Category Archives: Budgeting

5 Things Friday

Posted on by
Reply

  1.  We are expecting our third snow in three weeks tonight. I have no plans to go outside the house before church on Sunday!
  2. The greenhouse continues to work really well. I am already beginning to think about what we could possibly grow next year…a lemon tree is high on the list.
  3. I have officially been able to complete my grocery challenge of $50 a week or $200 for the month of January. I even included my Amazon order which in the past I would have not!
  4. Our lives are on the uptick with events and practices, so it is really nice to have another weekend at home with most practices and events being cancelled due to weather.
  5. We can finally start to see a reduction in our freezers which is nice. I am currently making plans to start slowing adding more convivence meals back to the freezers using only the ingredients that we have!

Five Things Friday- Food Edition

Posted on by
Reply

  1. Food Waste- I am actually excited and pleased with the way we have been able to reduce our food waste this week. For dinner on Monday, we used the remaining hot dogs from our camping trip and I used the single remaining bun for a bacon and egg sub on Thursday morning.  We all ate leftover PF Changs for Tuesday lunch with Matt finishing the leftovers on Wednesday at lunch. Thursday night I used the finally 2 remaining apples from December along with 2 applesauce cups to make Apple Cinnamon Baked Oatmeal for breakfast on Friday!
  2. Eating Out- We have managed to eat at home exclusively since we returned on Monday. I will be eating out lunch today since I am at work but with the weather so cold our only restaurant meal will be Sunday at lunch!  This is a huge accomplishment for us especially since we are eating out of freezer and pantry.
  3. Grocery Budget-We currently have spent $90.72 including the additional camping treats that we purchased.   I do have an Amazon subscribe and save order that will arrive next week which will increase the spending to $184.75. I also have $121 left in our grocery budget envelope. We are on track to spend less than $200 for groceries for January.  Currently, my plan is to keep as much of the grocery budget as possible even at $50 a week so that we will have the cash this summer to purchase meat, chicken and pork in bulk!
  4. New Recipes- Since we have been spending an extended amount of time at home, we have been exploring what we can make with the items we have on-hand. I made a copycat version of Olive Garden Breadsticks  which will be a definite repeat. Matt made a cheeseburger pie for dinner on Thursday from a new recipe, unfortunately it will not be a repeat as it was just eatable.
  5. The greenhouse is working great!  We actually were able to eat a salad from the lettuce we have been currently growing!  The kids were so excited and we hope to enjoy more of the garden soon.  We have been pleased to learn that first the heater is working well even on extremely cold day! And to Matt’s surprise the plastic roof is holding strong and providing the protection and heat that is needed!

Tuesday Thoughts

Posted on by
Reply
  • We all (even Lily) enjoyed our 4 day camping trip to Conway SC this past weekend.  We arrived home on Monday (Martin Luther King Day_) to about 6 inches of snow in our driveway. The kids were super excited to “play in the snow.”
  • Today (Tuesday) was an official snow day for the kids. The community college even cancelled class!  I however worked remotely with a two-hour delay. I am grateful to be able to stay nice and warm and earn a paycheck. The same thing will happen again tomorrow.  We are actually supposed to receive more bad weather Thursday night and Friday morning, so this is turning into an interesting week.
  • We have our first official harvest from the greenhouse. Matt was able to harvest a bag of mesclun lettuce today. We will use this as part of our salad with Lasagna for dinner tomorrow. Matt was also pleasantly surprised to find that our greenhouse roof of plastic did not break or tear in the sleet, snow and wind. We are now strongly considering getting a lemon tree this summer to keep outside in the summer and in the greenhouse next winter!
  • So far this month for groceries we have spent $90.72. Which means I currently have over $100 sitting in the grocery fund. I have trade and left a $100 bill in the envelope to encourage me not to spend it. I am also on track to spend less than $200 on groceries this month. I do have a subscribe and save delivery that should arrive on January 28th but that still should not throw me over the $200 budget. My next decision is to keep saving the excess in the grocery fund until June or use this money to pay for some other items.  Right now I want to build an emergency grocery fund of $200 to start with.
  • Braxton has been staying with us this week so that both of his parents can work.  I will be the first to admit, I am glad daycare is open tomorrow because it is difficult to work with a toddler in the house!

5 Things Friday

Posted on by
Reply

  1.  I am focusing on reducing our spending during the first few (6) months of 2022 for several reasons. First, I want to keep everything pretty safe until Matt has a permeant new job and we can develop a new budget based on it. Second- we have three trips plan and Haley’s wedding, so I want to be able to enjoy each of these events without count pennies!  Third- We have grand plans for some house repairs to be completed so I also want to keep this as the end goal.
  2. We were able to achieve 2 No Spend days this week!  This is two more than the entire month of December.  Goal to achieve the same or better next week!
  3. We spent a total of $11.16 for groceries this week. I decided to go ahead and stock up on 2L drinks while they are on sale. We are still way under our $50 a week budget.
  4. I have made a couple of sales on Ebay this week and Matt was able to sell floormats and brake pads from our Toyoto van. These are small items but they are adding extra income/ spending money so everything is helpful.
  5. It is cold… the temperatures hit 80 last week and have been staying in the high 50’s for weeks. Today the high is 40…YUCKY.   I really dislike the cold!

