Category Archives: Saving Money

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!

5 Things Friday

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  1. We are currently experiencing a heat wave with temperatures between 95-100 and feel like temperatures between 105 and 110 degrees. We are also continuing  to experience extreme drought conditions. We have a watering system for most of our square foot gardens but it really cant keep up with the heat and drought conditions. I am not sure how much produce we will be getting.
  2. Matt was able to find a couple of small cherry tomatoes and we have gotten a couple of cucumbers and several squash. I am disappointed but we continue to try and definitely use what we get1
  3. Because of the holiday (fourth of July) occurring on Saturday, Matt and Lily both were off today! Kendall worked today but is off the weekend and so is Zach. We enjoyed a rare treat of pizza for dinner since we were all home for dinner.
  4. Matt and I spent a large part of the day cleaning the house. With all the kids working just about every day, I am struggling to keep up with the daily chores and have not been able to keep the house to a clean level that I wanted. It feels awesome to have the whole house clean!
  5. I am continuing to work on adding food to the freezer!  I was able to make two additional meals of stuffed shells this week.  I have also added several options for breakfast will continuing to use up the eggs!

Another busy but productive week.

Summer Goal Update

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In order to stay accountable, I need to make a weekly update on what I have been able to do!

This week is likely one of the slowest of the summer, keeping this in mind, I have been focused on making specific progress toward the goals.

One big thing that we accomplished this week that was not on the list was cleaning out the master closet. Matt and I reduced our closet by HALF!

This week I was able to pick about half a gallon of blueberries from the garden. Matt make blueberry muffins last night and the rest were frozen for future use.

1. Make and order 8 photo books. I have made one complete book on Shutterfly from our cruise. I am waiting for a good sale before ordering.  
2.  Read a total of 8 books. No progress this week. 
3. Make and freeze 12 baked ziti’s
4. Make and freeze 6 million dollar spaghetti pies
5. Make and freeze 6 pans of chicken enchiladas. I actually purchased 4 chickens at Costco to make this easier and the cheapest as well!  We now have 6 in the freezer and one for dinner next week!  Goal met 6/19/2026.
6. Either walk or exercise 3 times a week for at least 8 weeks. No progress on this week. I have not been outside much at all this week with lots of kitchen progress. 
7. Make and freeze 6 taco pastas.  I was able to make 6 taco pasta and we ended up freezing 5 of these. I am going to count this as goal met 6/19/2026
8. Make and freeze 6 chicken, broccoli rice casseroles. I was able to make 6 chicken broccoli casseroles. and we ended up freezing 5 of these. I am going to count this as goal met 6/19/2026
9. Make at least 50 meatballs and freeze.  This one is a little tricky but I wanted a place to record this. I made and froze 6 meals of Salisbury steaks this week. When I made the list I did not realize we were out of Salisbury steaks so that is the reason it was not included. 

Saving on Saturday

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To be honest most of the time, saving money takes time and/or effort. There are, have been and will be times that I do not have the mental capacity to even attempt to add one single thing to my schedule. This week have been mentally and physically exhausting.  And I knew that we needed to get some major things checked off the list as we have a fun outing planned for next weekend.  My major goal for today was to get the tomatoes planted. I am happy to say that I accomplished that goal and will hopefully share more about it tomorrow.  And I definitely did not think I had time to save money but I decided that sometime you just have to go ahead with your plan.

We worked or should I say Matt worked adding automatic watering systems to the gardens last night. He focused on getting both our tomato beds set up to water at least daily.  We have been slowly working on this project and it was crunch time as I could not plant the tomatoes until it was complete. While we did end up purchasing a new solar pump and drip line, I am happy to say we re used both the solar pumps and now successfully have a watering system on all the bed. We also had enough of the drip line to not only complete both the tomato beds but also the front bed which this year contains watermelon. After some thought, we ended up using a food grade bucket as the source of the water.

Basically the watering system for this bed was free as we purchased nothing.

I have been watching the sales especially at Dollar General because they have been the cheapest place to purchase soda’s.   Today, I ended up going to two separate stores as the first store did not have enough pack for me to complete the deal. I was able to purchase two small plastic bags/containers for ninety cents each. My plan is that one is a spare bath basket and one is a good way to transport sunscreen.  I was able to purchase 6 twelve pack of soda and some chocolate bars for next weeks adventure for $31, which makes the cans around thirty-seven cent each.

While waiting for CVS to open, I was scrolling Facebook and noticed that the local farm was running a buy two get one free special on strawberries today.  I knew we needed the strawberries and this made them $14 a gallon or $3.50 a quart, this is half price and very similar to what you can purchase in the grocery store. I debated grabbing these as it meant that we would have to spend some time and effort in capping and flash freezing most of them.  I am so glad I did . The strawberries are juicy and delicious and we have frozen three gallon which means that I should be able to grab another two gallons and have enough for the next 12 months.

 

Saving on Saturday – Hair

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Beauty cost!  And the cost of beauty is rising.  One of the few things that I am absolutely afraid to do myself is my hair.   I can not cut straight and if I mess up my hair then I am going to have to pay so I chose to pay up front.

