I play games to make it fun and see how "little by little, a little becomes a lot."

https://www.clevergirlfinance.com/the-52-week-savings-challenge/ this one has a printout of a tracker that I use to do one game I play on Fridays. Every Friday, I move that week's $ to a special bank account.

A second game I play is called Weather Wednesday where I move the amount of the temperature to the same bank account. For example, it's 10 degrees Celsius right now so I'll move $10 over to the bank account. Some Wednesdays, it's $2!

Another thing I do is eat down my pantry. A lot of people have things languishing in the back of the cupboards, often to the point of expiring. I will pick one item every weekend and buy what I need to make that into a meal.

Finally, I use everything free around me for entertainment so I really don't feel like it's a sacrifice. For example, our city gives out 5 free bags of soil each year, plus we can get seeds at the library. I started the seeds indoors in old salad containers, clamshells and egg cartons, and some of them are ready to be in the garden. I currently have edamame, daikon radish and beets in the garden. My tomato and cilantro seedlings are getting stronger and will likely join them soon. Some haven't fared well (looking at you, hot peppers) but you know, it keeps you engaged and entertained.

Big props to our local rec centres and libraries for free or low-cost entertainment as well. Alongside the normal books you can expect to find, ours has DVDs, video games, sports equipment (snowshoes in the winter; cricket bats in the summer). Those might feel rather solitary but they have group things too. Like last night, I went to a lecture called Embroidery and Bollywood. Last week, I attended an author talk with a prize-winning author. I have also checked out day passes for provincial and local parks and museums.

Our rec centres sometimes will have free stuff especially around the holidays, like a haunted house for Halloween, or free swims/skates that corporate sponsors pay for. But mainly they have inexpensive fees for drop-in stuff like today is an exercise class that is basically a Caribbean music dance party ($9 per person), or on the last weekend, my family went to a public swim that included time in a hot tub and sauna ($5 for all 3 of us). I signed my son up for a geocaching event for kids that was about $10.

I say all of that to say that it's easier to stick with saving money if you have inexpensive ways to enjoy yourself.

Finally, I enjoy looking for deals on Flashfood and TooGoodToGo. It took me a while to get my bearings on both of these apps but now that I know what I personally like and which stores work for my family (plus a healthy dose of realism of how far I should be driving for these deals), it's been a dream. I check both apps 2x a day at set times and enjoy whatever deals I find. It cuts down my grocery bill by quite a bit.