2016

Posted on September 11, 2016 by Sheila

This coming week our lives have officially hit the crazy stage again with multiple (yes meaning more than one) practices each night except for Friday. We also have eye appointments this week. I know that without a plan we would be eating fast food a lot but here is the plan.

Breakfast– Saturday- Gravy Biscuits, Sunday- Breakfast Burritos. Monday- Strawberry and Cream Baked Oatmeal. The rest of the week will be leftovers including Waffles, cereal or Sausage Egg Croissants (on sale at Costco)

Lunch- We have enough Lunchables left to finish out the week. I have pre-cut up salad things for several of the days for Lily and myself.

Dinner- Saturday- Lunch- Fast food. Dinner- Cookout with neighbors
Sunday- Lunch- “Alice Springs Chicken”, 6 layer salad, and creamed corn. Dinner-leftovers or sandwiches
Monday- Sloppy Joes and French fries .
Tuesday-Spaghetti and meatballs, Garlic toast
Wednesday- Honey Garlic Shrimp (new recipe) and fruit
Thursday- Beef and Broccoli or left overs
Friday- Shepherd’s pie

5 Things Financial

Posted on September 10, 2016 by Sheila

A day late and a dollar short…. so I thought I would share anyway. I can’t even say these are five frugal things but this is our reality.

The first pay of the month was this week. Unfortunately, both our electricity and water bills were both the highest we have had in several years. The water bill was $45 due to a leak. The electric bill $301, mainly due to extreme heat we are experiencing this summer. I saw last night that we have had 53 days in the nineties, our average is 26. The good news is that we are expecting to have cooler this week, which means the end of our air!
We were planning to keep our grocery budget at bare bones this month. We already have a menu plan in place. We did need some breakfast items including milk so I head to Costco. Our membership was due. We also decided to purchase some steaks from Zaycon, so we are still under budget but no where near bare bones.
I am really liking the McDonald app. Today, I enjoyed a large diet coke and Kendall a hashbrown for $1.07.
Baseball is an expensive sport. Zach decided he wanted to try it out this fall. I am really surprised at all the cost associated with it. I did purchase cleats and a helmet from a family at our pool.
After a month of struggling with Verizon, Matt and I both have new IPHONES. They really are a lot faster and easier to read for me. This should be the end of electronic purchases for the year!

Saving on Saturday-9/03/2016

Posted on September 3, 2016 by Sheila

Just for the record, I have 3 or 4 post that I have planned in my head and just no time to get posted. I am going to have to work on a better schedule for the next month if I have any hope of meeting my goal of 20 post. Now on to the regularly scheduled topic… saving.

This week, I have been saving and using gift cards to keep our budget low. If I purchase a gift card that is one thing but these cards are free from either swagbucks or MPlaces.

Thursday- I used my McDonald’s app to purchase Matt, Lily and myself breakfast for a grand total of $4.70. Total saved $10.00
Next Matt stopped at Starbuck’s to grab he and Lily a treat. He used a gift card earned from Swagbucks to pay so no out of pocket. Total saved $8.50
We picked up donuts to take to Zach’s class at school for his birthday. I purchased a BOGO card several years ago and continue to reap the benefits. Total saved $8.35.
I was disappointed that my Disney gift card order at Target was cancelled but decided to use the money to purchase some K-cups. I was able to purchase 4 16 packs and a container of pumpkin pie spice for zero out of pocket. The best part was I received free shipping and an additional 5% off because I have my target card store. Total Saved $53.
Total saving for Thursday: $80

Of course, it is Labor Day weekend so we had to go to Lowes. Last week, we grabbed a $10 Lowes card and a $5 Lowes card from MPLACES. We purchased bug spray, mums, pavers for the garden and light bulbs. I was able to use the cards with no trouble. One was actually on my phone and the second was a printed one. Total saved $15.

I did some planning ahead for this weekend, we have enjoyed three meals at home today, in addition to work outside the entire day. I am very tempted when we get busy to grab some fast food or order a pizza, so this is a true victory. I am going to say we saved $10 on pizza that we made at home instead using Sour Dough bread, spaghetti sauce, cheese and pepperoni.