Let’s Talk Food!

Posted on by
Reply

Food is always a huge part of any celebration for us!  This year did not disappoint!  We started on Wednesday morning with a trip to Cracker Barrel for breakfast!  Lunch/ Dinner was a really cool burger bar in Asheville called Juicy Lucy!

We enjoyed microwave breakfast meals in our camper both Thursday and Friday mornings!  These are a huge treat for us and at $27 for both mornings way cheaper than eating out! On Thursday, we enjoyed lunch at the Stable Cafe at Biltmore.

Christmas Eve, Friday, was our usual Pork BBQ with the addition of baked beans and mac and cheese!  This is definitely a repeat.

For Christmas morning/ lunch I made cheddar bay sausage balls, cream cheese cresant rolls and a hashbrown casserole.   For dinner we simply ate from the fridge with the healthy addition of deviled eggs, fruit and a veggie tray.

Sunday or the day after Christmas continued our food celebration, my Sunday school class had a pot luck breakfast, lunch was at La Caretta (Mexican) and dinner is appetizers at a gathering of friends.

After all this, I am sure a food coma is going to occur soon!

I have also had a chance to view out grocery spending for the year. I am very excited to announce that we spent $6,312.75 on groceries this year which is an average of $526.06 a month!!! This is actually a decrease in the overall average from last year.  I have been doing some thinking and planning.  I want to challenge myself to keep grocery spending to $50 a week for the months of January, February, March and May. We are travelling to Disney in April so I am not sure if that is realistic to even attempt to keep this same budget in April.  This will allow us to hopefully use up the majority of the food that is in our freezers so I can spend some time next summer, restocking with items that we currently are enjoying and make a bunch of prepared meals.  It will also allow me to get a realistic idea of what we need to spend on a weekly basis for fresh food and diary items.

5 Things Friday

Posted on by
Reply

  1. My Christmas break starts today and last for 2 weeks. Zach and Kendall actually have school on Monday and Tuesday next week and they get an additional 2 days off after New Year’s. Lily does not start back to school until January 10th!
  2. We have our first official camping trip planned for next week. We are headed to Biltmore to enjoy the lights and an art exhibit!
  3. The greenhouse is being productive!  We have around 10 containers growing cooler weather foods. I am so excited about this and can’t wait to try some. Based on trial and error we have decreased the temperature for the heater to come on at to 45 and we are waiting to start watering again because some of the plants looked drowned.
  4. Our electric bill rose by $100 with an increase usage of 22% from last year. We are currently in the process of trying to determine how much of this we can control and what is to be expected with the greenhouse and camper. The good news is that it did not exceed the budgeted amount but is close.
  5. We started making Christmas treats last night… Reindeer crack and candied pecans.  I may work on cookies today if I get MOTIVATED!

Saving On Saturday or Sunday

Posted on by
Reply

This week I actually spent money in order to save money. I ended up with a day off work so Matt and I hit up a couple of spots that we usually don’t have time to go to.  First was the Dollar Tree. Currently most items are priced at $1. I have read several articles that indicate the standard price will be changed to $1.25 starting in January. I decided to save myself some money and do a stock up trip. I purchased items like sandwich and snack bags, deodorant and the boy’s body wash. I ended up spending $50 so I saved at least $12 on items that will be purchased and used.

Next, we stopped at the local Belk’s store. I was actually shopping for a couple of boys we chose off the angel tree at church. I did not find anything in the size that I needed that I would consider a deal, but I did manage to grab 3 dress shirts for Zach and 9 short sleeve t-shirts for Braxton for a grand total of $50.

We have several local ‘bargain” stores. We stopped at one for $6 packs of diapers and a couple of other items.

I have always shopped after Christmas for wrapping paper and for items to keep in our gift drawer.  This year I also found a bag of wrapping paper in the attic. I have been using the paper we found so that we will definitely not have to buy any more for next year either.  The kids were able to locate gifts for a white elephant gift exchange, in the gift drawer so that also saves on expenses.

Last but definitely not least is using the food we have and trying to not let any go to waste.  I made a definite effort to go ahead and package up lunch size containers for this week so that I can just grab and go.

