It's Cheaper to Do This than That Thread

That's nuts. If I use the delicate cycle it's like 24minutes for example with the min level the clothes come out clean, free of suds and a lot more dry compared to all other non-front load washers. I'd say your mom's washer was either malfunctioning or it was a design flaw.

Wow, never heard of that, and I have a fairly hi tech front loader myself. What kind does she have? As a pp said, something seems to be malfunctioning. I use the 'quick load' cycle (32min) for nearly everything, and get very clean clothes (use much less detergent that called for also).

Pretty sure it was a Bosch. Some of them have all sorts of automatic sensors (weight, fabric type, soil level, etc.) I remember her having service out for it multiple times. They told her that there may have been enough detergent left behind in the clothes from her previous machine that it may not even need any detergent at first.

Just looked it up and it seems they now also come with an automatic detergent dispenser to avoid overusage and "prevent additional rinse cycles". So it must have been a common issue where the machine just kept rinsing until all the detergent was gone.
 
Definitely cheaper to buy gift wrap and other holiday stuff as the stores desperately clearance it out at the end of the season.

Found an endcap at the grocery store full of this stuff. I just stocked up on gift bows for $0.49 each/bag of 25 - this will likely supply us for the rest of the year!
Best of all, none of them were traditional Christmas colors! Some were even glittery animal print! :D
 
Yes, we eat a lot of black beans and I was going through cans and cans. With my Instant Pot and a bag of dried beans it is quick and so much less waste! We also eat a lot of yogurt and milk is still cheap here (.99 to 1.68) so I make a gallon batch in the instant pot. I strain it for greek yogurt, add good fruit preserves and the savings over the $1 yogurts or even the large tubs is huge. I t really tastes better too.

I use my Instant Pot for yogurt too. I also use it (or a saucepan on the stove) to make a fruit compote to top the Greek yogurt. It uses only frozen fruit, sugar, water and a little lemon juice. Thisoldgal has a recipe for the fruit compote - I use her Greek yogurt recipe too.
 
Wow, never heard of that, and I have a fairly hi tech front loader myself. What kind does she have? As a pp said, something seems to be malfunctioning. I use the 'quick load' cycle (32min) for nearly everything, and get very clean clothes (use much less detergent that called for also).

I have an LG front loader and I use a tiny amount of Tide-free (like a tablespoon!) and some white vinegar. Sometimes I still have suds on my clothes even with the extra rinse. Clearly many of us are using way too much detergent.
 


I use my Instant Pot for yogurt too. I also use it (or a saucepan on the stove) to make a fruit compote to top the Greek yogurt. It uses only frozen fruit, sugar, water and a little lemon juice. Thisoldgal has a recipe for the fruit compote - I use her Greek yogurt recipe too.

I checked out Thisoldgal! Wow, I love it!

I've been eyeing the Instant Pot, but haven't bought one yet. I always feel obligated to research everything like that before I buy it. I've watched youtube videos using it. It probably would be great to bring to WDW if you were driving! I brought my crockpot once years ago when we had paid for the trip but then had some financial issues. The boys really liked coming back to a late night meal ready in the room, but I felt bad that you could smell it down the hallway. lol. An Instant Pot would prevent that from happening. My boys were always hungry when we got back to the room, crockpot of not! I think that when they were young, they were too overstimulated in the parks to really focus on eating. So, when we were back in the room, they relaxed and became ravenous. This was particularly annoying the trip we had free dining. :crazy:
 
Plus if your last shopping bill was only $1.89, then that is less than the cost of even one box of the cereal! But still, it is good to buy what you can use or donate before expiration to avoid food waste. I still marvel at how little some couponers can pay for so many items.
Yes! It drives me crazy that dh just tosses a new something in the cabinet instead of seeing that we already have that item and the old one should be brought forward and put the new one in the back.
My dad uses the black marker dating like a pp mentioned. Sometimes he gives us a bag of stuff to take home when we visit and we always know it was from them with the date real big on it. :laughing: Hey whatever works...
 
Why would you let him regularly throw out food? I would have made him put it in his thermos for lunch the next day.
He does not take a packed lunch and even if he did what we tend to eat for dinner doesn't lend itself well to be a packed lunch without being about to reheat. We have no microwave at home and he does not have access to one at school. I do sack lunch it for work but I have ways of reheating leftovers.
 


