Category Archives: Budgeting

Three Day Weekend- Labor Day

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Today is what most people would say the last day of summer.  Some years it feels like fall already but not this year. The temperature was around 83 *however since this is 10-15 degrees cooler than last week, it was a pleasant day to work outside. I spent alot of time trying to battle back the weeds. I got all of the blueberry bed cleared and about half of the bed on the side of the house. I also spent some time pulling weeds in the garden, removing dead things and trying to make it look a little bit better. I am actually very happy with it now.  I harvested a gallon of tomatoes and we have 14 zucchini plants that have sprouted along with two bean plants. I also found a couple of loofa sponges that are big enough to use effectively!  I am holding out hope that we get a load of zucchini and a couple more nice batches of tomatoes in the next couple of weeks.

Matt and I ended up installing a new rain barrel for the bed in the front of the house. I had also decided to remove the back barrier. I am planning to make this bed a pepper bed next year so it will not be needed and it was actually really ugly. We also placed some additional pieces of wood under the legs to help it look straighter. I also worked on some general clean up around the outside of the house and we changed the front sign from flowers to fall!

The other area that was a focus was continuing to add to the stockpile. I made a batch of salsa on Saturday and canned up four additional pints. I also made both pizza sauce and a couple of extra pizza crust today!  The canning closet is looking really full and I am thankful that even though I did not officially participate in the Every bit counts challenge. I only have less than 20 empty jars at this point.  I am very hopefully that we will be able to fill these remaining jars up with tomato products in the next month as well as start to empty some of the jars out so that we can significantly reduce the grocery budget.

I am disappointed in the fact that we are almost eight days in September and I have yet to have a no spend day.  On the bright side, we decided and scheduled a short weekend trip to Myrtle Beach in October as a time to just get away and enjoy some time together without a lot of outside demands.

August in Review

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August was an extremely busy month filled with both fun and tears. We started the month off by pulling a Uhaul trailer to Florida with most of Lily’s furniture to get her settled in her new apartment. Then E, Braxton and I spent almost two weeks at Disney. Matt flew in and out but did get to spend a good week at Disney. Next up was Haley’s pinning ceremony that had most of the crew together! I started back to work full time, Kendall and Zach started college.  We have not struggled as much as I anticipated with all the changes in routine! I have even caught up with most of my list for before school starts. This fall we have lots of football games to enjoy, several birthdays to celebrate as well!   I hope to get things back on track with regular post on the blog as well as some serious debt repayment and of course a new budget to start next year.  I typically do a budget review/revise in June but this year is different. So I am honestly looking ahead and trying to really set our sights on starting 2027 off strong with both a realistic budget and debt reduction plan. This means that I am going to be making more post about budget and money over the next few months as I focus on planning!

Groceries- Goal $800 per month.  We spent $536  for the month of August. My goal for the next two months is to significantly reduce our spending to less than $300 a month.  I am hopeful to reduce this overall budget to $500 starting in January however I am not quite sure this is realistic. We have a significant amount of food in our freezers and pantry so I am hopeful to really stretch us this fall.

Gas- Goal is $400.  Total spent was $690 for gas  this month. This amount does not include the trip to Florida.  I am not sure what the gas spending will be as I am adding about 30 miles or more a day with after school care for E. The price of gas continues to jump so this may be an area to reconsider in January as well.

Blogging-The goal will be 15 posts per month.  This is post 10 for me. Considering that I was out of town for half the month this is a significant improvement and win for me!

Debit-   The goal for 2026 will be to pay off the Home Depot Credit card without interest. Finances are always a difficult subject to be completely open and honest about. At this point, I don’t see us making the big second payment on the Home Depot card. Which means we will be hit with a significant amount of interest to tackle. God can provide so I have been praying. But regardless of his answer, we have to re adjust the budget. I am hopeful to use the remaining months of 2026 to get us on a solid financial track with planning for saving and debt repayment at the front! On the positive side a increase in income is coming and we should pay off the Tahoe in January!

