Tag: "Guest Posts"

Frugal Lunch Ideas – Guest Post by Taya @ SimplyFrugal.ca

I’m thrilled to announce that Taya from Simply Frugal has written us a great piece on frugal lunch ideas. Here’s a bit about her:

Coupon clipping, menu planning and deal hunting are a few things Taya is passionate about.  She lives in Beautiful British Columbia with her husband who supports her vision and strange tendencies for living a debt free life.

She can be found at simplyfrugal.ca where she brings Canadians the latest store deals, coupons, freebies and money saving ideas – daily.

Taya has a great series on menu planning and eating healthy on a budget. If you enjoy this post, you should definitely check out her food-related money-saving tips. Enjoy! -Shayna

Frugal Lunch Ideas

Are you spending a small fortune on lunches by eating out every day?  Lunches, when you’re a working person, can be costly.  Not only are they expensive, restaurant meals can also be harmful to your health.  If you’re looking to save a buck and start eating more healthful lunches, then read on.

With a bit of planning and creativity it’s easy to replace expensive fast food lunches with frugally priced homemade food.   Here are some of my ideas to help get your creative juices going:

1. Picnic - If you’re used to heading out each lunch break with a group of coworkers to a local restaurant, why not start planning picnics?  Head to a nearby park when the weather permits to get a bit of fresh air and catch up on the latest office news.  Of course bringing your own lunch is the way to cut costs here!




2. Pack dinner leftovers – This is my favourite way to cut lunch costs.  I simply make extra dinner so that I will have plenty of leftovers for lunch the next day.  If you don’t have access to a microwave, consider purchasing an insulated jar to keep your foods hot.




3. Purchase or make a cute lunch bag – Nothing makes bringing your own lunch more fun than having a cute and inexpensive lunch bag to hold everything.




4. Plan ahead – Set aside an hour each week to cut up fresh vegetables that you can bring easily to work each day.  You may also want to bake a batch of muffins or cookies during this time.  Or even while you’re preparing dinner, cut up some extra veggies for your lunch!




5. Prepare your own – Going along with the previous tip, instead of buying prepackaged granola bars, sliced cheese, cookies, etc, make your own.  Not only do you know exactly each ingredient that goes in each recipe, they taste better too!

Here are some easy lunch ideas that I always like to have available in case I don’t have any dinner leftovers, my usual fare:

• Burritos – My favourite is a combination of refried beans, rice, cheese and salsa, rolled up in a tortilla shell then wrapped in tin foil.  These freeze really well.
• Samosas – I’ve got a favourite easy recipe you can find here.  These also freeze well.
• Salad – I always have a container of that Spring Mix salad on hand.
• Bunwiches/sandwiches – Anything goes!

– by Taya Knight

Coupon Co-operation – Guest Post from Mom2Michael

Hi all! So, working for a coupon company, I have grown to love coupons – they’re free to use, and they end up saving you lots! But what do you do when you have too many coupons? You exchange them! Today we have a great post from Mom2Michael who shares her experience with coupon co-ops. Enjoy!

I have a confession to make. I love coupons. I clip them fanatically. And I’m not sure where I “learned” this, as my mom never had the patience for it. But I love the idea of saving money, and even those 25 cent off coupons eventually add up. I get my coupons from newspaper inserts, off the rack at supermarkets, savings websites, or direct from brands through their loyalty clubs. I get so many I don’t always get around to using them all, so I am working on being more selective, and on coupon sharing.

Coupon sharing is a great idea. Different folks in your circle may have access to different coupons for different brands, and if you come together and share or trade you can all maximise your savings on the brands you love.

When I was on mat leave I joined a local Mom’s Group. It was a super support network where I made great new friends. We would meet once or twice a week at the mall for a stroller walk, a cup of coffee, and good long chat with other actual adults. Wow. And the conversation often turned to where the best deals were on diapers or formula, or who had too many coupons for brand x. Or, one mom would mention she had to pick up diapers while we were at the mall and “Does anyone have an extra coupon for that today?” We began to informally trade coupons amongst ourselves.  For instance, I preferred one brand of disposable diapers, but I was getting coupons for a different brand, which another mom preferred. So off they went.

This sharing was becoming so common to our meetings, I decided to go out and buy a coupon organiser for our group (available at the dollar store – totally cheap). And I sorted out my coupons and added all my unwanted ones to the organiser. Then the next time we met, I passed the coupons around. And our coupon co-op was begun! At each meeting we passed this organiser around, and anyone could take out coupons they needed and put in coupons they didn’t. The organiser went home each time with one of the moms who was planning to come to the next meet-up. And many pennies were saved and coupons used that would otherwise have been sent to recycling.

You could apply this same coupon co-op idea to any group really – a card or games club, at your  office, parents’ council at your kids’ school, or the neighbourhood moms you meet in the local playground. Anywhere you find yourself among like-minded folks who are trying their best to be frugal shoppers.

Have experience swapping coupons? Got another way for dealing with unused vouchers? Share them by commenting!

I’m not really cheap… (Part I) – Guest Post from Tracy of The Daily Mom Diaries

Hi all! We have a special guest post today. Tracy of The Daily Mom Diaries offers her valuable tips on how to save money – it’s her way to be frugal without being cheap! Check out part one of her two parter:

My husband kindly refers to me as being cheap, I however prefer the terms Thrifty Diva or Frugal Queen!  No matter the term, I am great with deals, bargains and saving money!!  I am a busy mom to three boys and currently on maternity leave.  This leaves us living on one income and a tiny little bit of maternity benefits.  Saving money and cutting costs are a huge part of our lives.  Today, I would love to share with you some of the things I do that work for my family.

