Every week I buy two bags of carrots at Lidl. Usually they’re about 40 cents a kilo. I process the carrots myself so I don’t have to buy the much more expensive preprocessed ones. We take a couple of them with us to work every day. It’s so easy and very much worth it.
What’s your favourite healthy budget snack?
Love,
Mrs EconoWiser
Another post about freezer cooking. I just love love love the concept. This Monday I made our traditional Dutch peasoup and Mexican mix.
Soup ingredients:
Mexican mix in progress. I don’t eat meat so I made two versions. One with grounded beef and the other one with shrimps.
The final result:
Love,
Mrs EconoWiser
Hi there, Mrs EconoWiser is rather busy at the moment as you might have noticed. See, here in The Netherlands we celebrate both Christmas and Sinterklaas. Sinterklaas is actually a predecessor of Saint Nicholas (hence the name). The biggest exchange of gifts will happen on this mans fictive birthday on the 5th of December. That’s why sales have recently gone up and through the roof. For the rest of December I expect the same since it has been that way for the past five years already.
It’s nice to earn a lot of extra cash at the end of the year instead of going broke on all the gift-giving.
Love,
Mrs EconoWiser
Last week I saw a couple of youngsters sneaking into my neighbours’ house in order to nick beer out of their garden. Don’t know what the beer was doing outside, by the way. Anyway, there have been quite a number of burglaries in our neighbourhood lately. Therefore, we have decided to “invest” in an anti-burglary screen of €800. It will look something like this and it will be attached in front of the big sliding door at the back of our house.
I’d rather spend €800 to feel safer and make our house look less attractive for burglars than doing nothing.
Would you have done the same?
Love,
Mrs EconoWiser
I have been thinking about this for a long time. We love to visit new place. Yes, we are those people who like to travel a lot and hardly ever visit the same place twice. A couple of years ago I read about the advantages of exchanging your home with another family so that both parties can enjoy a nice holiday without the cost. I checked out homeforexchange.com today and I am getting more and more excited about this. My husband is very hesitant, though.
Do you have any experience with this idea of home swapping?
Love,
Mrs EconoWiser
I really like the fact that my salary is always transferred to my bank account on the 24th of the month. On that day I always transfer money directly into our joined account. That way I know for sure that there will be enough money in the bank to pay for our monthly mortgage fees and the rest of our expenses. My husband’s salary doesn’t arrive until the 28th usually. I just really like the idea that we always have enough money in our account. I am also looking forward to the first of the upcoming month. Then I’ll calculate the total balance for this month and we can decide how much the extra mortgage payment will be. Yay!
Do you recognize that feeling?
Love,
Mrs EconoWiser
A very good friend of mine is a hairdresser. He cuts our hair for free in his salon after hours. I only have to pay cost price for the dye he uses on my hair. However, we don’t live close to our friend and it takes about 45 minutes to get there by car. Not very Mustachian, I know. So we try to combine our visit to our private hairdresser with a weekend stay. We only do this about once every three months.
This is fine for my hair, but my husband’s hair looks a mess by then. It just grows too fast. I started sending my husband to a cheap local hairdresser for the in between haircuts. I wasn’t very pleased with the result and it still cost 20 euros. I have been paying attention when our friend gives my husband a haircut. Mr. Money Mustache inspired me to carry out the following idea. I’ll ask the friend whether I can buy a second-hand shaver and a good pair of scissors off him. I’ll also ask him to teach me how to cut my husband’s hair properly.
I’ll keep you posted on the results!
Love,
Mrs EconoWiser
Yup, I just love sitting on my couch in the living room with a tablet in my hand. We own a Google Nexus tablet. It was a birthday gift I gave my husband this year. I know…not very Mustachian. But we do love the thing. This is the reason why it was also easy to give up our newspaper subscription. In the morning we’ll just read the news off the tablet. Anyways, I started reader Mr. Money Mustache’s oldest blog posts and have started to work my way up to the present. I already have much inspiration to upgrade our badassity!
Love,
Mrs EconoWiser
I don’t think I will have any problems with this statement, since there are only a couple of weeks left of 2012. However, I only bought “new” second-hand shoes a couple of weeks ago because of my orthotics. My old shoes just didn’t fit and I sold most of them. This leveled out evenly so my purchases didn’t cost me extra money.
I haven’t bought new clothes since almost six months now. Now that I am decluttering my wardrobe I have a fairly good idea of the amount and type of clothes I already have. Usually, I am a sucker for the end of season January final sale. Maybe I won’t be purchasing anything during that upcoming sale?
Love,
Mrs EconoWiser
From 2008 to mid 2010 I practised a nice frugal groceries routine. I let things slide and only picked it up again halfway 2012. Now I am back on track and loving it again. What’s my routine? Rather boring, really.
On Mondays I do the groceries. So I get up in the morning and make a list. Never go grocery shopping without a list. Then I’m off to Lidl and shop the greater part of the things we need. I especially like the fruits and veggies they offer at great prices. Also, there’s usually only one version of an item there. Peanut butter is peanut butter, so the paradox of choice is eliminated here. Then, I’ll go to Jumbo (regular supermarket here in The Netherlands) and shop the things Lidl doesn’t have or certain brands we like (coca cola for example).
I spend about €75 on average each week on groceries now. There’s the two of us and no kids nor pets.
How much do you spend each week?
Love,
Mrs EconoWiser
EconoWiser 