Amanda and her boyfriend took the three little kids to our local fair last night. Looks like they had fun!
Wordless Wednesday Fair Trip
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What Does Our Stockpile Look Like?
Over the past several months, we have been cleaning out our freezers and pantries. However during the last three weeks, two of the stores in the area have been running some really good deals so I chose to start to stock pile again. I am always looking for what other people consider a stock pile and how they do it so I thought I would share about ours. Here is a breakdown of some of the items we have on hand:
- 10 tubes of unopened toothpaste. I was able to grab 4 tubes for free this past week! I will not be purchasing any more, but free is free no matter how many you have.
- 20 plus bottles of Shampoo and Conditioner. I did purchase 3 bottles of Kid’s shampoo this past week. This is definitely an item, I will not be buying anytime soon. In fact, I will not even be looking for any deals on these until I am down to 5 bottles or less.
- 15 un-open bars of soap. Lily has very sensitive skin so I try to stock up when even one of the few brands she uses is on sale. I was able to purchase 3 bar packs at Harris Teeter for $0.35 this week.
- 6 bottles each of Ketchup and mustard. These were actually purchased in January when I was able to find them for $0.50 or less.
- 4 5# bags of sugar. I remember purchasing these at less than $1.50 a bag, they are in Ziploc bags so they should last a good long time.
- 40 can of vegetables. I purchased these at Food Lion two weeks ago for $0.25 a can. I prefer the frozen veggies but these are awesome to have on hand.
- 10 cans of soup. Tomato soup is one of the few items that I am brand loyal to, so when I find coupons that make it less than $.50 a can, I buy. But I also have another 10 cans of cooking soups as well.
- 10 cases of soda, I take usually 1 a week to work. These were all purchased in May and June when I was able to get for around $0.08 a can or less than $2.00 per 12 pack. I also use my coke points to add to this any time I can.
- 12 2 L Diet Cokes. I have been enjoying these that I purchased at $0.88 in August but I know that I will soon need to add to this.
- Our meal list is currently at 14 dinners. After these are used up, I will be stocking back up the freezers. First with a 120# order of chicken from Zaycon and then with a trip to the local meat butcher/market.
Lastly our veggie freezer is almost full, I have been slowly adding diced/stewed tomatoes this summer. Otherwise I have several packages of plums from last year. I also have an abidance of frozen zucchini and squash from 2 years ago. I did add to the freezer with frozen broccoli and corn purchased again on the brand sale at Food Lion. I know that Food Lion usually has the brand sale in January so I purchased what I thought would last till then.
Can anyone give me an idea what their stock pile looks like?
1. Emergency Fund at $1000 by the end of the month. I found out that I will be getting a refund on Haley’s tuition next week, so that will help to bump this up. But as of yet, I have not added any to the fund.
2. Grocery spending at $200 or less not including our Zaycon Food chicken order. We have made three shopping trips this week Harris Teeter #1 $8.82 (triples sale), Food Lion $ $20.39(things we are out of including paper towel) and Harris Teeter $22.42 (triples sale),. I also had to write a check for the girls to eat at school several times a week. But the good news is we are still under budget $163. The plan is to spend $200 or less! I actually think we are going to make it!
Wordless Wednesday-Beach
Trade You?
Bartering is the oldest form of exchanging goods that I know of. The problem being that I don’t think I am very good at it. In the past I have traded my OT services for housecleaning but that is the extended of my trades. Matt, however, is regularly on the look out for a good trade. This time even I am very impressed. He trade a web site design and maintenance for two years for this….
1995 Chevy S-10. It needed a brake line which has been replaced but that is it. It runs and now stops! So Matt has something to call his very own again. On a side note Zach has declared that this is the “Daddy and Zachary Truck”. Have you made a good trade?
Low/Spend No Spend Challenge Update 1
I am a day late with this but yesterday was one of those day when I was not home enough to post….
1. Emergency Fund at $1000 by the end of the month. I did some extra work at the Nursing home for the past two weeks so this should help. But in reality no extra money came in this week.
