Category Archives: DITL

5 Things Friday

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  1. This week turned out to be fairly busy with doctor’s appointments, conference swim meet and regular life. Here are a few highlights.
  2. Kendall swam in the conference meet on Wednesday night.  She improved her butterfly time by 4 hundredth of a second. Next Friday, she will compete in Regionals with two relay teams. She decided that her goal for next year is to make it to regionals in an individual event.
  3. Matt had several doctor’s appointments this week about the basil cell skin cancer on his face.  He will have surgery either February 13 or 14th to have it removed.
  4. I have not bought eggs in the month of January!  The chickens are laying around 2 eggs a day. We have add some bedding and pine shavings to the chicken run to ease the mud.   I have purchased 2 bags of garden soil to start some seeds inside in the next couple of weeks!
  5. Tomorow, Saturday, we are planning a big project to convert the “Beetle building” from canvas to metal.  Hopefully I will be able to share some pictures soon.

5 Things Friday

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  1. We have been getting one egg a day this week and today we found a second one!  This comes at an awesome time as we have used up the last store-bought egg in the house. I am going to try and avoid buying any more eggs so that might mean we are stretching what we get. I am very hopeful that soon we will have an abundance!
  2. Kendall was home this week from school due to not having to take exams. I asked her to organize and inventory the shelves of food in our laundry room.  I was actually shocked at what was hidden up there. I was also surprised and a little upset about her finding 4 cans of pork and beans.
  3. My biggest score of the week was 3 cases or 36 jars of regular mouth canning jars for $13.97 I found at Walmart this week!
  4. We have managed to not spend anything on groceries this week. The grand total for the month is $50.46.   I do have a subscribe and save order that will arrive next week for $67.12.   Which means I should be able to keep the grocery spending to $120 for this month!
  5. Lily has begun teaching piano and also continues to walk a friend’s dog as well as babysit. She is doing an awesome job at saving money for college.

Pantry Challenge vs No Spending

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This is a subject that I have been thinking and working out in my head for the last 24 hours or so.  These are my thoughts and how I worked it all out.

A pantry challenge is a way to reduce your grocery spending, use up items that you have had for any length of time in your freezer and pantry.   Another purpose or rationale would be to determine how much food do I really need to store?  My one solid rule for this year’s pantry challenge was to only buy what we were completely out of.  My thought was also that if I don’t go to the store, I am less likely to spend money as well.   I don’t mind stopping at the grocery store on the way home from work to grab an item but usually what happens is I look at meat for markdowns and also take a look at the clearance section.   Knowing in my head that I don’t/should not be doing that is actually very freeing and has given me a chance to avoid extra spending on groceries.  Another benefit for me is being able to say to my family “We are doing a pantry challenge this month so if we don’t have it then we can’t make it.”   Because of this I am currently keeping a list of meals that we enjoyed and have enough supplies for in February.  I will again do the same for March. My goal is that we really eat out of the pantry and freezer until after our Disney trip. Which leads me to a random question and struggle.  How much do I restock?  For example, I used the last of the pork and beans in a recipe on Saturday. Since I am completely out, I could restock but do I buy 2 cans (what I used) or 6 cans which is what I would typically grab because that fills my can shelf.   Currently my decision is to wait, we use those beans once a month maybe so they are something that I can wait to restock.   This may be my overall decision about most foods except Diet Coke, and creamer. It also does depend on what we end up eating as well.  I chose to continue my subscribe and save items at Amazon.  I am very consistent in checking prices to make sure that they are still at a good deal.   I also make sure we don’t have an abundance of the item. This month’s subscription is mainly lunch foods.  We all take lunches at least 4 days a week.  I will count this toward our grocery spending.   I will admit that I have also been trying to limit the number of items we are ordering from Amazon as well. This month so far we have paid for toothpaste. The other items have been free with points and/or gift cards earned.   I should be able to reduce the amount of Amazon spending for both February and March as my plan is to get our small tax refund on an Amazon gift card to help reduce cost.   A pantry challenge in my mind does not affect our other spending such as going out to eat or purchasing non-food items.

