Monday Meal Planning

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I am finally catching up on life around here. I have been doing some reading over the last several days. What I am seeing is that food prices are going to continue to rise.  Here are some thing I am doing to stretch our food budget.  For lunch made a box of pasta salad added tomatoes, chicken, cucumbers and peppers this was divided up for 4 lunches.  Purchased a rotisserie chicken, used for one meal, then add some to pasta salad and remained for sandwiches.  Cooking with what is on sale. I found cabbage for eighteen cent a pound. I bought one head, made cole slaw and will use the rest in egg roll in a bowl.  And of course the biggest money saver MENU Planning

Breakfast– Saturday-Pancakes (left-overs frozen)   Sunday- Cinnamon Rolls from Costco  Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday-choice of breakfast muffins, eggs, sausage, oatmeal, cereal or grits, breakfast burritos, or omelets.

Lunch-  Saturday–Bad Daddy’s for Matt’s birthday   Sunday- Long Horn Steak house.    I assembled salads, a pasta salad  and hamburgers on Sunday. The kids will eat left-overs  on Wednesday.

Dinner-  Saturday-  Chicken from Costco, slaw and cresant rolls    Sunday-left-over or muffins . Monday-Steak ums and French Fries   Tuesday-Pizza  Wednesday- Egg Roll in  a bowl   Thursday- Chicken pot pie    Friday- BBQ Pork.

Saving on Saturday- Square Foot Garden Update

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Hopefully we have experienced our last freezing temps this Spring!    We have lots of tomato plants and a few other plants that are beginning to sprout.  I am hoping for a large harvest this summer. We may lose the cherry tomatoes (middle picture) but so far they are still hanging on.

None of the cucumber seeds that I started inside survived but I did find a couple of our seed sprouted.

I have four Basil plants to keep alive this year.

Finally a couple of sugar snap peas have sprouted.

Off to a rocky start, let’s hope things get better!

 

Friday- Catch up

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I think that April has been one of the busiest months that I have had in a long long time. Today April 23rd is the first night of the month that I have not had a need for a place to go!

Honesty is always the best policy so I am going to admit right now that this is also the first blog post that I have written the entire month.   I did make a decision that I am going to post 5-7 pictures a day for the time we were in Disney. I also need to make a birthday post for Matt, update on the square foot garden and of course talk about Zach and his baseball as well. I am  very hopeful to get all these pictures post in the next week.

We have decided to turn the playhouse that is no longer in use into a greenhouse for next year. My goal is to re-use and re-purpose as much as possible but also provide a watering system and organized way to use the space.  I have already gotten plants started in the new square foot garden. I am looking forward to lots of fresh vegetables this year!

Financially we are still on the right track. Our gas budget is getting close for the month but his does include taxes and tags on the car in addition to the gas for our Disney trip. Grocery so far are really low but we have a Costco trip planned for tomorrow.

Now to enjoy some quiet time.

March in Review

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March was overall a great month. During the last two weeks, I have been able to reduce my Guam work load by at least half!  We also completed a re-fiancé of our mortgage and were able to update and re-build a new square foot garden.   We spent a lot of time anticipating our upcoming Disney trip as well. I am very excited and please with all the results.

Groceries– budget amount is $650.   We have actually spent $91.84.  This is lowest month in a long long time.

Auto/ Gas / Insurance: . My goal is  $400 a month.  Both of our vehicles needed oil changes this month. So ending at $375.32 is a very good thing.

Cash Envelope system- GOAL Met!   This seems to be working well so no plans to change now!

Goal #4- Blogging- 15 post per month.  11 post for the month is definitely an improvement but not the goal.

Goal # 5- Fitness– Goal is to exercise of some type at least 10 days a month.   Nope not even close

Goal #6 – Bible study- Goal-  Read or Listen to the entire Bible in a year.  I have been listening to a podcast every day that I drive to work. I should be able to listen to the entire session by June.!

Earnings- $55 in gift cards

No Spend Days- 1

April begins with no credit card debit and a goal to pay off the house and car within 5 years. We finally have arrived at a stable financial place and need to just stay the course and enjoy life!

Square Foot Garden update

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After spending many hours on both Friday and Saturday. We officially have a garden.

We added 3 12 foot beds that are 2 foot wide each for a total of 72 squares.

The bed with the wire climber is 8 foot long and 2 foot wide. The smallest bed is 6 foot by 2 feet. This is an additional 28 squares. This brings the new bed total to 100 squares.

We add dirt…

In total we have 100 square feet along with 22 spots for tomatoes and a sweet potato bed.

I am very happy with the look and hopefully after our trip will start to grow lots and lots of veggies!

Financial Update

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This is actually a very positive and happy post to make for me. As most already know, interest rates for mortgages are at a historically low right now.  We are receiving multiple offers each week to refinance our current mortgage.  After some prayers, we decided to check into doing a simple refinancing of our mortgage.  We actually did a refinance seven years ago and lowered our rate from 9.99% to 3.85%.  I was amazed to learn that we would qualify for an even lower rate, 2.75% to be exact.

We decided that since we have a sizable amount of equity in the house (over100k) that we could also look at paying off credit card debit.  We did not see any disadvantage to this as in significantly reduces the interest rate as well as allows us to free up over $1000 a month. Our van was scheduled to be paid off in July but we decided to go ahead and pay it off as well. In total we decided to use about $25,000 in the equity. This allows us to completely pay off our credit cards and the van.

We actually received the proceeds today and we are debit free except for the mortgage and the car we purchased in November.  We decided against paying it off as well in order to help establish and build Matt’s credit.  It would also have changed the interest rate on the mortgage.

In order to reduce the length of our mortgage from 15 years to 8 years, which is the length that was originally left we will be paying an extra principal payment a month. Our goal is also to pay an extra card payment each month to reduce the length of that payment as well. Finally we are working to establish an emergency fund of 3 months.

We have been working toward this point for several years and it feels good to finally be at a stable place financially.

Square Foot Garden Update

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We (yes all five of us) spent 8 hours working on the garden redo on Saturday. I am so excited to see all the changes finally coming together and starting to look like a neat and organized attempt.

First we started by putting down landscape fabric to help eliminate some weeds.

We added 3 new beds, 2 are 12 feet long and 2 foot wide while that third is 8 foot long and 2 foot wide.

Finally on Sunday, I started some green peppers, rainbow peppers and cucumbers inside  by the back door.

 

I am so excited to get this started!

5 Things Friday

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  1.  I have been out of work for 2 days this week because of a stye that became infected and decided to spread to my entire face.
  2.  We have decided and completed a refinance of our mortgage. We dropped the interest rate by over 1 %. We are going to pay off credit card debit with what we decided to cash out. Our current goal is to pay a extra principal payment each month in order to complete pay off the house in 7 years instead of another 15.  One interest fact for me is that my first mortgage was at 9.99% and our current mortgage is 2.75%.
  3. We leave for Disney in 15 days!!!!!
  4. Our stimulus check was used for the following- 4 new pair of glass for the kids, the cost associated with redoing our square foot garden and paying for a condo on a NC beach for a week in July.
  5. Today, I have placed two orders one for lumber $602. and a second for dirt $550. Our trip to Lowes was an additional $135. All expenses for the garden!  I have increased the budget to $1500 after today.