Aldi is a great place to shop for groceries and their price in our area are significantly lower than the other stores. I sent Matt to pick up a dozen eggs on Friday. They were on sale for $0.79 a dozen so he grabbed the last 4 dozen available. Total saved $3.00

Our biggest and final saving of today is on clothing. My sister in law called and offered hand me downs for the girls. I am excited to spend a couple of hours see what we were given.

I think this is probably one of my biggest weeks of saving so far!

Thursday Thoughts

Posted on August 11, 2016 by Sheila

Zach has been missing his two front teeth for almost 4 years, I noticed today that he has one that is grown in about half the way and a second that is starting. This is changing his appearance and I will miss my toothless wonder.
Lily and Kendall both had orthodontic appointments today. Kendall mouth is umm not the best. In fact, she will have a tooth pulled in September and start her first round of braces in October. We are hopefully that two sets will do the trick.
Lily will only need one set of braces so we will continue to wait for all her permanent teeth to come in before starting braces. Next summer is the estimate.
I picked up one of my two new sets of glasses today. My ordinal pair was over 2 years old and the side piece had broken. The doctor did not include bifocals on my prescription and I lasted less than 3 hours at work before calling and getting the prescription corrected. I do have a second set but of course they are on back order and will be here after my vacation.
Lily will officially start school on the 22nd. We are all becoming very anxious about this.
We have worked this month on restocking our pantry and freezers so instead of focusing on the budget, I have been focusing on eliminated waste. I have discovered several areas that I can make improvements on. First is water, I am trying to use water that we cook with instead of pouring down the drain. Second is food, we have stopped menu planning this week to focus on eating what is ripe and in our fridge that needs to be cleaned out.
Today was our third trip to the water park. It was a much shorter trip only four hours but we all had a blast and I am exhausted! We are hoping to squeeze one more trip in prior to public school starting.

Saving on Saturday 08/06/2016

Posted on August 6, 2016 by Sheila

This month we are approaching our grocery budget a little bit different. First, our summer is coming to an end. Next week is our final “slow” week of the summer followed by our beach trip. So after looking at our supplies and realizing that we are to back to school days and crazy nights. So the decision was made to go ahead and get things ready for our crazy busy life. We headed to Aldi on Wednesday night to buy some staples and make sure we had can goods. Next it was Costco on Thursday. Fortunately, Costco had an awesome sale on convenience foods and lots of things that make our lunches easy to pack in the mornings. Zach and I also went to Walmart and grabbed 40 lunchables which were on sale for $1 each. These are awesome for the kids at the beach and also for a special lunch treat. On Friday, I stopped at CVS to grab the laundry detergent that was on sale. This is a ton of shopping this week but I am vey happy with feeling confident for the first couple of month of fall.

Next is actually getting some things in the freezer for grab and go dinners. Matt picked up 80# of ground beef that we ordered from Zaycon on Friday afternoon. This is some of the freshest meat we have ever received the date stamped on all the packages is July 23rd, so 2 weeks ago this was a live animal. We decided to simple put in the freezer 20 pounds or 10 packages to use for things that call for raw meat. Next we spent five hours, fry up and packaging the rest in one pound containers. These are also for pulling out for taco meat, spaghetti sauce, hamburger helper, sloppy joes, chili and stews or crock pot recipes that call for a pound of ground beef. I estimate this should last us six to nine months. This morning I made a large batch of French toast. The kids and I enjoyed some for breakfast and the rest was frozen to stick in the toaster for a quick easy breakfast.

We have a very full pantry and freezers. I plan to reduce our grocery budget to $100 in September and $300 in October. I may be able to keep it low for the rest of the year depending on how things work out with sales and how much the kids decide to eat.

Grocery Budget Buster

Posted on July 28, 2016 by Sheila

I will be the first to admit that I don’t grocery shop like most people but I do shop in a way that over a period of a year, saves money and feeds us well. I did excellent in the month of June of keeping cost low and even decided to reduce our monthly budget. I knew that sometime this summer, I would need to restock on meat and some other items, even last Sunday I had high hope of holding down our spending for the month. We had been to Costco twice and spent a total of $497 . But as of today that is not possible.