A no-spend challenge means that you do not spend any money except on bills and gas for the month. This would include eating out, purchasing snacks at ballgames or other events and also any other purchase.  This would be extremely difficult for us or even just me to do during this session of our lives. Since May of 2022, we have had at least one kid involved in an extracurricular activity. This means paying for admission for an event and usually these events happen around the dinner hour.  Including our drive time, it is just impossible to eat at home some days.  We also enjoy eating out with friends after church on most Sundays. I have in fact incorporated this into our budget.  I have in the past tried a no spend month except for budgeted items but this is my goal for every month so that does not work either.

So now that I have gotten all my thoughts out on paper, Why does it matter?  Currently we are in a pantry challenge and our washer completely died yesterday. Matt and I talked about it and decided to go ahead and order a new washer.  So, my debate was doing this just ruin our pantry challenge?  The answer is no and I don’t have an excuse to buy additional groceries or other items.

 

Weekend Wrap Up

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This was a rare weekend at our house for a couple of reasons. First it is a long weekend, with Monday being MLK day!  Second other than Kendall’s swim meet on Friday night we do not have any major plans or projects that need to be completed. My goal for Saturday was not to go outside of the house!

I did manage to meet my goal for Saturday. I spent part of the day, organizing and inputting the information into a tax program.  This also allows me to organize and declutter my office. As part of my office declutter, we went through all of the extra cords and things in on a shelf and placed everything in bags that are labeled.

We are currently in a pantry challenge, so meals were important.  We had beef ribs for dinner and then make 10 pints, 2 quarts and 2 half pints of beef broth, which I canned and put in the cabinet.   This also means that I have used up all of my empty canning jar except for the 1/4 pints that I will fill on Monday with jelly! I also spent some time to inventory my freezers.  I am finding food that I thought was long gone such as fish that Zach and Matt caught two years ago and packet of grilled chicken.  I honestly and beginning to think that we can do a three-month pantry challenge buying only what we are out of and not have to purchase any meat during the entire three months.  Yes I understand that it will likely cost more to refill my freezers and pantry in the future but at this point it makes the most sense to try and use up what we have because who knows what the future holds?  I also strongly feel that we will be more financially comfortable in the future when these purchases have to be made!

Small but important chores that we have completed included cleaning the dryer vent, chicken coop duties, and cleaning cars.  I also wanted to get to more organization in the pantries including the shower room, but I also spent time just watching Youtube and tv!

 

5 Things Friday- Pantry Challenge Update

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  1.  One of the things that I had given myself prior to the pantry challenge was that if 2L Diet Cokes went on sale for under $1 I would plan to stock up.  If you have been around here for any length of time you know this is my drink of choice. Late Friday night I received a text from my Mom that Food Lion was having a one-day sale on coke products.  After a swim meet, we (Matt, Lily, Zach and I) went into Food Lion and each purchased the limit of 10. Matt actually purchased Dr. Pepper, so I have “only” 30 Diet Cokes.  This puts our grocery total up to $50.46.
  2. One of the reasons, I have heard several people use for participating in the Pantry Challenge is to discover where you have holes in your pantry.  The very first hole was toothpaste.  That is now on my Amazon subscribe and save list. Yes, I am paying for toothpaste for the first time in almost 10 years but hopefully we will not run out again. The awesome thing about subscribe and save is once I get stocked up I can cancel and restart if needed or simply skip for 6 months. The second items that we discovered needed to be on subscribe and save was liquid soap. The good news is that we had enough credits on Amazon that this was a no cost item!
  3. A pleasant and fugal surprise this week was discovering 9 eggs in our chicken coop. We decided to enjoy these on the day they were discovered. This meant we switched up our menu plan for the week and had breakfast for dinner!
  4. My master list of repeat dinners has grown to nine!  The goal is that after we have eaten a meal if everyone enjoys, we can add it to our master list, and these can become items/meals we repeat at least once per month.
  5. I went grocery shopping in the freezers today. We are doing excellent with eating and re-arranging. Zach is a little concerned, but I think we are doing well!  Second biggest accomplishment of the day/. No Amazon deliveries scheduled until the 28th!