No Spend Days- Goal for 10 no spend days a month. Time to make this a focus as well as get some accountability.

Health/Exercise-I am currently down an additional 10 pounds over the summer. I guess walking an average of 5 miles a day at Disney does count as exercise. We have purchased a walking pad for the house so I have no excuse to not try and exercise at least 1 time a week for now.
Foster Care-  Our next court date is set for October 20th. We were notified that the official permanency plan is guardianship/reunification. This is a huge first step!  We were also told that the official reason for this was to encourage both parents to begin working on their plan.  I am going to try and keep my feelings and thoughts out of this section. As I want it to be a place I can find date and official things easily.

Very little progress has been made on my Summer goal list since I started back to work so this is a final update.

1. Make and order 8 photo books. We have received 2 books. I did print out 25 pictures to make E a Disney book.
2.  Read a total of 8 books. I have finished five books this summer!
3. Make and freeze 12 baked ziti’s- Goal Met! July 2026
4. Make and freeze 6 million dollar spaghetti pies  Goal met! August 
5. Make and freeze 6 pans of chicken enchiladas. Goal met 6/19/2026.
6. Either walk or exercise 3 times a week for at least 8 weeks. This goal was not met but I lost 10 lbs so something moved!
7. Make and freeze 6 taco pastas.   goal met 6/19/2026
8. Make and freeze 6 chicken, broccoli rice casseroles. 6/19/2026
9. Make at least 50 meatballs and freeze.  I did not get around to the meatball however I currently have 78 prepared meals in the freezer or canning pantry in addition to the 10 jars of spaghetti sauce that is canned!

Overall I was able to achieve the summer goals related to food but not my personal self care goals.  Who is surprised?

I wanted to add something that E and I are doing in the mornings and I was not sure where to add so this is the spot. We have 30 verse that have been laminated. We are going to read a verse each morning! We are hoping to follow this with a prayer. So far this does help us change our moods and I want to keep this habit up!

Why?

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Why is everything breaking especially in the middle of summer when I don’t get a paycheck and especially right around vacation.

Here are more of the details… first up the insta pot. This was actually not a big deal for me. This was actually a hand me down from my daughter. I just have not had good success with using these. I did enjoy making boiled eggs and rice in the pot but the last straw was the second batch of rice that burned for no reason and the eggs that were cooked dry before it ended.  I threw it away with no thought.  This actually happened three days before our vacation.

The second hit was much harder and I will admit made me cry!  Zach was mowing the yard in a rush and called to tell me the lawn mower was smoking. I told him to let it sit in dry grass as this was not the first time it has acted this way. Unfortunately, when he went to crank it again, it would not even start. I told him to push it to the end of the year.  We were fortunate enough to borrow the neighbor.  Based on history and the age of the mower (more than 10 years) we decided to find and order a new lawn mower during our vacation. It arrived on Monday! And the bright spot is I sold the broken one for $100 on Facebook.

We actually made it to vacation before the next thing broke.  We own our camper and there is a true statement that says  something breaks every single time you take it out. Fortunately it was only the clasp of the screen door for this trip but $15 is still an expense.

We arrived home on Sunday to discover that our oldest freezer had reached a temperature of 41*.  This meant that it had actually stopped working. It was a mad dash to try an save as much as possible. We ended up losing about 1/4 of what was in the freezer as it was completely unthaw.  A great benefit was that it was not full!  So the loss was minimal but still is a huge loss. We are still in the process of deciding if we want to replace this freezer.  It is a third freezer so I am not sure that is an necessary expense right now or even in the future.

Last but certainly not least on Monday, after the first batch of spaghetti sauce, my large crockpot died. It just literally stopped heating!  I had purchased one several years ago and just was using the liner from the new one so I was able to go out to the building and get the new crockpot to use.

 

This all are definitely first world problems but in reality it is frustrating and combined with all the changes we are going through with Lily moving and the tragic loss of two friends this past week. It feels like we just cant get a break!

