Category Archives: Saving Money

SAVING ON SATURDAY-

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This week we are again focusing on re-doing our square foot garden.  I am so excited that we have been able to save all of the dirt that has been ordered and put in our previous beds. We also have 2 large tomato beds, a sweet potato bed and 2 strawberry beds that have cost us absolutely nothing.  Our demolish phase is complete and next week we hope to build out all of our new boxes and get place and the garden part completed. This will allow us to plant the first few weeks of May!

 

Zach wanted his picture with all his hard work. He has even been working after school.

Monday Menu Planning

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After a full month of left-over soup, find it and take-out, I am back on track with meal planning. I have the additional goal of keeping our groceries as low as possible for the month with any and all extra money going to our Disney trip in April. Another huge positive is that I am actually working less hours in Guam so I have a tiny bit more time to cook and such. On Sunday, Matt and I tackled breakfast muffins for the week. The goal was to make something quick and easy since we don’t have bagels this week. The kids were gone all weekend to Haley so Matt and I splurged alot and enjoyed not cooking or washing dishes.

Breakfast– Saturday-Biscuit King   Sunday- Biscuit King  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday-choice of breakfast muffins, eggs, sausage, oatmeal, cereal or grits, breakfast burritos, or omelets. New  breakfast muffins included sausage and potato muffins and veggie scrambles.

Lunch-  Saturday–Burger King   Sunday- Time Square Pizza.    I assembled 6 salads on Sunday. The kids will eat left-overs and Matt also has 2 hamburger sliders to enjoy.

Dinner-  Saturday-  Mexican    Sunday-left-over or muffins . Monday-Steaks and Baked Sweet Potato  Tuesday-Baked Ziti that was found in the freezer.  Wednesday-Corn Dogs and FF.    Thursday- Hamburger Helper    Friday- Steak fataji  or Steak fried rice depending on my mood.

Saving on Saturday

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Yesterday, I gave you the reason that I am updating and drastically changing the square foot garden. Today I am going to share a couple of pictures of our progress. 

The best part of these three new beds is total cost was $0.  The tin was salvaged serval years ago from a car shed that my brother was tearing down. The wood and screws were from the previous square foot garden beds which are about half way removed. I also re used pavers from the previous bed.  I should be able to grow a total of 22 tomato plants and enough sweet potatoes to last us an entire year with just these three beds.  This finally picture is just to show where we are at curently.

Lots more work and cost to follow but for the first 2 days of actually work we are at zero cost!

Square Foot Garden 5 Things Friday

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This list is a little different as it is the reason that we are going to undertake the mass project of re-doing our square foot garden.  My goal is to use the same concept for square foot gardening just in a different way. The biggest difference will be that the garden boxes will not be on the ground instead they will be elevated.

  1. Prevent dogs and cats in the neighborhood from using the boxes as a rest area. Even Rugar is really sneaky in this. I am sure that is part of the reason some of the plant last summer did not survive.
  2. Expand the number of items that I am able to grow.  My plan is to reduce each box to a width of 2 feet. This will allow me to have easy access to both side and should provide an additional 50 square feet in the garden.
  3. Place weed cloth under all the boxes and remove as much grass as possible. By raising the height of the beds this will prevent lots of grass from ended up in each garden bed. It feels like we have more weeds and grass in our current square foot beds than we do growing in the area around it.  Because we are reusing most of the dirt, we also can remove lots of the weeds that are growing at grown level as well.
  4. Allow me to spend more time and energy in the garden without bending or sitting on the ground. This should be a huge benefit in year to come as the beds will be around waist height for me.
  5. Expand and arrange the growing season and spaces better. We hope to add a small growing tunnel in the fall. But we will be able to have several different varieties of peppers and beads without the worry of cross pollination.

ICY Thursday Thoughts

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We woke up to ice this morning. The weather prediction is that we will continue to have freezing rain all day.  Because the state was placed under a State of Emergency, Kendall, Zach and I all have a true snow day. NO work or remote learning!  I do have to work in Guam but this really gives me a chance to catch up!

