June 22, 2011
How to save money on food while you are on vacation
1) Start saving early. I put all my loose change in a jar, and when I get ready to leave on vacation, I cash it in at the bank. The loose change is usually enough to pay for a meal on the trip.
2) Earmark alternate sources of income. I make some money every month doing surveys online. Sometimes I put this money into my savings, my debt snowball, or just use for mad money (shopping and eating out), but this month, the money is earmarked for eating out on vacation.
3) Do research ahead of time. Use TripAdvisor and Yelp to read reviews of restaurants at your destination, so you can find out which ones offer good food at a reasonable price, and which ones to pass up. Try to find restaurants where the locals eat, and avoid restaurants that cater to tourists or business travelers with expense accounts. Ethnic food is usually a good bet (we’ve had good success with Vietnamese, Mexican, and Moroccan restaurants). For example, on our last trip, the tourist trap surf-and-turf restaurant was overpriced (entrees started at $15) and crowded with long lines waiting to get tables. We drove to another town 10 miles away and had great Mexican seafood at a restaurant where our entire bill, including drinks, was less than one entree at the first restaurant!
4) Once you have decided where you want to eat, search out discounts. You can use Restaurants.com to buy certificates, or look for coupons. Some restaurants have printable coupons on their websites, others have coupons printed in coupon books or even the local newspapers. Also, look for happy hour offers. In San Francisco, there was a sushi restaurant right next to our hotel that offered $2 Sapporos from 5 to 7 pm. Of course, that was when we ate dinner!
5) Decide which meals you want to eat at a restaurant and which you can make yourself. My husband is not a big breakfast eater. When we are on vacation, I pack bagels, cream cheese, and fruit, and we have a light breakfast in our hotel room before heading out. This is extremely cheap, especially if you find the bagels on markdown or have a stockpile of cream cheese! It also means you can stay at a cheaper hotel that does not offer continental breakfast. We then make sandwiches for lunch. On roadtrips, we never know if there will be a good restaurant close by when we get hungry, but with sandwiches we can stop anywhere (park, beach, scenic turn-out) and have lunch. There are different schools of thought on this. Some people prefer to stay at hotels that offer a breakfast buffet, and fill up on that, then pack snacks such as fruit, nuts, and granola bars with them for their excursions. Others maintain that breakfasts and lunches at restaurants are usually cheaper than dinners out, and make a light evening meal in their hotel rooms.
Which leads to 6) Get a room with a kitchenette. On this trip, we are staying in a cabin that has a 2-burner stove and a small refrigerator. This will enable us to cook the majority of our meals and only eat at restaurants a few times during our trip. I have planned meals that are simple and cheap, even using some of my stockpile, just like I would at home.
June 14, 2011
More things I can do to save money this summer
1) Turn jeans with worn-out knees into cut-off shorts (estimated savings, $20).
2) Get hair cut at a beauty school instead of paying my usual stylist (estimated savings, $20).
3) Use older towels that we already own for beach towels instead of buying brand new beach-specific towels (estimated savings, $20).
4) Use cell phone digital camera instead of buying new digital camera (saves about $100) or disposable cameras (saves about $10). Plus it is easier to load photos onto Facebook.
5) Buy food for cooking at vacation cabin in the local stores instead of in the high-priced island supermarket (estimated savings, about $50).
Saving money on vacation lodging
Start planning early. We started looking about 6 months ahead of time, when it was still the dead of winter. The main reason I did this was to get the days off work that I wanted. We were also able to shop around for accomodations. Lodging fills up fast on the island where we are going, and tends to be expensive in the “High Season”. By starting our search early, we were able to find a cabin with a reasonable price and the amenities we wanted.
Decide what kind of accomodations you need. We usually do fine in fairly basic rooms. On our last real vacation, we spent 5 days in a hotel in San Francisco that didn’t have a fridge. We survived by chilling our beverages in an ice bucket filled from the ice machine down the hall. We ate all our meals out. Fortunately, food in San Francisco wasn’t very expensive. I do like to have a fridge, because it means I can bring more food from home. So this year, I made sure that all the rooms we are staying in on our vacation have fridges. Other than that, we don’t need much. We don’t need pools, weight rooms, cushy bathrobes, a pillow menu, or even Wi-Fi. I’m a pretty adventurous eater, but draw the line on powdered eggs reconstituted in a warming tray, so continental breakfast is also a non-essential. However, a coffee maker is essential because my husband cannot think straight in the morning without a big cup of coffee.