5 Things Friday

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  1. Found Money- I think that I am usually really good at keeping track of my money.  I usually try not to let anybody keep my money without interest.  However this week, I have discovered that two separate business, held my money for over a year. First is the dentist office.  All three kids had dentist appointments two weeks ago. They are all old enough to go without me. Zach did call me and say that he needed more fluoride toothpaste and then text to say that I did not need to pay because he had a credit on his account. When I got time I called and this week they called me back.  Not only does he have a credit but Lily also has a credit from 2024. In thirty days I am expecting a check for $681.99.  The second found money is from a car service plan.  We purchased several service plans when I bought my car.  When reviewing one we realized that I paid for a battery in November 2025 that was covered under a service plan. I made Several phone calls and should receive $299 back in a matter of weeks. $980 found this week.
  2. I am trying an experiment. Our clothes have gotten increasingly wrinkled to the point I really need to iron even the t-shirts.  I hate ironing!  So instead I am currently hanging our outer clothes on the line to dry. If this works, I will do the last several times we wash clothes this summer. It will be hard to do when I go back to work but I am hoping it works well enough to stop or eliminate the need to iron right now.
  3. This summer has been extremely hot and dry!  We have been struggling to keep up with the demand of water.  After seeing the dead and sun burnt plants, I made the decision to pull out all my squash and green beans and replant.   We have gotten very little from these plants and I had the extra seeds. I am hoping that this works if not then I really have only just wasted time!
  4. We are starting to get some cherry tomatoes from the garden!  They are small but good!
  5. I ended up going to Cherry hill farm to purchase a box of canning tomatoes to make Baked Ziti with. My summer break going so fast that I realized that if I did not get the ziti made this week it probably would not get done. $15 for the tomatoes was cheaper and better than buying jarred sauce.

Saving on Sunday

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Yes this is definitely a day late post. I had planned to write this yesterday but now I want to include my clothes saving today so it is just a saving on Saturday post a day late!

Groceries remain our highest expenses next to out mortgage.  One of my summer goals is to prepare easy meals to use during the school year. It is one of the ways that i am able to maintain our grocery bill.  We typically only eat out once a week.  However between school and sports this puts a strain on my abilities. By having at least 100 meals in the freezer that can be heated and served this prevents lots of pizza and drive thru runs. This year I am also trying to make a comprehensive list of all the meats/ingredients in the freezers as well. My family LOVES baked ziti’s. I would like to make 8-10 of these and have one a month for the entire school year.  But  Italian sausage is expensive and each one requires a pound.  I was excited  to find  it on sale at $2 off a package. I ended up buying 10 packs so I hope to make these in the next couple of week. I am currently waiting on tomatoes in order to make more sauce as we are down to 5 jars.  We are currently working on the end of the whole cow we purchased two years ago.  I was glad to find some meat on sale as well. But to be honest spending $229.00 at Food Lion was a shock to my system.  However that is meat for 12 meals so at 19.50 a meal to feed 6 people is not horribly bad.  I also purchased alot of ice cream as treats.  I continue to monitor the cost of soda and when I saw that Dollar General was not only placing soda’s on sale but giving two $5 off 25 this week, I had to take advantage of that. I ended up spending $59 for sodas this week but that should last us a while and can were around 37 cent a piece and bottles were 65 cent each.

I took advantage of half price offer on Walmart + this week. This included a peacock tv subscription as well as 10 cent off a gallon for gas at Walmart. I am going to keep up with what I spend this year to see if it is actually worth it.  So far we have saved $9 in delivery fees and I am not going to include the cost of Peacock as we did not need it but it was a nice extra that the kids and Matt have already taken advantage of.