I have been very fortunate to have a good hairdresser for almost 25 years.   She has always been reasonable priced. Since 2019, she has decreased her available hours and it has become more and more difficult to get appointments.  Fortunately for me, Lily enjoys doing hair especially coloring.

I did have a hair cut appointment on Thursday and the first thing she said to me ” Your girls have not dyed your hair lately and you need it:”  A hair cut is still $15 so that was the first step.

I called Lily and she agreed to work on my hair.  It cost me $33 for the hair dye and what else she needed.  Her words of wisdom were “Trust the process.”  I did snap some pictures so share. But I am very pleased with the results for $48, I have an entire new hair style.

First Lily “bleached” to bring out most of the red color. This process took almost an hour.

Yes there were some “orange” streaks but “trust the process.”

This was the look last night when it was still wet.

I am glad I did “trust” the process.

Seven Things Saturday

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  1. I had every intention to post a five things Friday yesterday but it just did not happen.  So I decided to change it up and post seven things today.  One of the reason that I was not able to post was that Kendall and I spent the entire afternoon at Catawba College where she was interviewed for a full ride scholarship. Although we will not know about the scholarship until March this visit helped to solidify her decision that she would like to attend Catawba next fall.
  2. We are preparing for a major ice storm and some really cold weather over the next couple of days. The current temperature is 25 at 5pm, feels like 14.The temperature is not expected to be above 40 until a week from Monday. We are predicted to reach between 1/4 and an inch of ice. The overall hope is that we do not lose electricity and get to stay nice and warm. Or the kids hope for all snow to play in.
  3. Because of the weather, our church has already cancelled activities for tomorrow. Both the school districts have sent home remote activities. If the weather remains close to the predictions, we all may be home for the next week together.
  4. We have done some things to prepare without going overboard. I took Mom to the grocery store on Wednesday night as we had a swim meet on Friday. We have created an access point at the front of the house which would allow us to run a generator to run space heaters for keeping at least part of the house warm. Chickens have been fed heavily with good bedding and water is full. We will keep a check on the water for the next couple of days.  All warm items and flashlights have been assembled. We have spent lots of time charging things.  Lots of things have talked about and planned. And we currently have load number 5 in the washer. My plan is to wash a sixth load tonight and wash probably 2 additional loads tomorrow. The worst thing that could happen is that we have all clothes clean.
  5. One of our garden beds broke with the bottom falling to the ground. Unfortunately, this was the bed that I planted garlic in. Matt and I braved the cold and moved 21 garlic bulbs. I hope this will mean we get some garlic in the summer but who knows.
  6. I did have a chance to go through my seeds.  I am actually not planning to buy any seeds this spring. I am going to buy some basil plants and some flowers but that should be it.   I will have to buy more dirt as we are adding a green stalk planter. The other big expense will be a watering system to go over the top and connect to the sprinkler.
  7. Food is always  a big deal, I made a huge breakfast bowl for lunch, Lily made sushi bowls for dinner and I have made breadsticks and Chicken gnocchi soup for dinner.

Word of the Year

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Fun fact is that I have never made a “New Year’s Resolution”.  I have in the past and even made a couple of goals for this year.  But I am have been thinking and figured it would be a good time to try something new. I am going to chose a word to focus on this year.

REDUCE

This might seem strange but I need to spend some time and energy reducing things in several areas of my life.

First up is my pantry.  Kendall will graduate from high school this year.  She is already deciding on a college and then in two additional years she will be off on her own adult adventure. Zach at the same time will be graduating high school and staring his adult adventure.  I am guessing that within 3 years we will have an empty nest. That means we will probably need less than 1/4 of the pantry that we currently have. In reality, if we don’t consume and use up most of the “non favorite” items now then they may be here forever.  The pantry challenge is going to help with this idea. I am also planning on not purchasing any meat unless I find a deal I can’t pass up until June. I definitely want to empty out and turn off our chest freezer and move the convivence freezer out of our bedroom. This should definitely help reduce the clutter in my room as well.

Along the same lines, I am currently storing items in our pantry, the laundry room and our shower room. I would like to reduce this to having all the food in the pantry, using the laundry room as a storage area for paper products and then laundry items. This would leave the shower room for self care needs. In reality, I need to sort through all the items in the shower room and decide which ones can be thrown away, sold or simply need to be thrown away. This would also allow me to clean out the bathroom cabinets as well. Overall, I want to reduce the number of items that we keep on hand to a maximum of 6 months with most items reduced to three months. This will translate to a year supply for two people much easier than now.

Next on the reducing list is the number of clothes that I am keeping. I need to have a really good closet purge and reduce the items that I am holding on to. That is definitely something that will be waiting till the summer.

I have already shared plans to reduce our debit and spending this year as well. The overall goal is to be debt free except the mortgage in 5 years and totally debit free in 8 to 10 years.  Neither Matt nor I will be or can really increase our incomes at this point so REDUCE is definitely a must.

REDUCING Clutter and REDUCING my Stress yeap Reduce is a good word for this year.

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?