  • How the kids are spending most of the day…. Braxton spent last night with us because both of his parents had to work today.
  • I am planning to spend part of the day cooking!  This morning I made French Toast. We all enjoyed for breakfast and I quickly froze the remaining 4 slices for another easy breakfast.  Because of my crazy busy work schedule this week, we have been eating out of the refrigerator. With this nasty cold wet weather, I decided to add in a pot of soup a day until at least Sunday. This is a huge benefit to being at home. First it is a hot meal that everyone usually likes! Next, it is easy storage and can be used as dinners for next week. We try to package in single serving containers to make it much easier to heat and eat! And I am definitely using all the items in my pantry and freezers.
  • A no work day also let’s me continue to go through and organize both pantry and freezers. I have been determined since the first of the year to first reduce our grocery budget as it had gotten totally out of control in 2020.  I also needed to figure out what food we have and what we actually need. I am continuing to use Alexa to store both my regular grocery list and my Costco list on. I will likely get to Costco this weekend.
  • We were able to get our washer repaired on Monday.  Total cost was $130!   I am hopeful we can get at least another 10 years out of it now! I am also focusing on getting caught up on laundry. We were without a washer for 3 weeks which means lots of extra loads.  We were able to keep up with our regular clothes by washing at Amanda’s, my mom’s and a friend but nothing extra.  This morning, I have already washed 3 loads for Zach including his sheets and comforter.   Kendall will hopefully get her sheet done today as well. My goal is to wash our sheets tomorrow as I will be working remotely.

Making the best our of a really desired snow day!

What’s Up?

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  • I wanted to share this in case any one wonders why my blog post are so sparse this month. The other probably more important reason to share is so that three or more years from now, I can remember why I can’t work 2 jobs.  Currently I am averaging an additional 15 hours a week in Guam. This is in addition to my regular 40 hours at Davie County Schools.  This week, I did receive several emails that Promise to  begin lighten my load over the next month or so.  The idea that they have hired 3 more therapist and when everything is said and done I will lose hopefully half my caseload shows a better picture of how busy I really.
  • Washer update- The pump is bad as well… currently waiting on the new pump to arrive, I honestly have no clue what the cost will be so…..
  • Making BIG plans for the garden this year, I am going to completely re-arrange and re-do the whole thing.  First it will be significantly taller. This should reduce the amount of dogs that decide they like it. Second it will make it much easier for me to work and maintain without bending over so  much. I am anticipating a huge expense but also hope to re-use as much as possible from the existing.
  • Our final Disney trip for at least 2 years is 50 something days away. I am currently working on saving the money to cover our food expenses. Not sure how much we will end up with especially with the washer repair a still unknown.
  • Goal of this week is no food waste, I have a plan and the refrigerator is nicely stocked. So far this month we have spent $172.74.I was planning on a trip to Costco but still not sure where to fit that in at either so I may try to make it to March before adventuring to Costco.

Saving on Saturday

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After the struggle we had last week I am glad to say that things are definitely looking better today.

Instead of replacing the washer, we decided to have a repairman check it out to determine if it was worth the repair.   I am excited to say that he came this morning and it is a belt which will cost $20. So along with his labor we are around $100 to repair, saving us $500 if we had chosen to replace.

I feel like I am finally controlling the grocery budget.  The first thing that has made a huge difference is use “Alexa” to keep up with what items need to be on my grocery list. I have gotten in the habit of adding items as they are used up to the grocery list and then printing before going to the store. I save time and money by not purchasing items not needed!  In January we spent $230 on groceries and so far this month we have spent $171!  This is a significant reduction in our spending from last year!  I do anticipate a COSTCO trip at the end of the month but I also have a Costco list going on the Alexa so that should help as well.

My mother has been watching food prices and let me know that Aldai had  ground beef for $1.49 a pound this week.  The limit was 2-5 pound tubes. I was able to purchase 5 tubes between myself, mom and Matt today. This is the absolute lowest I have seen ground beef in several years.  I did a quick check of the freezer to determine what we needed. I was able to process 25 # today. We have taco meat, Matt’s chill and my chill. Baked beans for lunch tomorrow and 9 bags of cooked meat to use to help with a quick meal on our busy days.

Matt was able to use some wood from the building to make 2 additional Minnie Ear holders for Kendall’s wall and a shelf for Zach’s room. I will try and post pictures as soon as they both get painted.