Kendall had requested Olive Garden for lunch today and we ended up shopping at a couple of stores in the same shopping center after eating. My family has discovered that they can eat “lighter fare” which is less than $15 a plate and includes soup, salad and breadsticks as well! Total cost for 7 for lunch today which included 3 additional meals of leftovers weas $120!  Belk’s had a good sale going on as well. We were able to purchase t-shirts for $10 each ! Matt also found  shirt on clearance for $18!  Our final stop of the day was a shoe store where I was able to purchase new tennis shoes for B and E and a new pair of dress shoes for Matt. I count spending $60 for shoes a win as well!

I have said several times today that I buy things on sale so we don’t have to pay full price when we need items!

Saving on Saturday- Pantry Challenge

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I am proud to say that I have not been inside a grocery store for three weeks. I will admit that I did send Zach to grab some sour cream on Thursday.   My rule for the pantry challenge is that we only buy items we are totally out of.

Sour cream was the exception or maybe it actually qualified. We had two containers in the fridge.  Unfortunately both were moldy.   Zach spent $1.83 for the sour cream.

We actually ran out of rice on Thursday. I usually purchase large bags of rice at Costco in March but this year we used more than expected.  At Walmart today, I really debated if I wanted to grab a small bag and wait to get at Costco. However the price difference was over three cent an ounce, so I just could not justify. We ended up with a 20 lb bag which only filled one bucket about 3/4 the way. I will still plan to grab another bag from Costco when we go.  As we were walking through Walmart, I found split wings that we will use for Junk Food Sunday. They were reduced to $19.84 for 8 pounds so we purchased 16 pounds. We have opened and used most of a carton of shelf stable milk so I grabbed a gallon of milk as well.   We have been attempting to use up all the meat and chicken from our freezer.  I have used up all the shredded chicken, and all the canned chicken. I wanted to make Chicken stew tomorrow so I went ahead and purchased a whole chicken. I normally would not have purchased but I decided to go ahead because we were out.

Now for the splurge, I grabbled a bunch of bananas and a loaf of bread.  We experienced a MAJOR life change last weekend. I am going to hopefully post about it soon but these were things to make my life easier.  I ended up spending $51 at Walmart today. This means that I have spent $291.57 in total for the month.

Positive Budget Adjustments

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This is typically one of the times that I search to make sure that I am getting the best deal of all the normal bills. The reason is simple, I am thinking about the new year and a new budget.  We switched our internet provided right at a year ago. The first three months were $50ish then it went up to $86.75 which was still less than we were paying. We have been receiving promotional offers in the mail from the original provider  (Spectrum) but nothing outstanding aka worth the time and effort.

Well luckily that changed last week. We received an offer for $50 a month for 12 month at the same speed we had.  I went on line to make the change and also saw an offer for $50 free which I grabbed. I knew it would take some time to get everything switched so I scheduled for last Sunday. Of course it did not work out so a technician came on Monday and got it switched over.  We are going to save $26.75 a month for 12 months or $321 for the year.  This offer also included a free mobile phone line.

This offer required a little bit more research but we decided to go ahead and switch Kendall’s line to save an additional $35 a month.  I was actually trying to get a transfer pin from Verizon online when I managed to trigger a $20 a line discount for 12 months with the catch that I needed to call to get this discount.  Of course it did not come that easy. I spent 45 minutes on hold waiting to talk with someone who was only able to immediately apply it to 4 lines (one of which was Kendall’s).  I have been promised that we should receive the additional $40 discount in the next four business days.  But the hassle is worth it. Currently by changing Kendall’s line and given the $60 discount on the three lines our cellphone bill has decreased by $120 a month or $1440 a year!

That means that I am $1761 closer to paying off Home Depot!

Pantry Challenge update

I did a quick shopping trip on Tuesday 12/30 to end out the year.  I am going to attempt to only buy diary that we are completely out of or other items that are necessary in order to keep eating.  I am also significantly reducing my Amazon subscribe and save orders as well. This past week we have been focused on celebrating birthdays and eating left-overs.  Today, I realized that we are out of ranch powder and I used up the remaining thyme in our soup tonight.  Neither are required to eat so we should be good.