My biggest money saver is my library. It's directly on the way home from work, so I'm not driving out of my way to go to it. Aside from books, they get many new releases of movies. We're patient so we don't mind waiting to borrow a movie vs. paying to rent it. Plus we get it for 7 days, which gives us plenty of time to watch and then return. My library also has board games and other kid activities to borrow, as well as cooking items (bundt pans, etc).

My other money saver is thrifting! Anytime I need a household item, I go to the thrift store first. I've gotten some nice things VERY cheap! Plus, I feel like I'm recycling in a way.
 
This is vacation related, but not Disney related-

For school vacation trips we always leave on Monday and return on Mon or Tues. We save a ton of money on flights, usually a couple hundred $'s per ticket and the kids only miss a day or two of school.

Also, we always get the cheapest room at the nicest resort we can afford. A few times we've gotten free upgrades, but if not, we really only sleep in our room on vacation so we'd rather have a hotel with great amenities than a great room.
 
My other money saver is thrifting! Anytime I need a household item, I go to the thrift store first. I've gotten some nice things VERY cheap! Plus, I feel like I'm recycling in a way.

for us it depends on the store. sadly some of the ones I would prefer to frequent (charities I wish to support) overprice items such that I won't purchase from them b/c of their 'no returns' policy (electric items I can't test in the store and I recognize I can get for near comparable prices on sale or with a coupon new).

HOWEVER-I highly suggest that before anyone purchases something through pampered chef that interests them they go to their local thrift or goodwill store b/c I routinely see brand new items that I suspect were gifted as shower or wedding presents.
 
It is cheaper to go to the Goodwill thrift store on the last Saturday of the month than any other day. They give you 50% off your entire purchase on the last Saturday of each month.
I don't think that is true of all Goodwills. Unless they recently changed, the one in my town doesn't do that. Prices seem to be increasing alot at my store but there are still some bargains.
 
Knowing yourself and your habits is really important and we work constantly to get better at not wasting, whether it's electricity, food, gas or time. It's a struggle to do it right, and it's real work budgeting and saving and being aware of what you spend. We're not great at it but get better all the time. We save by shopping at Aldi for the majority of our groceries and pick up additional items as needed. If I stay out of other stores, I save money. It's too easy for me to justify buying stuff I don't need.

I also realized that most avenues of saving money aren't for me. Like a Sam's Club membership we let expire in April. We just end up buying more stuff we don't actually need, I do miss it but can do without. Same things for savings programs, coupons, etc. If it's going to take a bunch of work to pay off, it's not going to happen for me.

I will always try to find the absolute best deal on anything I buy, I research everything and will wait for a good deal. But when it comes to the whole coupon game, I'm lost. And while getting free toilet paper would be awesome, we don't seem to regularly use a lot of products that you get coupons for.

We don't do reward programs with any type of cost anymore. It always sounds like a great deal, I buy into it, but a month later I forget I bought into whatever it is, then the year is up and I never used it...like those coupon books kids sell! I'm not buying them anymore.

We don't have credit cards. Up to now this has worked really well for me. I pay cash. For everything. I don't get reward points, but I don't pay an annual interest rate and I don't have to worry about missing a payment. This is what works for me now, but hubby and I are considering a card to use for groceries, gas etc, that would be paid off each month as it seems we're missing out on some valuable points.

We drive our cars until they absolutely fall apart. We will have to buy another one soon, but my current vehicle has been driven for over 10 years since I paid it off I will buy another used vehicle and do the same with that.

We shop thrift stores and rummage sale for everything from original art to clothing to furniture, to yard tools. We have saved so much money doing that. There really is no way we could get by as well as we do without it.
 
For us, it is cheaper to buy a MoviePass, which gives us 1 different movie a day every month, than it is to buy tickets for every movie we want to see. We go to the movies a lot & $10/month is less than the cost of one evening ticket at some local theatres.
We still buy on occasion for movies we want to see opening weekend but that just means we get a second viewing, which we often want.
 