5 Things Friday- Final Friday in 2022

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  1. The extreme cold last week caused a little bit of panic for us. The automatic closing house vents that we purchased 18 months ago have started to fail. Meaning that we had 3 or so that did not close at all and another 3 that did not close completely.  Fortunately for us, our pipes did not freeze under the house, but we could feel a significant difference in the floor temperature. We decided to go ahead and replace these. The cost is not the issue as finding daylight hours to complete the project is.
  2. We have never been entirely happy with the very expensive sink faucet that we purchased and installed when we moved the kitchen sink.  It has started to become difficult to use, setting off our breaker on several occasions and requiring some engineering in order to continue to use.  Another decision was made to go ahead and replace it as well. We did decide to go with the low-tech option. Matt was able to install this in one evening.
  3. Positive news from the blast of cold air, although both of our water barrels frozen neither cracked so we did not need to replace either of these.
  4. Our chickens also survived the cold. We ended up adding some additional bedding and a separate water bucket which needed to be emptied and filled every day but otherwise they appear to be doing great!  The price of eggs has jumped to 4.49 a dozen so I am very hopeful that come March we will not need to purchase eggs!
  5.  After testing positive for the flu a week ago, my goal for this weekend is to get Christmas decorations put away, finish up some canning projects and make a couple of meals for the weeks to come!

Financial Planning- Year in Review

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Today, I have spent about 3/4 of my time in my office, reviewing, reworking, rethinking and double checking all things in my financial plan.  Overall, this has been a good year for us financially and I want to make sure that we stay on a good course to keep things in a positive direction.

One thing that has significantly changed this year is our income. Matt started the year off on unemployment, actively seeking a position. This continued until mid-April with a period of six weeks where he had no income.   I worked between 10- 15 hours a week in Guam via Tiny Eye until the end of May. I was very surprised to learn that my contract was not renewed in June.  Although this has negative impacted our finances, I do not plan to seek a second job at this point. I have some things on the radar, but this would currently consist of less than 2 hours weekly. One of the things that I wanted to make sure of was that we would be able to continue our current lifestyle without building up debit if things stayed absolutely the same for an entire year.  Currently, we should be able to maintain both our current income and living status based on the numbers I have gotten today.

I was able to finalize a budget for 2023.  I did make some major changes in not only the way I am budgeting but also in the priorities that we have.  Although the way I am wording and paying our expenses in 2023 is different, we are still using a zero budget. Meaning that both Matt and my income is budgeted at 100% with no extra money.  We find ways to save more and make money in a variety of different ways. Part of my time was spent reviewing previous years and where we stand financially compared to even 2011.  We currently have 24 thousand dollars in debt besides our Tahoe and house.   This is in comparison to $16 thousand in December of 2015.   One important difference that should be noted with the current value of our house, we could in theory sell the house and be able to cover not only the remaining mortgage but also our current debt including the Tahoe.  Another comparison that I found is that our minimum credit card payment in 2017 was $989.69 compared to $822 today.  I am going to continue to work toward zero debit other than the mortgage, but I also want to celebrate the success that we are achieving while actively living and engaging in our lives.

Speaking of success, we have achieved a “baby” emergency fund of $1000.  The majority of this is in cash so that is a HUGE success.  The next steps that I am going to focus on under the Dave Ramsey plan is snowballing all debit.  I am seriously considering making zero credit card debit a goal for 2023!  I am not sure this is achievable with Lily starting college, but I do want to have less than $100 thousand in debit including our mortgage and Tahoe by 2024.  Currently we have around $170 thousand in total debit.

We averaged $972 a month in grocery spending this year. In comparison to the USDA “thrifty” plan which would equal $1400 a month. This is significant increase in spending when compared to $530 in 2021, $631 in 2020 and even $821 in 2011.  My mother continues to provide support in this area as she eats at least 3 days a week with us.  My goal is to increase grocery spending to $975 a month in 2023.