2. Grocery spending at $200 or less not including our Zaycon Food chicken order. We are continuing to eat out of our freezer with a couple of list going on. The first is on the side of the refrigerator, this is a list of items that will be purchased on the first shopping trip to Costco in October. The second list is a list of all the available meals that we can make. It has been helping as we can look and decide in the morning what will be for dinner that evening without checking three different place. I have already spent $80 of our $200 grocery budget. Our only local grocery store is having their “brand” sale this month. This basically is where you have an additional $0.25 off each item between 4-40 that is a store brand. We combined this with a regular sale to stock up on canned veggies at $0.25 a piece and frozen veggies at 0.75 a bag. I am really pleased in how much we were able to stock up and my plan is to stick to the budget!
Wordless Wednesday Sept 4th
Sidewalk chalk is always a hit!
September Challenge
I have decided to join Carla on her low spend/no spend September challenge. I really need to do this to help beef up our Emergency Fund and get our spending/budgeting back on track for the year. She has set some lofty goasl but I decided to keep it simple but just as lofty!
1. Emergency Fund at $1000 by the end of the month. Both Matt and I are anticipating extra income this month in addition to any money we are able to save from our budget will hopefully make this reachable.
2. Grocery spending at $200 or less not including our Zaycon Food chicken order. We have already begun working on this! We cleaned out our chest freezer this weekend and made a menu planned of approximately 20 meals that we can make with the items we found. Our plan is to stick to these meal and only purchase items that we are out of and need for regular days. I am hoping that this will be mainly bread, milk and eggs but we had to purchase cat liter, tarter sauce and dog treats already so this may prove more difficult than I first imagined.
Birthday, Boys, Bike and Bubbles
Today we celebrated Zach’s birthday. One of the huge events is choosing a place to eat, Zach chose Cracker Barrel.
After a much needed nap, we went out to play with Zach’s new gifts; a bicycle and helmet, sidewalk chalk and bubble gun. He also got some new pool toys for next year.
Learning to pedal
Next up was the cake, he had requested an alligator cake so that is exactly what he got!
cake with candles
blowing out the candles
August in Review
Financial goals: August was an expensive month for us with Auto expenses, College and our Vacation. However we are ending the month about the same as July $1000 behind our set budget. The month of September should be better as we are expecting payment for a website, a partial refund of tuition and I have some extra work available this month as well.
- Pay off Lawn mower by March 2014, so no interest is charged. Payment of $100 made, almost a triple payment
- Pay off all outstanding debt except the mortgage by June– No new debt incurred! This is a major accomplishment considering the extra expenses of the month.
- Emergency fund to $2000– This will receive the biggest push this month as I hope to re-establish and get it to around $1000, because of Auto repairs it is currently at $100
- Maintain a budget using a form of the envelope system – Still working well! It has really allowed me to track expenses this month. It worked on vacation as well!!!!!!!!!!
- Groceries: Spend $600 or less a month Awesome month in this area, we spent around $200 including food for the beach! We are currently only $20 over for the year. We have spent some time cleaning out one of our freezers and making meal plans. The goal for August is to spend less than $200 except for an order of Zaycon chicken that we should receive in October. If we are able to meet this goal, the extra will be placed in Emergency Fund to beef it up!
- Gas- Including our gas for vacation we spent $550 in addition we spent another $150 on auto repair and service. The Goal is $400 a month, so we did met this goal if you eliminate vacation and repair. I hope to keep this expense low in the next month due to the need for tags, inspection and renewal of our AAA all come this month. My goal will be to use any funds not need to cover these additional expenses as my auto fund is empty!
Blogging: Goal: 15 per month This is the 15th blog posting of the month, for the second month in a row.
Devotions: Goal is 5 a week Goal Met! I am really enjoying my morning time.
Weight: Goal to exercise 3x a week and to be down to 150 by December by losing around 4 # a month.. To be honest, I have not even address this goal this month. I have not gained the 10# I lost but there has been no progress. Repeat from last month…..
On paper, August appears to be a successful month, we really enjoyed our vacation so that makes it even better.
The anticipation is that September will be a better month financially for us in the terms of income.