5 Things Friday

Posted on by
Reply

  1. We are continuing to focus on our electric usage. There are certain things that are beyond our control such as needing to connect the camper to the house when someone is staying it in.  And the need to keep a heater in the greenhouse in order to prevent the plants from freezing and of course our usage will be greater with Christmas lights. We also have discovered ways to save electricity in small ways. Unplugging the camper even during the daylight decreases our usage and we are beginning to experiment with the temperature we must keep the greenhouse at. Turning off lights and using the dishwasher and dryer at night continue to save us.
  2. I have realized that a year can change things completely.  This year which has been our best year ever financially has also brought more changes and twist than are even imaginable. Matt is currently unemployed but yet the goal is to end the year with our only debit being the house and Tahoe payment.
  3. Our final project of the year is going re-organizing and re-arranging our master closet.   We have started making some simple changes which already make it feel much lighter and more open. We will be installing a new closet organizer on one side and continuing to sort through clothes which will finish this project. I am projecting that the entire project will end up costing less than $200.
  4. We have several count downs going on in the house right now. First up is our first “camping” experience in Asheville right before Christmas, followed by Christmas and New Year then our January trip to Mrytle Beach which will be for 4 days instead of 2 and a longer drive. Finally our Disney trip in April. It has been an entire year since we have been to Disney! Plus this will be our first real experience camping at Disney.
  5.  I am starting to look ahead at some major home improvement projects for next year. These will be expense that we will pay out of promised money.   We will likely end up spending around $20k on these so I want to make sure they will be exactly what we want and of top quality.

November in Review

Posted on by
Reply

I know very well how quickly things can change but November gave us a good reminder of just how change affects everything. My goal for November was to reduce spending basically a no spend month. Sounded like a reasonable goal with the focus on paying off all the bills by the end of year. Just three days into November and we learned that Matt would be losing his job. After looking at our situation, some prayer and as the shock wore off, we decided to first sell the van and try to arrange our lifestyle to live on what income we could be certain would be available. I am thankful that it really will not be a difficult adjustment. Things are different but not awful.

Groceries– budget amount is $650.   $484 I have already been purchasing some items for Lily’s party.  I also did some stocking up on drinks and other things that I wanted to have on hand.  I am not sure what the month of December holds as far as groceries but I know that starting in January and lasting until Matt has steady employment is to reduce the grocery budget to $50 a week which or $200 a month for fresh veggies and bread only.  I may try to do this as well in December after Lily’s party.

Auto/ Gas / Insurance. My goal is $400 a month. $385.80.   Met! One of the big downsides to the new Tahoe is the gas mileage of 15 miles per gallon. We are trying to be diligent about driving it only when needed. The Equinox gets awesome gas mileage and we can drive as much as we need without a second thought.  I am going to keep the goal the same with alot of monitoring at this point.

Cash Envelope system-  Goal not  met!  This goal becomes one of the most important part of our budgeting system. It is no longer a choice but a requirement.

Goal #4- Blogging- 15 post per month.  Goal Met! This is post number 15

Goal # 5- Fitness– Goal is to exercise of some type at least 10 days a month.  Nope Naa

Goal #6 – Bible study- Goal-  Read or Listen to the entire Bible in a year. Need to find something to get started on this.

Earnings– Cashed out Ibbota for $28 and fetch for $3, with another 7 currently in the account, I am waiting to cash out at 10 this time. Verizon for $5. Total $36 free money this month!

No Spend Days– Did not keep up with this as it just was too difficulty.  I worked hard to make sure things were paid. I know we had 1 day of no spend and even that is an improvement over zero.

We had some unusual expenses during this month. We also spent a ton of money but in the end, I have been able to balance out most things. We are ending the month with a brand new Tahoe, new to us camper and a huge drive way!  Most of this was covered by Matt’s inheritance so we are grateful.  We also have to figure out how to cover the expense of Lily’s car.

I know of at least one more project that we want to finish which is some better organization in our closet.   We also have our first camping trip planned for December. And best of all is CHRISTMAS!

5 Things Friday

Posted on by
Reply

  1. Matt has been working on getting the greenhouse functional this week which including install shelves to hold the planter boxes. We had originally screwed the plastic boxes to the wall and some had already started to crack with the weather change. We are running a small heater at night which has increased our overall electricity usage so this is something we will need to monitor.
  2. We planted 8 more boxes with more fall vegetables. I am hopefully that we will be able to have a mid-winter harvest that carries into the spring. It does appear that some of the lose leaf lettuce has already started to grow.
  3. Matt was able to try a new recipe this week for Impossible Cheeseburger Pie.  Matt, Lily and Zach really liked it. Kendall said it tasted like beef. This will definitely be a repeat for us!  I also found a breakfast recipe that I am going to try in the morning!
  4. We have NOWHERE that we have to go tomorrow. My plan is to work on cooking as much as possible for next week so that I can spend the extra time working on Christmas decorations!
  5. Food Lion finally has a sale on 2 Liter Diet Cokes!   I have already stocked up on 30 with plans to add at least another 10 this weekend.