Monthly Archives: July 2016

July in Review

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Personal-
1. Blogging– Post 20 per month. Fail. This is post number 15. I have been working hard the last two weeks to catch up and already have some plans for the next weeks so on to better things next month.

2.Weight Loss– 175#. BLAH!

3. Spiritual– Spend at least 5 days a week, reading and studying The Bible. Nope. I am hoping to finish reading through the Bible this month and start something new.

Personal goals are a failure for the second month straight.  Not much more to say in regards to that.

Financial- 

1. Set aside money each month in every budget category. Fail

2. Establish and maintain Emergency Fund- Fail.
3. Groceries: Goal is for $550. Fail . We spent $818 in Groceries this month. I am hoping for improvements in the next 2 months but if not I will again increase the budget!

4. Gas: Spend $400 a month- Fail! We spent $424 this month including a new battery.

5. Pay off all Credit Card debit by December 2016- Fail. I am meeting bare minimal payments on everything but really was hoping to begin to get control and reduce this number.

So if you read this review you can see that we have not righted our ship yet in fact most days I think we are headed in the wrong direction. My plan PRAY!

Square Foot Garden Update

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  • The squash bugs won, sort of anyway. After a couple of weeks of trying to kills by hand and using soapy water, we have lost all our squash plants and even our cucumber plants that started.  I was able to make 8 containers of squash casserole and thanks to our neighbor 4 packs for squash lasagna.
  • I replanted 14 squash plants and it appears that 4 or so have survived the heat. We have cucumber relish and one jar of pickles. I hope that these new plants will start to produce and allow us at least a couple of gallons of pickles.
  • Matt was able to get our rain barrel collection system put together this week and one rain storm we captured over a 55 gallon drum of water. We have been able to water the entire garden and hopefully save our sweet potatoes and some tomatoes for the past 3 days without running out.  We hope that in the near future we will be able to store at least 2 of these drums for use during these hot dry spells.
  • Last night we pulled up all of the corn plants without harvesting a single ear. I have learned a couple things that I plan to try next year before giving up on growing corn after 2 years of no benefit. First, against what square foot gardening says, I think we need a deeper bed. The roots for the corn were very small and the kids were able to remove from the ground without difficulty. The current plan is to purchase and add another board to the sides of the bed. We will also be moving as much of our compost dirt as possible into these beds to help with deep roots and better soil.
  • We are starting to get all three types of peppers, green, jalapeno and banana. I am hoping that given enough water we will have a good abundant harvest.
  • Within the next week, we should also get our first watermelon and cantaloupe.

 

Five Things Friday

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  1. Today is the fifth Friday of July which also means I receive my third paycheck for July. I am paid every two weeks but budget based on two checks a month. This third check will cover our trip to the beach and our grocery overages for the past couple of weeks.
  2. Tomorrow night we are planning a “girls night in” as Zach is spending the night with Amanda. Matt will be working.
  3. Tonight is the end of one of the two “quiet” weeks of the summer. Piano and cheerleading were all the activities for the week. Next week is back to busy with a trip planned to Emerald Point and the girls have sign language camp all day Friday.
  4. My best friend used the same analog yesterday to explain MPLACES as I have been thinking all along. It is like Pokémon Go, as I am always trying to “check in” places at stoplights but in two months I have earned $15 in gift cards.  MPLACES is an app on my phone, ask me more if you are interested.
  5. I have officially booked our next trip to Disney. The goal of this trip is to pay for all or as much as possible by using apps and other found money. This money will not come from our regular budget at all and does not including saving on any bills or the differences in budgeted amounts vs. amount spent.

Grocery Budget Buster

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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.

Monday Musing 1/25/20016

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  • We have 5 weeks before Zach and Kendall start back to school and 4 before Lily begins her adventure in a Charter School. The next three weeks are what we consider slower because the girls have cheer on Monday and Thursday. They will also have piano once a week.
  • I was able to make a deposit on our next Disney trip this week using money that we have earned from Swagbucks. Matt and I are both using this site to earn extra money. I am so excited. The goal of this trip is to totally pay for it with money not included in our regular budget!
  • Our garden has not produced like we had hope but one of the biggest reason is the heat. Currently in NC, we are experiencing Day 26 of the summer with highs in the 90s. A typical summer is 29 days of 90 degree temperatures.
  • Matt has assembled the new water barrel to start collecting any rain water. Hopefully we will be able to water the garden on a regular bases without increasing our water bill.
  • I did plant 3 additional tomato plants and a dill plant this weekend with hopes of increasing our harvest.
  • We have really enjoyed our 2 trips to Emerald Point, a water park, this summer. We hope to go a couple more times but plan on spending only 4 or 5 hours at the park instead of 8.
  • The plan for August is to re-stock the pantry so our spending may be really close to budget.

Saturday Savings

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sos

Today was the final swim meet of the year and I have a ton of pictures that I will post during the next week but for now we have been doing some serious saving.

First up is a budget buster- we have a leak in the  main water line from coming  the street to the house. The first leak occurred over the Fourth of July and it failed again today. Matt was able to fix the leak and repaired  the leak for less than $5. If we could have found a plumber to come out on a weekend or holiday just the service fee is at least $100 per trip, so we saved at least $200.

We were given a bag of cucumbers and squash. To be honest, I am exhausted and did not want spend anytime doing anything in the kitchen. But this is a lifestyle choice so I fried squash for dinner, chopped up and cooked the remaining squash with onions and carrots. I have a squash casserole ready for the oven tomorrow and we have a bag that will be used for a casserole in the future. The cucumber have been cut into spears and place in a jar. Our pickles will be ready in three days and will last in the refrigerator for up to a year. This is hard to place an exact price on but I am going to say that we saved at least $10 by doing these things.

We did save money at the County swim meet by waiting to purchase t-shirts until later in the day, when the price was reduced, we saved a total of $7.50.

How are you saving?

Saving on Saturday-7/16/2016

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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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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?