Stay away from chains (unless you really like a particular chain, stay there a lot, and get reward points for each stay). I find them to be sterile and boring at best. The last time I stayed at a chain, my husband and I were miserable because compact fluorescent bulbs glared from every light fixture in the room (and there were about 10 in the room). The hotel was located on the outskirts of town, surrounded by abandoned strip malls from the 70′s and cracked asphalt. It was less than romantic. We are visiting the same town again on this vacation, and this time we are spending about $10 more for a hotel in the center of town, in walking distance to restaurants and shops, and with a better view. Hopefully the lighting and ambiance will be better as well. We like independently owned hotels. I find that I can get good discounts at these types of places. I use online codes, coupon books, and Triple A discounts to get a good value.
I also tend to avoid Bed and Breakfasts. I have stayed at a few in my time, but found the decor is usually stuffy and overwhelming, and the walls are very thin. Sometimes the owners have lots of rules about their homes and are nosy. I have even seen B&Bs that do not allow unmarried couples to stay there! You have to be a real people person to stay in a B&B, because you will encounter the owners and other guests at close quarters, and most likely they will want to chat. It also helps to be an early riser and a morning person, because the breakfasts are often served in the early morning, around a communal table. While off-season bargains do exist, usually you will find that you are paying a premium for the stuffy decor and high-calorie breakfast.
I use Trip Advisor to find hotels with good ratings, and then I go to the hotel’s website directly to check rates. I find that by going to the hotel’s website and checking to see if they offer a Triple A discount, I can get better prices than if I book through Orbitz, Expedia, or Hotels.com. Some hotels don’t offer Triple A discounts, but sometimes doing a Google search for “hotel name” + “coupon code” or “discount” might turn up some results. Or the hotel might offer a discount for booking in advance or booking online, or staying a certain number of nights. Another good rule of thumb is to book at hotels that cater primarily to business travelers on the weekend, when they are less full. Conversely, vacation resorts might have lower rates on the weekdays.
June 9, 2011
The coupon game is changing…
While it is one of my favorite guilty pleasures, TLC’s “Extreme Couponing” is definitely changing the couponing world. Retailers seem to be scrambling to close the couponing loopholes that are exploited by the people on the show.
Read any book on saving money on groceries, or any couponing blog, and they will tell you to stack store coupons with manufacturer’s coupons. I used this strategy myself to great advantage. However, around the time that “Extreme Couponing” premiered, Fred Meyers, where I do most of my couponing, stopped allowing stacking! Imagine my shock and surprise when the cashier told me that I could use either the store coupon or the manufacturer’s coupon but not both!
Fortunately, all the store coupons Fred Meyers has been issuing lately have been for their private label products or for things that I don’t usually buy, so it hasn’t been much of an issue. If the manufacturer’s coupon is a high-value coupon (for example, a dollar off), it might be a better deal to use the MC instead of the SC, because often the items they issue store coupons for are already on sale, so it becomes a sale-with-a-coupon deal instead of a stacking deal. Conversely, if the MC is a low-value coupon (say 25 or 35 cents), it might be better to use the store coupon. It just makes things a bit trickier, and the savings not quite as good.
Another major change is that Safeway no longer accepts electronic coupons.
For a while, I would load the Shortcuts coupons on to my Safeway store loyalty card. I was very surprised when I noticed that I could use the electronic coupon and a paper coupon (sometimes doubled!) on the same item, making the item free or even producing an overage. Extreme Couponer’s delight! Safeway quickly put the kibosh on this. This is not going to affect me much, because most of the Shortcuts coupons are for junky processed foods that I don’t buy much of anyways.
Safeway still allows stacking and doubling. And Fred Meyers has recently added their store loyalty cards to Cellfire and Shortcuts. No word on whether you can combine electronic coupons with store coupons or other manufacturer’s coupons at Fred Meyer!
June 8, 2011
Things I can do right now to save money
1) Cut my Netflix subscription from 2 movies out to 1 at a time. We barely have time to watch these movies anyways, and have been having really good success with getting movies at the library. Estimated savings: $5 a month.
2) Drop my cell phone insurance. It is about to go up. I have 6 months left on my contract and then I plan to get a Cricket phone. My phone has already broken and been replaced under this insurance, so it’s a bit of a gamble. Estimated savings: $8 a month.
