Our Black Friday marks another zero spend day for us. We started the morning slowly by reading a stack of Christmas stories I’d checked out from the library, and then headed to my parents for a late brunch and a leisurely day and some long walks. 

This week’s Five started in Hawai‘i at the close of our vacation and ended with a cold (mostly) clear day back at home. 

1. Not quite sure why, but our car rental (with the free upgrade) ended up $3 less than we had been quoted, which meant we spent a total of $213 for a minivan rental in Hawai‘i

Our super sweet minivan at the end of the rainbow

2. My mother in law is awesome and picked us up at the airport when we arrived Saturday at 7am with coffee, oatmeal, and sausages hot and ready for us in the car. We had planned to take light rail to keep costs down, but we were all pretty exhausted (red eye and the flight was only 5 hours, so not near enough rest even if we’d slept the whole time). Basically she is wonderful and saved us from possibly 1) caving and picking up coffee or breakfast and 2) spending $50 on a Lyft home instead of less than $10 on the light rail. 

3. The only money we spent this week was on groceries from the farmers market and our local store. Usually, when life gets extra busy – like returning from a trip and a holiday week – we just order take out to make our lives easier. We finally seem to be breaking that cycle and made all our food this week. 

Best, super durable kids headphones
4. I used a gift card to buy these headphones for our 4 year old goddaughter for Christmas (pink and purple are currently on sale for $9.99). She travels a lot with her family and, as we learned this trip, these headphones are perfect for airplane trips with kids. Kudos to Maggie from Milana’s Travels for the tip on these because they’re awesome. 
5. We loaded my trunk with firewood from my parents’ house since they recently had a few trees blown and cut down and now have a ton of extra wood. We’ll have a fire tonight which will help heat our house a tiny bit and is just a cozy end to a what is now a rainy evening. 

Free firewood!

What were your frugal wins this week? Did you do any Black Friday shopping?

3 thoughts on “Friday’s Frugal Five (Black Friday Edition)

Leave a Reply