Last Friday, Matt texted that we were out of toilet paper so I stopped by the CVS, where I thought our preferred brand was on sale. It was on sale but not what I thought so I just grabbed one package. The sale I was thinking about started on Sunday. Sunday night Lily and I headed back to CVS to grab the toilet paper of course and a couple of other deals. I was disappointed that I had to get a couple of rainchecks which threw off my savings. My goal is always 60% but with buying the needed toilet paper and also some additional sunscreen I ended up spending $27.25 and saving 48% or $24.71. I did start this trip without any ECB and ended with $2 so not a complete fail.

Next, the one store in our area that doubles coupons started a super sale, which doubles coupons up to $2. I looked over the list and realized that many of items we need were available so last night we headed out. I was also able to grab drinks that we will be taking with us for our beach trip. I did hit my 60% mark, spending $77.97 and saving 140 or 64%. I used three rainchecks that included 10 packs of hot dogs, flour and sugar, all items that I did not have coupons on but were a great deal with the rain check.

Finally, we are still following our monthly plan with lots of different items on the weekend. We decided to have Hamburger Helper on Monday since both girls had cheerleading. Matt and I realized that we were using our last pack of ground beef. Typically we purchase between 30 and 50 pounds at a time and fry and place in one pound bags which make meals really quick and easy to fix. Zaycon Foods is where I always purchase chicken breast and I have been pleased with the ground beef in the past. I got an email this morning with a pick up for ground beef next week and an additional 12% off code. We decided to go ahead and purchase 80 pounds of ground beef. We plan to fry up 50 pounds and just freeze the other 30 pounds to use as raw meat. Total cost for 80 pounds of ground beef $215.38 or $2.69 a pound which is the cheapest I have seen this year.

Currently I have spent $818.07 so a total budget fail but it should allow us to eat well through the rest of the year. My goal will be to lower the grocery budget to $400 for both August and September to keep us on track for the year.

Saving on Saturday-7/16/2016

Posted on July 16, 2016 by Sheila

I have said many time that it is the little things that save money. So after realizing how far behind I am on blogging this month, I thought I would make a list of things we are doing this summer to get our budget back under control.

Menu planning- We have switched to a month long plan. One of the best parts of this is that we can switch around days without having to worry about if we have certain ingredients or not. Our menu plan is based around the meat in our freezer’s at the first of the month. Fruit and veggie are most like what we have either in cans or fresh or as in today on sale.
Not shopping- This one sounds so very simple and actually makes the most sense. I know that if I go to Costco, I can always find a good deal on snacks and cereal or other foods that we don’t usually buy. Sales are great but I realized in January that we needed to consume the great deals. I have been able to reduce our food budget by over $150 by simply not shopping. I have a list that can be added to if we run out of something and my goal is to shop Costco once a month. I also have been stopping at Aldi about every other week to grab things in smaller quantities or pick up fresh items. Yesterday, I grabbed 2 containers of blueberries along with some lettuce, poptarts and sausage.
Planning ahead which really goes along with menu planning. We have a pool membership that we pay yearly and this year, we purchased season passes to the water park. I have purchased chips and cookies and other convenience foods to take with us as treats. We will usually take either a pasta salad or wraps or sandwiches for lunch. I did some research on our last visit to the water park and the best deal was $25 for a pizza and 4 drinks. I spent $24 at Aldi yesterday and grab more than enough stuff to finish out 3 meals instead of one. The kids are enjoying our special treat such as a package of cookies and we are not breaking the bank.
Not eating out. This by far is our biggest down fall. We enjoy eating out. At the beginning of our budget journey we would honest eat out 3-4 times a week. When our income was reduced to one, we have been slowly decreasing the times we eat out. I was so excited to find out that we have eaten out twice in July. Once for Kendall’s birthday with my parents and once yesterday.
Stockpiling- When I do shop, you will find that I don’t shop like a normal person. I shop the deals and then stock up. It is not usually for me to purchase 10 2-liters at a time or 10 bottles of ketchup if the sale is the right one. I am finding that sales are becoming fewer this year but I am still able to shop with my price list.
Wasting as little as possible- This week on Wednesday evening, I saw three very wipe bananas on the cabinet. I knew we needed to use these ASAP. I was able to make banana bread and top with strawberry jam for breakfast on Thursday. We also are trying to preserve as much of our garden harvest as possible. This week alone I have made 2 batches of spaghetti sauce and a batch of frozen cucumber relish. This does requires some flexibility with our menu planning but it seems to be working for us.