3) Stop buying bottles of tea to take to work, and brew my own ice tea instead. This is really wasteful. I would save anywhere from $3-$6 a week if I made my own tea at home and brought it to work with me.
4) Buy tinted moisturizer with sunscreen at the drugstore instead of at the department store, when I use up my current tube. Estimated savings: $15.
5) Grow my own basil, mint, and Italian parsley. Estimated savings: $2 a week.
Frugal Sophisticate is back!
A lot of changes in the last 2 and a half years since I last picked up my blog. My husband and I moved, got married, I got a new job after brief period of unemployment, and we moved again to another apartment.
I am busier than ever but still trying to keep up the frugal lifestyle. Even though I work more than 40 hours most weeks, I have some downtime at work and thought that I would start blogging again to give me an outlet for writing and expressing my opinions.
I feel that it is getting harder and harder to stay frugal as the prices rise. My grocery budget feels out of control. It’s getting more difficult to find deals on food and plan meals frugally (being tired at the end of the day doesn’t help either). I’m going to use this blog as a tool to keep me on track.
I’m going to focus on topics like traveling, cooking, and ways to save money on shopping and leisure activities.
February 9, 2009
Menu Plan Monday 2/9
Last week, Josh and I succumbed to the horrible death virus that is going around. I am still suffering; my ears are plugged up and I can only hear out of one of them. It’s very disconcerting, and I feel just miserable. Monday we had Chicken Caesar salad, Tuesday we had salmon, risotto, and a salad with Gorgonzola cheese and tomatoes. Wednesday Josh made Minestrone soup and I made garlic bread from a loaf of sunflower-seed-flax bread I bought months ago from the day-old rack at Fred Meyer and kept in the freezer. Thursday I made crispy tofu with a peanut-coconut curry sauce and basmati rice. Friday, we wanted something easy, so Josh bought frozen potstickers and edamame from Trader Joes, and I made Asian coleslaw. Saturday, we had buffalo burgers, sweet potato fries, and left-over coleslaw. Sunday we had Chicken Caesar salad again. My grocery bill was astronomical this week, the highest it’s been since I started keeping track. I think it’s because I went shopping when I was sick and run-down and hungry, and I did not want to deny myself anything, so I kept throwing it in the cart!
This week:
1) Pasta with Puttenesca sauce.
2) Chipotle chicken and black bean burritos with rice, assorted fixings.
3) Megadarra (a yummy lentil-rice dish from Egypt that Josh makes).
4) Curry-rubbed tilapia with red potatoes, salad.
5) Crispy tofu stir fry with soyaki sauce, snap peas, broccoli, brown rice.
6) Pizza, salad.
February 2, 2009
Safeway deals from last week
I’ll just post my Safeway deals because that is the most fun part of grocery shopping for me, the ridiculous Safeway double coupon deals. This is from Friday, should have posted them sooner.
2 boxes Triscuits …………………$ .88 (They were on sale for $1.69, and I had a $2.00 off 2 coupon which I doubled to make them an astounding $ .44 each. This is the cheapest price for Triscuits that I have ever seen. Yay Superbowl!)
Star extra virgin olive oil………………..$5.49 (after $ .50 coupon doubled).
Lundberg Farms risotto…………………$1.40
Purina cat food…………………..$2.00
2 cartons Tropicana orange juice……………..$3.50 ($1.75 each after $1.00 off 2 coupon doubled).
2 lb. Tillamook medium cheddar………………..$4.99 (on store special).
3 small red potatoes………………..$ .95.
Small head org. cauliflower……………..$2.18
3 red onions………………$2.56
5 roma tomatoes………………..$1.38
1 bunch radishes…………………$ .79
1 avocado……………….$ .88
1 bunch cilantro……………..$ .69
1 5 oz. container organic salad mix……………….$1.98
1 5 oz. container organic baby spinach………………$1.9
My total was $31.65. I saved $26.95, or 46%, according to them. I skipped Fred Meyer this week and did the rest of my shopping at Trader Joe’s. Fred Meyer has very consistent sales and prices on things. Every month they print a booklet with their sales for the month, and often the same things are on sale month after month, or every other month. Safeway is more of a wild card, and they have a lot of unadvertised specials on random things that there are often coupons for. By going to Safeway, I missed out on the cheaper vegetables and canned beans at Fred Meyer, but since those items are only a few cents cheaper than the ones at Safeway, I figured I could save more by picking up the double coupon deals at Safeway. I’ve been thinking a lot about starting a price book Excel file, where I could enter all this information.
