As a family of eight with financial goals, we are all about saving money on the things that don’t matter to us so that we can be free to spend on the things that are our priorities.
My husband and I were both raised in frugal families, so we aren’t strangers to the frugal life, but our priorities are a little different than our parents’ were. Your frugal probably looks different than my frugal, too.
That’s how it should be! Personal finance is personal because we all have different priorities.
Still, no matter what your frugal looks like, I’m sure you can agree that living the frugal life can really be an adventure sometimes.
Sometimes you have wins that you’re eager to share with all of your frugal friends. I call those our frugal feats.
Other times things don’t work out quite like we had planned. Those are our frugal flops.
And sometimes the frugal life can just be funny.
So here are some frugal feats, flops, and funnies from our summer (better late than never, right!?)! Feel free to share your own in the comments!
Frugal Feats
Fair Tickets
Our county fair is held in June. My kids came with me to help set up the quilts at the fair early in the week. I am definitely on the younger end as far as quilting friends go, plus I have a bunch of tall, helpful kids, so every year we get recruited to help set up the quilt exhibits. For our volunteering efforts, in addition to free lunch, we got five free tickets for the fair, a savings of around $50! We pair that with either going on kids day (younger 3 kids get in free) or teen day (older 3 kids get in free).
Fair Food
If you have read this post, you won’t be surprised to know that we spent exactly $0 on food at the fair. Buying food for 8 at carnival prices is just not our style. Since you aren’t allowed to bring food into the fair, I left ours in the car. I brought a cooler with sandwich things, fruit, bagels, Italian ice, and frozen GoGurt. When everyone started to get hungry, we got our hands stamped, walked out the the car to eat, then went back to the fair. We brought our own refillable water bottles with us into the fair, so we stayed hydrated. Also, most of our family (except for our oldest two who are extra health conscious) participated in the funnel cake eating contest, which meant we each ate half of a funnel cake with whipped cream. That was enough “fair food” for us!
Frugal Flops
Bug Spray
We took a very quick and last minute camping trip in June. Mike headed out with most of the kids a few hours ahead of me. He called to let me know a few things he forgot. Among those was insect repellant. He told me that the moquitoes were really bad, so if possible, I should grab ours before I left. I had already left, so I stopped by the store on the way. We have lots of moquito spray at home that we really like (this kind), so I didn’t like spending $10 on the only option the store had. To make it worse, it wasn’t even effective.
Drowned Phone
My 15-year-old went to the river with a friend recently. In addition to playing in the water, his friend brought an underwater metal detector. Together they found lots of drowned treasures like sunglasses and pocketknives, but my son also dropped his phone in the water. I specifically warned him to be careful with his phone because the last time he went to the river he dropped it in the water. He was able to resurrect it the first time, but this time it didn’t come back to life, so he had to buy a new one. Unfortunately none of the random treasures he found in the river were worth as much as a new phone cost.
Frugal Funnies
Amazon Prime
We have had Amazon Prime shipping through my parents for as long as I can remember. On ocassion we have also paid to watch or purchase a Prime video. When I first noticed an Amazon Prime charge on our credit card I figured that it must be a video that my husband rented for the kids. Then I saw it again the next month, but again figured that it must be Mike paying for something Prime-y. After three months I finally asked him about it. He said he never signed up for anything. The only think we can figure is that one of our younger kids inadvertenly signed up for it. He immediately cancelled, and since we hadn’t accessed any of the benefits that month they automatically refunded the charges for that third month at least. The moral of the story is to just communicate instead of assume.
How about you?
Tell us about your recent frugal feats, flops, and funnies in the comments!
My funny actually happened several years ago — and wasn’t very funny at the time. My school-age daughter answered the landline phone one afternoon before I got home from work. it was a call from the Penney’s credit card company. She knew I had a card and knew the answers to the security questions (mother’s maiden name, first pet, etc.) and managed to sign us up for an African safari. I was in total shock when my statement arrived and there was a charge for several thousand dollars to a travel company (I bought clothing, sheets and towels from Penney’s — didn’t even know they had a travel department!) It took months to get that trip cancelled and the charge off my card. It wasn’t long after that when I got rid of the landline because of some way worse scam calls we started to get — and cancelled my Penney’s card because they closed all their stores within a 200-mile radius of our home. We now joke about when we are going to schedule our safari — and my daughter knows not to say yes to anything offered on a phone call! It was one of those not-funny things that we can now view as funny!
That’s a great one Nancy! I’ve had a toddler accidentally order pizza from an app on my phone, but an African safari takes the cake! 😂 One of these days you need to finally get your African safari!
So happy you are back. I really look forward to your updates.
You are not the only one with mysterious Amazon subscriptions (there was an FTC lawsuit that was just settled out of court, with Amazon paying out one billion in damages).
My daughter just submitted some photography to our county fair, it was free to submit and she got a ticket for each day to enter free but she had to pay to have her photos matted- I was out of town so it was hard to help her so we felt kind of bad about the extra cost but then she won a prize, a gift certificate to the local framing shop, so now she is set for next year if she wants to enter again.
One of our travel feats this year was when we rented a car (through Costo, which has great savings,) but it also gave us the option to add a toll package(flat rate for unlimited). We were traveling to NYC so we added the package and we got stuck on a section of the infamous New Jersey Turnpike- we couldn’t figure out how to get off at the right place and ended up going around four or five times- each time a new toll was added- which was over $20- I don’t know if they actually charge that if you go around in quick sucession but it was such a releife to not have to worry about it and what would have been stressful was just a funny memory.
Congrats to your daughter! That’s exciting that she won! And that is a funny travel story that definitely would have been more stressful if you were worried about the toll costs! Thanks for sharing!
Getting free parking but forget to go past the machine to activate it, and still having to pay while at the exit of the parking garage with the car 🙁
Checking the prices with the hanscanner and deciding not to take this home, bit don;t take the amount of the scanner, so paying the price I thought was too high for me and not taking the item home with me …..
(it is just a few euro’s but still….)
Oh thoses are both bummers Bianca! you are not alone in making silly money mistakes! Thanks for sharing.
It looks like you are not the only one paying for an Amazon subscription by accident. I heard this article today on NPR. https://www.npr.org/2025/09/23/nx-s1-5550290/amazon-prime-membership-lawsuit-ftc-fraud-antitrust
So happy you are back!