Money-Saving Tips from Tibs and Shell

[Joods]

I'm cheap with the heat too. Tibby splurges on that. To be fair, we live in New England. He's not a polar bear yet.

For some reason I thought you guys lived out in Arizona or somewhere like that.

We are frugal on our heat as well. The kids have five blankets each on their beds in the winter and we don't touch the thermostat. It is kept at 67 degrees throughout the year. Rob is a damn oven so he provides all the heat we need lol. Besides, I get hot flashes due to being peri-menopausal since I was 40. I keep a Wind machine running on my side of the bed all year long.

For my savings tips:

Feeding a family of five, we find it cheaper to shop at Sam's club. We also use ebates. I've had an account with them for over five years now. I can shop at Sam's through the ebates button on my browser, have them pull what's on my list for me. All I have to do is go in, pick up the cart and pay. In and out in five to ten minutes and I stick to what's on my list and shop from home. It doesn't cost anything extra for this service either.

There are items I won't buy from there such as cereal because I can get that cheaper at our local grocery outlets here. But for meats, I find their prices to be far better than even Walmart. I use 90% lean ground beef. The local supermarket chain, Giant, sells that for $5.99 per pound. I can get the same 90% lean ground beef at Sam's for $3.99 per pound, saving me $2.00 a pound on the good stuff. Chicken is the same way. I can get the better quality, boneless skinless chicken for $2 & $3 less per pound by getting it at Sam's.

Also, we don't use prepackaged or processed foods. We make 95% of what we need, from scratch. So buying staples such as rice, flour, sugar, spices, butter, eggs, meats, etc in bulk at Sam's saves us money.

Also, because I'm a cosmetology student, knowing what I know about shampoos, conditioners etc, I no longer buy those from the store. I get them from my school's salon. Because a student, I get a 30% discount off all products, which is sweet because I get better quality items for the same price as the cheap crap at Walmart. My bathrooms are stocked with back bar sizes of what the school uses in their dispensary. As long as the school is willing to sell me the larger sizes, and I can useu discount, I'll buy what I need, there.

That said, I can also shop at places the public can't. So I get discounts from places like Salon Centric or Cosmoprof for professional products. Those places always have sales too. I recently got 14 different colors from the Joico Intensity line. Normally, each tube of color would cost $6.85, but they had a sale of 2 for 10. I bought in bulk and saved a ton. I'll make my money back big time.

Each tube can yield me three bowls of color. If I charge for a color service starting at $65, each additional bowl of color needed would be another $20 per bowl. And that's cheap! Consider your typical salon charges out the ass for fashion colors, you could end up spending well over $200 just to have three different colors in your hair.

Keep in mind you aren't just paying for product. You are paying for your stylists time and talent too. Some stylists in New York, for example, charge over $200 an hour for their services, no matter what you want done.

I think I got in the right business. Plus, anything I buy for my trade is tax deductible.