Category Archives: Saving Money

5 Things Friday

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  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!

Saving on Disney

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Our next big adventure of camping is going to be a trip to Disney World.  I will be the first to admit that this is one of the reason that I agreed to buying the camper.  I thought today I would share some of the ways that we are saving money on and during this upcoming trip.

The camper is the biggest savings for several reasons.  First the cost of a campsite is approximately half that of a resort room that would hold our family. The campsite also allows us all the perks of being on property except for one thing which is clean towels. We are fully expecting and planning to need to wash at least towels twice during our upcoming trip but even with this cost factored in the savings are huge!  When we take into consideration the additional gas needed I will still venture to say that we are still saving at least 1/4 the cost of a resort room. The second reason is that by bringing the camper we are not limited to what items we can bring. I am planning to bring a fully stocked refrigerator, we will be able to carry water and drinks in the parks which is also a huge saving. We will not be taking in many snacks because we prefer to enjoy all the good food that Disney has to offer. But at $4 a bottle, even bringing one water a day per person is a saving of $20 a day or $100 for the week!  We will also be bringing 4 or 5 days of breakfast with us. We typically spend about $65 for a resort or even a quick breakfast at the resort. With the camper, we will be shopping and bring our favorite breakfast including lots of fruit and yogurt. So it will still be a huge treat but just a much cheaper treat. We will also plan to eat our favorite breakfast meals as well so no hurt feelings here.

The next way we are saving is gift cards.  We were actually given gift cards at Christmas and I have rescued several old unused ones as well.

A great way to save is by purchasing gift cards at Target, you automatically get 5 % off so you get an instant savings. I currently have $150 in gift cards for myself! Depending on what happens in the next couple of months, I would ideally like to have $2000 on these type of gift cards to cover all of our “restaurant meals”

Along the same lines as gift cards is my Disney Credit card.  I earn “Disney Dollars” with each purchase.  I have been using this card for our trips and paying it off immediately. I also pay for this trip on the card and then pay it off. Currently I have $379 on this card. I anticipate around $500 to be on this card before we actually head to Disney!

I talked about purchasing food for this trip earlier. My initial plan was to use the grocery money for the month of April to cover the cost.

However, we will be receiving our Costco Cash from our Costco credit card in March. This should cover most if not all of the food expenses.

IF I do need to use some of the grocery budget it will allow me to stick to $200 or less in April instead of $600!

The final way to save money on our trip to Disney is to make the kids each responsible for their wants and “needs”  At around 100 days I started reminding the kids that they will want to have extra money for Disney.  I typically only buying Christmas presents for each kid at Disney. I do purchase all the food and drinks they want but just by not buying say a shirt for each kid saves at least $500 on the overall trip cost.

Simple ideas that stretch the budget!

Five Things Friday- Food Edition

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  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

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  • 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

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  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!

5 Things Friday

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  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.

Menu Planning Monday

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I did go to the grocery store with my mother on Saturday but managed to spend less than $5. This week we will be focusing on using the food we have on hand!

Breakfast– Saturday-Find your own.  Sunday-yogurt for me   Monday, Tuesday, figure it out!  Wednesday, Thursday, Friday-choice of breakfast muffins, eggs, pop-tarts, sausage, oatmeal, cereal or grits, breakfast burritos, or omelets.
Lunch- – Saturday-Pulled pork for Lily Birthday   Sunday- Olive Garden  Left-overs, pizza and soup should work for most of the week.
Dinner- – Saturday-Left-overs   Sunday- Left-overs. Monday-  Left-overs   Tuesday-Turkey Casserole   Wednesday-Baked Potato Soup  Thursday-Hamburger Helper     Friday-Pork Quesadas or you guess it Left-overs!

Saving on Saturday- written on Sunday

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This has been a crazy long and fun filled week.  After spending Friday night partying for Lily’s birthday. Saturday was spending cleaning up from said party and finding ways to  save and use as much of the food in my refrigerator as possible.  Food waste is one of the biggest areas that I can save money.  Lily’s birthday party was not on the frugal side so anything we can save and use.

We had purchased 3 veggie trays for the party at Lily’s request.  We came home with extra carrots, broccoli, cauliflower and rainbow peppers. The peppers were placed in the fridge because I am positive that the girls will use these for lunches and snacks over this week.  Matt was in charge of cutting up the baby carrots for freezing we were able to package a total of 9 cups of baby carrots in the freezer.  The packages of frozen carrots to purchase are $1.25 each.  The veggie trays are $14.99. By saving these we were able to re-coup the cost of one of the trays. I was able to steam and puree 5 cups of broccoli which was labelled for use in one of our favorite soups. another $2.25 found.  The cauliflower is not a preferred food for any of us however, I plan to take it with hummus and some ham salad to use as a meal this week as well.  We had purchased 3 bags of potatoes for baking. We ended up with approximately 25 potatoes that had been fully cooked. I made a baked potato salad to go with the pulled pork, Lily received for her birthday.  We also used this as a lunch meal.  We will use some of the potatoes for a baked potato soup this week. By adding some butter, cream cheese and sour cream we have 10 additional dishes of mashed potatoes to use for future meals.   Finally we took the left-over turkey combined with celery, carrots and onion made a casserole for dinner on Tuesday of this week.

The other area that we are focusing on is electricity use. Our electric company has joined the modern age and I am able to monitor our use daily. We have currently increased our usage by 7.77% over last year. I want to figure out what is different and how we can decrease this use as rates are also increasing.

Any suggestions or ideas are appreciated!

5 Things Friday

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  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.

5 Ways We Are Preparing for Unemployment

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  1.  We decided to sell your Toyota Minivan.  We were planning to keep it as an extra vehicle and  to use for trips with my Mom.  After much discussion and given the fact that unemployment will be less than half of Matt’s normal salary. We decided to go ahead and sell.  We got an online offer from CarMax and made an appointment. We spent a total of 1 hour for the entire process in the store and walked out the door with a check for $10,600.
  2. Paid off every little last debit, we could find or knew about for the next six months. This included things like garbage bill, taxes, tags and inspections as well as a couple of small medical bills. We also went ahead and paid all of the credit card balances to zero. I have been using some of the no interest promos combining with paying off the amounts as they come due.  I felt like by going ahead and paying everything to zero, it would be easier to start and use a cash only system. We will continue to use our Sheetz card for gas as it reduces the cost by 8 cent a gallon. We have a set amount of $500 to pay each month on this.
  3. Finished purchasing Christmas presents. I actually already had 3/4 of it completed but this was the push I needed to finish.
  4. Took inventory and completely stocked up on groceries. We added items for appetizers and things we might only use for the Super Bowl as well to this list.  I need to make a Dollar Tree run for body wash. We will still need to purchase bread, diary and vegetable items.  My goal is to reduce the grocery budget to $300 a month which is half of what we currently are spending.  In reality, I may be able to reduce it down to $200 a month after November.
  5. Established an emergency fund. This is placed in a money market account which is still easy to access but separate from our normal savings accounts.