Yoghurt cups: Recycle and reuse

Yoghurt cups are just perfect for reuse and recycling. Nice tumbler like shape, they usually come with a cap and are sturdy enough for most household storage. I use them atleast 4-5 times before I say goodbye to any of those. Here're a few things I use them for:

For storing leftover dough, cut vegetables or leftovers in the fridge.

For keeping lentils and beans for germination. (Go here for my post on sprouted beans)

For storing knick-knacks like buttons, coins etc.

For mixing my various homemade hair and face masks. They are handy because lot of these recipe call for yoghurt and I just use a yoghurt cup with last bit of yoghurt in it and then just toss it after I'm done. That way I don't even need to wash the cup before reusing it.

A lot of my yoghurt cups end up in my container garden, I use them for growing seeds or just plant a couple of small plants with smaller life span. The picture I have shows fenugreek plants in the cups. Fenugreek is a popular Indian herb which is used a lot in Indian cuisine.

Carnival of Money Stories #72

Broke Grad student has been hosting the carnival of money stories #72, my post on my husband's encounter with couponing has been included.

I couldn't suppress a laughter from this post by Budgets are sexy.

Carnival of Personal Finance

Carnival of Personal Finance #165 is up here at No Debt Plan. My post on savings has been included in this edition of carnival. Check it out for great articles on Personal Finance as well as a $50 giveaway from Kevin.

Hello, I have a convert here

So I made my debut to the fantastic world of couponing in February. While I was a little skeptical and afraid of the whole process, BEB was downright petrified. He couldn't believe I was willing to spend so much of my time and energy to save those itsy-bitsy 50 cents. I continued anyway, not because I believed in the savings from the coupons, but because I enjoyed the challenge of working the system to my advantage. Sometimes, it worked and sometimes I failed miserably. However, it earned me the moniker of "Coupon Warrior", nevertheless. Hubby, who initially absolutely hated the idea, made his peace with the fact that he was married to an absolutely "coupon-crazy" women. Slowly and surely, I learnt better ways of organizing my coupons, finding great deals and learned which deals were not really worth it and which ones I absolutely had to have.
So, now after many a Saturdays, when I asked BEB that we HAD to go to Walgreens today to make most of a couple of amazing deal they were having today, I didn't have to deal with his usual resistance. Not only did he get ready to go with me, he also helped me with find the right brands to work with the coupons I had. Once we were done with the Walgreens business, I meekly pointed out that I wanted to go to Rite-aid too, because they too had some amazing deals. To my surprise he agreed.
At rite-aid I told him that they are having this deal on Gillete shavers. He didn't need a shaver then but he just checked it out, and sure enough, it was a really good one. He asked me how much is it going to cost us. When he learned that with coupon and Single check rebate he can have it for free, he was amazed. He took the razor, but pointed out that what he really needed was a shaving gel. Okay, I said, I have a coupon for 1$ off on Gillete shaving gel which we can match with 1.79$ travel pack and have it for 79 Cents. He was awe-struck, he mentioned that he couldn't have it for such a bargain price even in India. The best was yet to come though, I showed him the Revlon nail-polish money maker deal. The nail-polish was free after single check rebate, but since I had a coupon of 1$ off, I could make a dollar on the price of nail-polish.
Ever since we have come-back from that trip BEB has been asking for more Gillette coupons so that we can get more shavers for him. My pointing out that we don't have anymore Gillette coupons and that we can only get one shaver on rebate isn't working. What can I say, its a nice problem to have.
And Oh! If you have someone in the household who doesn't think coupons work, but could use a Gillette shaver, make sure you take him to Rite-Aid before Sunday. :-)

Savings: How I stay motivated in face of financial mishaps

Last month while we were driving on a freeway a stray pebble hit our windshield and left a big gaping hole. It cost us 225$ in repairs.

Last month was also the month when we saved roughly 10$ by increasing the gaps between our laundry cycles and line-drying the clothes in our yard. We also saved about 10$ in movie subscriptions by borrowing dvd(s) from city library instead of paying for a streaming service.

It was easy to laugh at these savings in the face of this mishap which cost us almost equal to the yearly savings we'll get from these two changes, provided we continue to keep doing them through the year. I used to despair at these happenings and think that "There goes all my effort and time...in one single awful event..." I used to consider abandoning all these snow-flaking ideas and also abandoned many of them until I begun to put things into perspective. It finally dawned on me that snow-flaking or not, that pebble could still hit our windshield and it would still cost 225 bucks. The only difference would be that right now I have 20 bucks of snow-flakes stashed somewhere, which will soften the blow a bit for me.

Life happens, and so do things. It doesn't matter whether you've been saving or blowing money like the currency will be discontinued tomorrow. Even if your savings wont be always enough to bail you out of the situation, it will help soften the blow, at the very least you can take comfort in the fact that you did all you could to avert the situation. I think the effort and time invested in saving money is well worth it.

New week, new carnival!

I submitted an entry to Carnival of Personal Finance this week. You can go here to check my entry as well as several others.

July Budget: "No expense day" edition

So we are onto August now and I'm desperately hoping that the marching forces of expenditure take a break for a couple of months and let us touch our targeted budget for the month. But before that happens I have to go through the painful process of slicing and dicing our expenditure for July and from whatever I know of it, it ain't gonna be pleasant.

We finished 157$ below our realistic budget and 527$ above (???) our targeted budget. We had about 1400$ worth of unexpected expenses this month. So I can blame them for this spike in our expenses. What I want to see in the coming months is, "whether there's really some such thing as 'unexpected expenses' or whether I should allocate a big chunk to unforeseen expenses. We'll see.

Anyway, right now I feel that I have got the magical key to bring our spending down. As I have mentioned earlier we have decided to observe at least 3 "no expense days" where we try to spend no money at all on that day. It was BEB's idea which I adopted in no time. It was surprising to see how many "needs" just disappear, when we just wait them out for a couple of days. Specially doing it on weekdays was so easy and it saved time too. Earlier we used to stop at the grocery shop on the way almost every other day, now I try to get all the groceries on the weekend and avoid going to store during the week. I found that it saves a lot of time, and that one ingredient wasn't all that necessary after all. Biggest advantage was that BEB didn't get a chance to fall for that unhealthy snack every other day. Earlier when we used to go to grocery store every other day, then more often than not we ended up getting those fried Indian snacks, just because BEB got the opportunity to buy it. Later on, he felt guilty about eating those unhealthy snacks. Now, by avoiding going to the store we have reduced the chance of getting it.

If you really want to cut down your spending, just try it once, try not to spend any money, and I mean ANY money that day. You will really see how much difference it makes to your bottom-line.