Pantry Challenge Preparation

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I am trying to spend part of my winter break working on Pantry preparation.  I had already been thinking about participating in a pantry challenge but with the new heating and air system it is a definite we need to now.  First I have been working on a list of all of the different meals we could have based on items in our freezers and pantry. My goal is to have a list of sixty items. I am planning to share this list once I get it organized and typed up. Here are some of the other ways I am working to get prepared to make this pantry challenge successful for both the months of January and February.

So far in the last week I have made a batch of sloppy joes (8 meals), two extra meals of meatloaf muffins, two extra meals of bagels and one extra loaf of bread.

I have been searching the pantry to try and restock on any items that we might run short on during the next several months.  I ended up at Costco last night to pick up items for our dinner party on Saturday as well as the items we needed. I ended up spending $306 which puts me over the grocery budget for this month however I will let you know next week what our budgets actually look like for next year.

The “rules” I have set for myself

  1. Eating out as a family  only on Sundays – We have a specific budget for this.  I will also try and stretch this budget to cover meals on the go which will be needed for a couple of swim meets.  Matt and I will continue to have our “spending money” which is going to be reduced from $50 to $40 every two weeks for at least the first six months of 2026.
  2. Purchase only diary items such as milk, cheese and creamer.  I am planning to make bread during the challenge so this should not be needed. We have fruits and vegetables in cans, jars and frozen which need to get used up during this challenge.
  3. No purchasing of meat! With the exception of chicken wings needed for our Super Bowl party.
  4. Use at least 5 jars a week from the home canned pantry.
  5. Keep a list of items we run out of and when This is new this year but should help me figure out what I need in our pantry for the future.
  6. Lower the Amazon subscribe and save order to bear minimum of 5 items needed to keep the 15% discount or items we are absolutely out of.

Anyone else participating?

Saving on Saturday

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One of the most important things to remember is every $1 saved is an accomplishment.  With the huge financial expense of the new HVAC system, I am going to focus more on the little things for saving. The reason is we already do alot of things to save money and in reality, I can’t find much more that way. So now it is back to the basics of saving in every way possible.

I mentioned yesterday that I had not been out to eat breakfast. That is the first way we are saving money!

Another way we are saving money is by using items in our pantry. For us as a family this means that we need convenient foods that are easy to make and filling. Breakfast is one of the hardest meals for me because I don’t have much time to get out the door.  I spend ALOT of time in the Summer preparing food ahead but I also need to add to this during the year. Last night for dinner we had sausage balls and French toast.  I decided to go ahead and make a HUGE batch.  We have been getting six eggs a day so this was a good way also to use up the eggs. I purchased three loaves of French bread at Walmart for $1.47 each ($4.50), used sugar, milk, vanilla and cinnamon. I am going to estimate the entire cost to be $10.  Matt used the Blackstone to fry up the bread. We ended up with our dinner and around 60 additional slices of French toast.  Currently one meal of French toast for one person is $10 so for the same cost we probably have at least 5 meals for our family of five.

The final way we saved money this week is by building shelves out of pallets that we got for free last year. We have used this wood to complete the front part of the new building as well.  I did use part of my Christmas money to purchase the brackets. The total cost for his was around $30 but we have lots more space and I definitely like  organization.

5 Things Friday

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1. Today is the official start of the Christmas pajama pants season.  I have two weeks to be able to enjoy wearing these. If you see me in public, I will be festive and warm! So mind your business
2.  I have not eaten breakfast out/grab on the way to work for the past two weeks. This may seem small but it is a big deal for me!  In reality I will have saved probably $20-$40 this month alone.
3. We have our annual Christmas dinner planned for December 27th. I have already started some of the preparations in hopes that it will not be as exhausting and I can enjoy more of the fun parts of it!
4. Our new HVAC system is installed. Here is me looking forward to warmth and lower bills!
5.  On Sunday, we will enjoy a “Birthday Party for Jesus”, lunch with Friends and Carols and Candles at church.  This is a festive as it gets and I am looking forward to each of these!