“It’s only a dollar,” most people say when they spend it. But a dollar here and there amounts to many dollars. You can all do the math. Mark and I are frugal beings. We save a dollar here when checking our supermarket receipts and challenging mistakes. We save a dollar there not buying a treat. We save several dollars by looking at GasBuddy to find the cheapest diesel in our area. Being conscious about our spending habits “saves” hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year. We say “Nope, let’s not buy that grill for our camper yet” until it drops in price and we convince ourselves “We don’t need more stuff.”

Other times, we agree we shouldn’t go out for dinner or join people to have a beer at a bar. These outings are expensive; we can eat and drink for much less at home. Often, we promise ourselves we’d use the money we didn’t spend on splurge A for splurge B another day. That day, of course, never arrives. This is our way of life – whether we like it or not, it allows us to stretch the money we have.

One of these months I hope to write a more detailed blog post about how we manage to make our money last and offer tips of how we stay on a tight budget, but today I wanted to share a few examples of how one dollar can be “stretched”. It’s only a dollar, but it can mean so much more.

Recently, one dollar gave us: Continue reading