Finally, I remember to add digital coupons and offers prior to heading to Food Lion today. My receipt says that I save $26.00 and I earned $4. in rewards!

How did you save money today?

What’s happening?

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I would really like to write a how we are saving on Saturday post. So far our out of pocket has been minimal but I don’t know if it is going to last.

First problem, internet. Now to be honest, internet problems for a long time.  We actually received a $49 credit this past month because of recent troubles. While working at home on this week, I noticed that the internet would go out for around a minute at a time. Matt called and they sent out a tech on Friday.  He ended up replacing both the modem and wireless router.  The cost to us was only the time spent waiting on the tech and the lost of internet for around an hour.  I am really hopeful that this will fix the problem.

Second problem… much worse  of course.   Matt woke up around midnight last night and then again around 2am. The temperature inside the house seemed to be dropping. We plugged in our space heater and at 6am the temperature inside the house was 59. We called the person who installed our system 14 years ago. He provided awesome service, returning the call around 8 and was here around 11.  It was the thermostat.  Lucky for us a quick and cheap repair.

As we are trying to stay warm, we notice another problem, the washer is not spinning properly and the clothes are really wet.  This is an ongoing problem, we have contacted a friend who is a repairman hoping for some advice to see if we should have repaired or replace. The washer is 12 years old and get used on a daily basis if not more than daily.

One positive that occurred today, I turned the stove on a self-cleaning cycle to add heat to the house.  While it was running, Matt and I ended up giving it the best cleaning it has had in several year. I jokingly said now watch it will be so clean that it will not work properly. So far so good it works great!

5 Things Friday

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  1. I have not used this format since September ??? Really maybe that is the reason I have not been hitting my blogging goal?
  2. Today both the kids and I had a remote learning day due to the weather forecast of 2- 4 inches of snow. Instead, we have had a cold rain most of the day with a change over to snow around 4pm. It has been yucky!
  3. I have made a “extra” money goal. I would like to save $500 a month in January, February and March to use as our food money in April. So far for the first week of January I have “found” or saved $203. If I can get to $475 I can purchase gift cards at Target to save an additional $25.
  4.  We are working hard at staying on track with our budget in January. So far was have spent $55 in gas and $91 in groceries.  I did place a Norwex order for more of Lily detergent so that will be an additional $70.
  5. My van is still in the shop after I hit the deer. Because they are going to repair damage from when I backed in the pole at Baptist hospital while Amanda was in the hospital. They estimate it will be fixed next week. I paid $500 from our stimulus and the insurance covered the rest of the repair.

Budget Busting Day Almost

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I am currently enjoying my two week Christmas break. Today, I had plans to spend most of the day shopping the after Christmas sales with my Mom.

On the way to pick up Mom a deer decided to come out of a field and ended up hitting the side of the van very hard.  I watched the deer run off so last I know it is still alive. Luckily the passengers side of the van already has several dents and scratches so I was at least thankful that we can now get the whole side repaired. I contacted my insurance and I should only need to pay the $500 deductible for collision. I am estimating that the total repair will be close to $4000 based on the sounds of the door and the damage I see. I was even able to schedule a repair for in the morning at 9:20am. I was able to look at the budget and cover this expense fairly easily but it does remind me that we need to make an emergency fund a priority!

Yesterday, we had our close friends over for lunch and I fixed  Taco Soup in the crockpot. A couple of weeks ago, I dropped the lid of the crockpot and it broken off. It was definitely still useable but not ideal.  The crock pot got really hot and has been cooking foods really fast really too fast so I decided that when my soup was overcooked it needed to be replaced.  I was able to find a basic replacement for $30 and decided to use my Christmas money for this purchase.

Finally tonight I was going to try a new recipe for “Cowboy Casserole” it needed 2 lbs. of ground beef. I found a package in the freezer and decided to use the insta pot to speed things along.  It appeared to be going well until I went to release the pressure and there was none.  I opened the lid and after 40 minutes the meat was still frozen and the inside of the pot was black at varies points.  Even 2 hours later the entire pot was warm to the touch.  Another item in the trash can! I am still debating if I want to replace this or not. It is not an item that I use frequently and can only think of 2 real items that I “need” it to produce.