For the Grocery Store:

• Look through all the weekly sales flyers and check out which stores have the best deals for the groceries you need.  Try to stick to one or two stores.  If you are driving to numerous stores, the money you are saving shopping is being eaten up by your gas consumption.
• I recommend making a grocery list and trying your best to stick to it.
• Clip coupons for the things you will buy and take them with you.  There are great Canadian coupon sites available on the web, coupon trains, trading/swapping, printables, etc…just Google it!  There are many great sites to choose from.

Around the Home:  There are so many things that I do around my home to save money.  Here are a few to try for yourself.

• When using the dishwasher, always make sure there is a full load before using.  Don’t use the heat dry cycle, let them dry normally.  Crack the door open and they will be dry in the morning.
• On laundry day, make sure there is a full load before using the washing machine.  If it is a nice day, hang your laundry out on the line to dry.  Better yet, follow the weather and ensure you coordinate your wash days with nice days.
• If something isn’t being used, then turn it off and unplug it.  Did you know that appliances still use a small amount of electricity while they are plugged in and not being used?
• I leave a kitchen timer in the bathrooms and anyone having a shower can set the timer to 5 minutes.  It’s reasonable to be in and out in that length of time.
• Turn down your hot water temperature on your tank a couple of degrees.
• Turn the thermostat in your home down to 15 degrees at bedtime.  Toss on an extra blanket and you’ll never know the difference.
• In the cold season, open all your drapes and blinds during the day to let in the warm sunlight.  On warm summer days, keep the drapes and blinds partially closed to block the heat and keep the temperature in the house a bit cooler saving on your air conditioning or your fan usage.
• Check into consolidating some of your home services.  For example, I get my internet, phone, long distance and cable all from one provider.  The whole bundle saves me a few dollars as opposed to getting these services from several different providers.

Stay tuned tomorrow for part II on saving money on odds and ends from Tracy.

What Are Coupon Trains and How Do They Work? – Guest Post from This Bird’s Day

Today’s guest post from This Bird’s Day shows you a different side of saving your Loonies. Instead of wasting unused coupons, pass them to someone who can take advantage of them! We hope you enjoy this post on coupon trains and their money-saving possibilities. – fi

Choo-choo, All Aboard the Coupon Train!

Have you ever wondered exactly how a coupon train works and where you can go to join one? In short, coupon trains are a way to trade the coupons you don’t want for the ones you do with other people either in your city or across the country.

Coupon trains usually consist of 5 – 10 participants. The first person, or the conductor, gathers the participants names and mailing info, and makes an ordered list of all participants so everyone knows where they fall in the mailing order. The conductor starts off the train by putting the coupons they don’t want into an envelope and mails it to the second person on the mailing list. The second person takes the coupons that they want out of the envelope and replaces them with the same amount or greater worth of coupons that they don’t want, then mails it on to the third person who then does the same. This continues until the coupons get to the last participant on the list. That person then takes out what they want, replaces it with what they don’t, and mails it back to the conductor who, by then, will have an envelope full of new coupons.

The rules to coupon trains are very simple.
1) Replace the coupons you take out
2) Try not to keep the train for longer than a few days – you should know approximately when to expect it, so have your coupons ready to go.

Coupon trains work best when you are close in proximity to each other (to shorten mailing times) and when everyone on the list has different preferences for coupons. If you have a baby, and want all of the coupons from the others on the list, you should make your preference known so others will know what to include. That being said, cross-country coupon trains work well too and sometimes you find some great coupons that were never displayed in your province (but you can use).

To find coupon trains in Canada, you can search online for Canada Coupon forums, or you can check out my site at This Bird’s Day. I maintain a list of coupon forums as I come across them in my sidebar under Savings Sites.

Money-Saving Tips – Guest Post from Consumer Noe

I’d like to extend a warm welcome to Consumer Noe, a blogpost dedicated to informing Canadians one consumer at a time. This guest post has 15 incredible tips for all aspects of your life. Hope they help you with your daily budget! – fi

1. Open an ING account and have your funds automatically deposited into it.

2. Save the Rest at Bank of Nova Scotia automatically deposits $1 or $5 into a separate account for short term savings such as a vacation or car repairs.

3. Start clipping coupons. Search online, newspapers, magazines and in-store.

4. Make a list before going grocery shopping and eat first before you go. Once at the grocery store, shop on the outer perimeter of the grocery store, this is where all the fresh food is kept. Vegetables, fruits, breads, meats and dairy. Don’t forget to stick to your list.

5. Plan your meals, at least a couple days in advance if not longer. There are some wonderful meal plans online. Search under meal plans.

6. Start using cash. Leave your debit and credit cards at home. By doing this, you won’t give in to impulse spending.

7. Budget. Write out your expenses and allocate your funds accordingly. Don’t forget to include some fun things like entertainment. Stick to your budget. You might get off track once in a while, but do not make it a habit. Too many times off course and the budget won’t work.

8. Shop for items when they are on sale.

9. Adopt the jar method. Allocate into jars, money for those expenses that are not fixed, for example: gas, entertainment, groceries, transportation, spending. Once the funds in the jar are finished, the do not get replenished until next payday. This method works best by pay period.

10. Open an RRSP account. You can start as low as $25/mth with most banks.

11. Swap children’s clothing with friends. Kids grow up so fast, it gets expensive buying them a new wardrobe everytime.

12. Shop at second-hand stores such as Goodwill, Salvation Army, Value Village and Once Upon a Child.

13. Watch movies at home instead of going to the theatre.

14. Make gourmet meals at home instead of going to an expensive restaurant.

15. DIY. Learning to do-it-yourself will save you hundreds of dollars a year. Everything from home improvements to interior design can be done by you. It just takes time and patience.

If you have any money-saving tips, please feel free to share.

Happy Shopping!!