How are you saving money today?

Menu Plan for 7/11/2016

Posted on July 10, 2016 by Sheila

This is honestly one of the busiest weeks this summer. The kids and Matt have Vacation Bible School every day from 8-1pm, swim practice on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, swim meet on Tuesday and swim dinner on Friday. On Friday, we also have piano and Matt is scheduled to work both Friday and Saturday. It will be busy and just in case we get a storm on either Monday or Thursday, the girls have cheer practice. The good news is that we have been planning ahead so this week should not blow our budget.

Here is the plan:

Breakfast– Saturday- Gravy Biscuits, Sunday- Chocolate Banana Bread. Choices will include cereal, toast, grits, breakfast bars, granola bars eggs or left over baked oatmeal or breakfast burritos-previously made The focus this week is quick and simple to get everyone to church and work on time.

Lunch- Sandwhiches, left-overs, chicken nuggets. This should be the biggest struggle of the week.

Dinner- Saturday- Lunch- Sandwiches. Dinner- Pasta salad
Sunday- Lunch- Pork roast, potato salad and deviled eggs. Dinner-nachos made with Taco Rice
Monday- Hamburger steak and French fries or left overs from Sunday.
Tuesday-Wraps during swim meet
Wednesday- Cheeseburger Pizza
Thursday- Chicken and Broccli in crockpot with rice
Friday- Baked spaghetti.

The plan for dinners this week is to prepare ahead as much as possible. I did go ahead and make the Baked spaghetti on Sunday. Each night if we can prepare the next day, we should survive this crazy week.

Summer Saturday-6/25/2016

Posted on June 25, 2016 by Sheila

This is a picture that I took last night of Zach. I am truly amazed at it. Zach is the only one of my children who did not like the water. We spend a big part of our summer at the pool most years but Zach has always preferred to play on the edge or just watch others until this year. He decided that he was going to swim on the swim team and then decide he wanted to play in the deep end. When I arrived after work yesterday, he wanted me to watch him go off the diving board, so of course I had to take a picture.

The weather today is different, it is less humid but very cloudy. We spent the morning outside working in the garden. We were able to pick another couple of family servings of green beans, which have already been cooked and placed in the freezer. We also unfortunately had to pull some plants like our snap peas, which have stopped producing and several of our squash plants which have been attacked by the squash bug. We also tied up tomatoes which I really really hope start to produce in the next couple of weeks.

Lily will be arriving home from camp this afternoon so the current plan is to wash her clothes and we may end up renting a movie.

I have several items that I need to take care of on this not the best of days to go to the pool including a monthly calendar and menu plan for the next couple of weeks.

Bring on Summer play!

Random Thursday Post-6/02/2016

Posted on June 2, 2016 by Sheila

Our first official harvest from this morning. We have been collecting and freezing basil for the past few weeks and have used a couple of squash, but this is the beginning of what I hope to be a very productive season for us.
Our new freezer arrived today, which gave me a chance to do some arranging and make a list of all the meat that we currently have on hand. I am excited and pleased to report we have meat for 75 meals in our freezers.
The bad news is that we also have a delivery of 120# of chicken breast coming a week from Tuesday. I need to get a plan in place of how I want to prepare and use this.
Given the above information, I am setting the grocery budget at $150 for the month of June. I will need to make some purchased to help prepare the chicken but otherwise I am going to stick to Aldi each week for $10 worth of extra health options!
All three kids are going to participate in swim team this summer which is my favorite activity to watch. The only down side to this is that I have to find Zach some trunks that he can wear.
I will receive my extra paycheck the first of July, our initial intention was to make an extra payment on both the house and van with this check however given our current situation, we will be using this money to help keep things on an even playing field for the summer.
The kids have one more week of school left, I think we are all excited to have some extra time.

Teens Tots and Everything In Between

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