My biggest money saver is my library. It's directly on the way home from work, so I'm not driving out of my way to go to it. Aside from books, they get many new releases of movies. We're patient so we don't mind waiting to borrow a movie vs. paying to rent it. Plus we get it for 7 days, which gives us plenty of time to watch and then return. My library also has board games and other kid activities to borrow, as well as cooking items (bundt pans, etc).

My other money saver is thrifting! Anytime I need a household item, I go to the thrift store first. I've gotten some nice things VERY cheap! Plus, I feel like I'm recycling in a way.

It is cheaper to go to the Goodwill thrift store on the last Saturday of the month than any other day. They give you 50% off your entire purchase on the last Saturday of each month.
I have outfitted two college apartment kitchens through the Goodwill! I found whole sets of nice silverware, complete Corelle dish sets, sets of Corning Ware, Tramontina hard adonized pots and pans sets, plus college apartment furniture. It’s been fun to hunt for the bargains.

Our Goodwill does 50% off the color of the week. Price tags are color coded- red, green, yellow, blue. I just bought DD a desk and chair for her apartment bedroom for $22 because they had yellow tags (color of the week)!
 
I have outfitted two college apartment kitchens through the Goodwill! I found whole sets of nice silverware, complete Corelle dish sets, sets of Corning Ware, Tramontina hard adonized pots and pans sets, plus college apartment furniture. It’s been fun to hunt for the bargains.

Our Goodwill does 50% off the color of the week. Price tags are color coded- red, green, yellow, blue. I just bought DD a desk and chair for her apartment bedroom for $22 because they had yellow tags (color of the week)!

Our Goodwill does that, it almost makes the prices worth bothering with. Goodwill and one other thrift here are absolutely outrageous. You can find stuff cheaper on clearance at the mall. We do have another, more reasonably priced thrift store, but they have started to creep their prices up as well. I used to love thrifts, but haven't found anything good in a long time. Too many Ebayers and people looking to resell.

We save money by:

Moviepass and a refillable popcorn bucket
researching and buying the best quality we can afford
always buy used cars, maintain them, and drive them until they fall apart
fixing things instead of replacing them
being avid DIYers
knowing when not do DIY
 
We don't have credit cards. Up to now this has worked really well for me. I pay cash. For everything. I don't get reward points, but I don't pay an annual interest rate and I don't have to worry about missing a payment. This is what works for me now, but hubby and I are considering a card to use for groceries, gas etc, that would be paid off each month as it seems we're missing out on some valuable points.

we operate on a cash basis as well but will use specific credit cards to make a purchase we still intend to pay in full before any interest accrues solely to qualify for extended warranty coverage.

if you are looking for a credit card that can work to your benefit points/rewards wise consider looking into what a local credit union may offer. we just got a new one b/c we wanted one that didn't charge foreign transaction fees so we opted for one through our credit union that lets US choose which categories of purchases earn the highest rewards. the one we got always gives the highest rewards for travel but we can opt for another 2 categories of purchases (for us-groceries/gas) to be in the highest tier, 2 other choices for the next lower tier-all others default to the lowest. our points can be traded for statement dollar credits so we will just let them pile up for a future purchase. the added benefit w/some credit union cards is they belong to the 'passport' program which offers nice discounts at a large number of restaurants and other businesses (we enjoy the bogo entrees at a number of privately owned as well as national chain restaurants).
 
I have an LG front loader and I use a tiny amount of Tide-free (like a tablespoon!) and some white vinegar. Sometimes I still have suds on my clothes even with the extra rinse. Clearly many of us are using way too much detergent.
What the problem is that washers will recycle the wash cycle water. You think that rinse water on the extra rinse is new water but listen to your washer. you will notice no new water is going into the machine. An appliance repairman told me this is the way the HE machine work now a days in order to be efficient . So the fact you are still seeing suds is because its the same water that originally rinsed the clothes.
 
What the problem is that washers will recycle the wash cycle water. You think that rinse water on the extra rinse is new water but listen to your washer. you will notice no new water is going into the machine. An appliance repairman told me this is the way the HE machine work now a days in order to be efficient . So the fact you are still seeing suds is because its the same water that originally rinsed the clothes.
That may be true but I never have suds left on my clothes sooo I'm guessing the main issue still is what the PP was saying in that too much detergent is being used. If you don't overuse the detergent then the reused water wouldn't have tons of suds in it to begin with.
 

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