We have spent an average of $620 a month on gas this year. This does include 2 trips to Florida, two trips to Mrytle Beach and a trip to Asheville. My plan is to budget $600 a month for gas with anything extra being used to pay down debt or for the extra expenses like oil change that always seem to pop up.

One final thing that I am going to include but it is an after note and one that I just wanted to document somewhere is that we lost around $2500 this year.  This was not an intentional lost or one we could have predicted but it did happen and affected our bottom line!

December Catch up!

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It has been 16 days since I last posted a blog. I am not sure but that may have been the longest that I have gone without posting ever.   The last two and a half weeks have been full of fun with some sickness throw in to make things interesting.

Lily and I really enjoyed our short girls trip to Disney for four days.  I am going to try and get up a post with some more details but things are moving fast and furious as the end of the year approaches quickly.

The week before our trip, on Sunday (December 11) I made a visit to Urgent Care with a sinus infection.   By Friday of that week I was some better but fighting face pain which was thought to be a bacterial infection.  On the plane trip down to Disney, I started with  a cough. Full blown yuckiness occurred on both Wednesday and Thursday of our trip.  We arrived home late Thursday night and I tested positive for the flu on Friday.

Haley and her family arrived on Friday.   I actually felt some better on Christmas Eve which was spent at the Fire Department with the Youngs. Christmas Day was at home with Haley’s David responsible for the meal.

As on today Monday December 26th, I have a lingering cough but we managed to get Family pictures, a trip to Winston and the camper under a tarp so  things are starting to look up!

Saving on Saturday

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We all know that our grocery bill in one of the highest budgeted items.  And to be honest, I have been going way over budget this year most of the year!  Today, I spent the afternoon making sure that as little as possible of our food goes bad and is wasted.

We also managed to eat at home all three meals which is a huge money saver.  Matt used the Black stone to make sausage links and patties and bacon. I was in charge of eggs and hashbrowns.  Matt also used the Black stone to cook 3 pounds of hamburger to use in several different things today as well.

I opened the vegetable draw to discovery that most of the items were on the brink of going bad. I did fine one orange pepper that was fed to the chickens.  I chopped up 4 and half cups of peppers and 2 cups of celery that went into the freezer. I also left out sliced peppers to be eaten as lunches this week. I chopped 4 cucumbers to snack on. I used the remaining green onions in our loaded potato casserole that was made to prevent the remaining potatoes from going soft.

I used up a couple of boxes of Chex mix for reindeer crack and muddy buddy Chex mix. We also discovered that a couple of half boxes of Chex cereal were stale, but they were not wasted instead the chickens enjoyed a treat.

For meal prep, I made a batch of cheddar and bacon burgers, two loaded potato casserole went in the freezer for later use. I made a batch of my chili for dinner and to use with baked potatoes this week.  Matt made a batch of his chill for dinner and lunches next week.  We also have a pound of ground beef cooked for a taco pasta this week.

Finally, we saved money by wrapping presents this evening using the paper I found in the attic last year and tape that was purchased on sale several years ago.  I have enough paper to last several more years of Christmas.  By that time, may I can sell my “vintage” wiggles wrapping paper!

5 Things Friday

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  1. This has been one of the busiest weeks I can remember! Monday- Kendall Swim meet, Tuesday- Lilly’s birthday, Wednesday-Kids had church, Thursday- recovery day and Friday- Night out for dinner and shopping.
  2. Next week is just as busy except that I have meeting most evenings!  Tuesday is Matt’s work Christmas party, Wednesday- Church, and Friday- Swim Meet. I also have meetings several evenings and Kendall has swim practice every day.
  3. I have already blown the grocery budget for the month. I have already spent $319 on groceries.  Yikes.  Hopefully I can keep under $400
  4. I am finished with Christmas shopping.  We went to Old Navy last night and purchased some clothing for a child at one of my schools.  Now I have a BUNCH of wrapping to do which is my least favorite thing!
  5. We leave for Disney in 9 days!