Best Money Savings Tips (Irvine, Moreno Valley: sale, home, buying)

[Poptarts]

What is your best tip for saving money?

Mine: Buying day old bread at Ralphs for daily consumption and freezing. Huge selection from white bread, whole wheat, flax, oats, bagels, muffins, sweet rolls, hamburger/hot dog buns, cookies, cakes price ranges from 50 cents to 3.00, at least 50-75% off the regular price. The prices are not consistent from store to store, some Ralphs have a better selection and lower prices. The day old selection is usually kept on shelves in the back of the store. I've never noticed the difference taste or freshness of day old bread.

[BlueyedCat]

We used to shop at a Hostess store off of Ellsworth in Moreno Valley area. That's what they carried. All items that was a day old or so. We really found some great deals there. And we never noticed a difference either. And it is a great way to save.

[Poptarts]

I take my dry cleaning outside of the area where I live (Irvine), much cheaper in neighboring cities, for example, my usual dry cleaners in Tustin charges about $2 per item, in Irvine, the same item would cost $8-$11.

[BlueyedCat]

That's a good saving. It always helps to shop around. We always shopped around for the best prices. That's why we miss California; there were many places to shop to get better prices. Competition. Here in TN you don't have much choice. So it's really hard to get good deals here on much of anything. There is just no competition. I'll have to remember your dry cleaning idea for when we get back over there. Thanks for the tip

[bhcompy]

Don't eat out

[killer2021]

My best tip is don't live in the OC. Too expensive.

[EscapeCalifornia]

Originally Posted by bhcompy

Don't eat out

That's a HUGE one.

To that end, my wife and I have the following system to remind/encourage us to eat in more. Its easy to eat out too much if you don't keep track. So I print out calendars from Word and post them in the kitchen. Each night, we write down what we had and about what it cost. Meals IN get marked with a green highligher. Meals OUT get marked in red. It makes it real easy to see how good we've been doing. It's also helpful to review the month and see where we could have saved money when we did eat out.

[Poptarts]

I'm doing something similar with monthly calendars. I'm planning a month's worth of meals in advance. I've been doing this for a few months and it is not easy, but it does cut down on meals out and trying to figure out at the last minute what I should make for dinner. My current version for April will be the following:

Week One:

Sunday - Roast chicken
Monday - pasta or rice/beans
Tuesday - leftover Sunday night dinner
Wednesday - soup and sandwiches
Thursday - leftover Monday dinner
Friday - pizza/movie night at home
Saturday - free night, maybe dinner out

My plan is to buy 4 meat items per month, whole chicken for one week, ground beef for the second week, ribs the third week, and chicken again for the forth week.

Week 2-4: repeat pattern, different recipes

By pre-planning I'm hoping to save money and shop less.

[Charles]

Cheap Airplane Drinks
When you travel on airplanes from Orange County Airport (now I've legitimately posted on an OC forum), stop at a liquor store and buy five little shooters of vodka for like $1 each. Since each one is less than 3 oz, you can get them through security legally. When the flight attendant asks what you want for your free beverage, just order orange juice. Screwdrivers are at least $5 on an airplane.

Mail a letter for $0.02
Next time you need to mail a letter, use only a two cent stamp and reverse the TO and FROM addresses (put the guy you want the letter sent to in the top left corner and put your return address in the middle). When the post office sees a two cent stamp, they automatically "Return To Sender", which means it goes to the person you intended it to go to.

How to sneak beer into Dodger Stadium
Not sure if this still works but this is what we did many times. Dodger Stadium security used to let you bring in ice chests and two liter bottles of soft drinks (like pepsi). We would pour 5.5 cans of beer in to empty pepsi or coke bottles and add three drops of red, green, and blue food coloring. It looks exactly like pepsi.

How to sneak beer into Dodger Stadium (Method II)
I found one of my dad's old 1960s radios, about the size of medium box of corn flakes. I took all the guts and parts out of it and squeezed three cans of beer in there. Works with big buckets from Kentucky Fried Chicken too.

How to get your under two year old her own seat on an airplane for free
There's six of us and our youngest is 18 months. Kids under two fly free as a lap child. We buy five airplane tickets and carry on a car seat. When we board, we hold the 18 month old in our lap and stick our (small) five year old in the car seat. Once we're flying, we stick the 18 month old in the car seat and our three other kids share two seats and watch a movie on the laptop. If you fly Southwest, most of the time you don't even have to bother with that; every one of us takes a seat and they rarely ask if our baby in the car seat has a ticket.

How to save $1850 dollars in taxes
Our second girl's due date was 1/1/2002, not a good date for tax year 2001 planning dads. We induced on 12/21/2001 (also because I had a company paid week off right about then). When I did my taxes with Turbo Tax in January 2002, there was a difference of $1850 in taxes for tax year 2001 due to that one extra dependent.

Free long distance phone calls
Back in the 1970s, you would use a public phone to dial a long distance number with a dime then the operator would ask you to deposit more money "Please deposit 55 cents", for example. Use a public phone right next to another one. When the operator asks for more money, hold the phone handle from the other phone in a "69" position with the phone handle you are using and add the money to the other phone. The operator is listening for "dings", one ding per nickle. Once she hears the eleven dings (from above), she punches the call through. You just hit the change return on the other phone and you keep the money.

[homesheba]

i buy reduced for quick sale most all the time and really have never gotten anything bad.plus- we have 4 dogs , so nothing ever goes towaste, i just never never give bones of course to them.
plus, i re use my baby wipes that i have used to clean my face, for a quick touch up to sinks , floors - whatever. i re use paper towel pieces also if they arent badly soild to wipe up spots.
i also use trading places online to for dvd's and books. and never hardly eat out anymore.