply you efforts. The blogs that track specific stores rewards programs, letting you know what items are free or worth the most rewards points/bucks, will give you an edge. Lots of promotional programs let you trade your name and email address for free samples and /or coupons.

Also look to farmer’s markets and co-ops, we spend $17 every two weeks for $50 worth of fresh fruits and vegetables. Little by little we have shaved almost $200 off our monthly grocery bill.

Try once a week cooking, or once a month cooking if you’re ambitious! There are so many tasty once a week cooking recipes out there that you’re bound to find some that you like.

Due to the fact that we didn’t start our marriage with the financial acumen that we now possess there is a tidy sum sitting on credit card balances. This can be a dangerous lever, waiting to dump us over the edge at a moments notice. We headed it off by finding a low APR, zero interest on balance transfer offer and moved everything we could onto that card. Then we proceeded to cut up our physical cards except for one emergency card and have begun applying the snow ball methodology. The snow ball theory has you paying off the lowest balance card while making minimum monthly payments on the others, as you pay off a card you roll what you had been paying on it into you payment on the next one. With this consolidation we erased about $50 a month in additional interest fees.

Lastly, we began looking at efficiency around the house and in our travel habits. By lowering the thermostat by 3 degrees and running only full loads in the dryer, we cut $15 off the electric bill. Using public transportation and walking for quick trips to the nearby store translated into more than half a tank of gas saved every two weeks; which at today’s price means $50 a month left in our pockets. Together we have identified our spending priorities, changed our spending habits and challenged ourselves to find fun and rewarding ways to save a little bit in each category on our budget. This has tallied up to savings of almost $400 a month, which comes in handy when saving for the next rain day.

Tags: budget, coupon clipping, debit and credit, free samples, grocery bill, Money Saving Tips, monthly expenses, save money, Save Money With Coupons, ways to save money

Food is the second highest expenditure in most people’s lives, yet they don’t pay attention to it. Pay yourself by using the information inside of 5 Meals for $5. This cook book is not only filled with delicious and plentiful recipes, it is filled with the information on how you can get the same prices and lower than the recipes listed!

You don’t need to change what you eat, just the way you shop! And you don’t need to rely on Spam or unhealthy meals to live in today’s debt ridden economy. It’s not all about coupons and Jaci will show you how!

If you think you might starve because of portion size, think again! If you’re single, freeze the leftovers and save or cut down the recipes and eat a fresh meal every day and using Jaci’s Buddy Shopping System.

5 Meals for $5 also has a weights and measures chart, free date night ideas, measure conversion tables, Jaci Rae’s “The Plan” on how to get out of debt and much more!

One recipe example:

Pot Roast
Cost per person $0.97
Total cost five people $4.87
2 lbs chuck roast ($1.92)
(my store just had a sale for $0.69 a lbs. A lot less than listed here!)
1 lb. potatoes, diced ($0.40)
4 carrots, chopped ($0.10)
1 onion, chopped ($0.30)
1 beef bouillon ($0.16)
1 garlic clove, minced ($0.01)
Salt and pepper to taste ($0.02)
Iceberg Lettuce and Cucumber Salad ($1.45) (recipe listed in book)
Basic Vinegar and Oil Salad Dressing ($0.42) (recipe listed in book)
1 lemon, sliced in 5 wedges ($0.09)

Saute chuck roast in a dash of oil until both sides all dark brown (about 2 minutes on each side on high). Combine all other ingredients into a large stew pot or crock-pot. Once meat is browned, put into pot with other veggies and spices and cook on low for 2-3 hours or until Meat is tender and fully cooked. Make salad and serve with chilled water and lemon wedge.

Click Here To Purchase

Tags: frugal meals, frugal shopping, how to get out of debt, Money Saving Tips, save money, tips for saving money, ways of saving money, ways to save money

Guest post by Lorraine:

For me, organization is the key to saving money with coupons. I work on finding and organizing coupons just once a week, and generally save $5 or $10 a week from my shopping bill. I search for online sites that offer coupons for the items I usually buy, and register and bookmark the pages for easy return. Some sites allow you to load coupons to a store card electronically. Others allow or require you to print the coupons.

Next, I check the local advertisements, and once I know what products are being offered for a good price, I pull out any coupons that can be used on my next shopping trip. I also use some higher-denomination coupons to try out a new but higher-priced item, or to occasionally splurge a bit on a special item. Since an expired coupon is a useless coupon, I keep the printed versions in a small tabbed file container, about the size of a recipe file box. Each coupon is stored according to its expiration month, so I never encounter problems at the checkout counter.

When I am in the store aisles browsing merchandise, I compare prices associated with the coupon-item I’m thinking of buying. If there is another acceptable brand that would be less than the discounted item, I put the coupon away for later use. It is important to check whether a coupon discount will really get you the best deal. Sometimes there are other offers that beat the coupon you have – a different size that is even less expensive, or an in-house sale price that cannot be combined with coupons, for example. By using coupons to look for the best deals, I also learn to shop with discrimination. It pushes me to check the price-per-unit of a grocery item, and to consider no-names or generics.

Coupon use also helps me to plan out my shopping, rather than pick up items from memory (or impulse) as I go down the aisles. I am sure that focusing on coupons, and the list of items I intend to buy, has saved me even more than just the coupons alone. Remember to toss out expired coupons, and to share higher denomination coupons with friends who may want them. You can find coupon sharing clubs on the internet, at church, work, or through you network of friends. Everyone enjoys getting a good deal, and if all else fails, I’ll leave an unexpired coupon (for something I have decided not to buy) right next to the product on a store shelf. Who knows, the next person to come along may be looking for that exact item and use the coupon themselves!

Tags: Money Saving Tips, save money, Save Money With Coupons, saving money