Categories
Every Day

Happy Mother’s Day Tomorrow

I hope you all have a fantastic day! We will be enjoying the day by cooking filet mignon on the grill. That is my favorite meal!

I wish I could be on here more often but my sciatica has been horrid the past month or so. It hurts to sit and stand. Advil is not working for me. So I have been doing a lot of reading lately laying down. I am trying to work through frugality books that I have read before. A special online friend and her husband are coming to visit again this summer. I am making a pile of the books as I read them to see if there are any she would like to take home with her before I donate them to our local library.

Hopefully the pain will go away soon. I have been doing exercises to try to get that to happen. You all know how active I am, so I am hating this! I seriously thought about ending my blog. But if you will be patient, I will continue it when I can and be back to normal soon. Prayers if you are a praying person. I would really appreciate those.

But we have been as frugal as we can right now. I am working on a # of problems. It looks like Mint Mobile is not billing us correctly and QVC put someone else’s charge on our bill. So hopefully I will have that all straightened out this coming week. The one time I went out two weeks ago, I lost my credit card. No one had used it. But I cancelled it and they say it will take 2 weeks for another to arrive. Fortunately, I have another one to use. I did not realize that I had lost it until I went to pay $ 402. for my dental cleaning and X rays at the dentist. That was a week later. I gave the dentist my denture to repair. I had a tooth pop out of it a while ago. But I have a spare, so I waited for my appointment to bring it in to him. The repair will cost $276. when I go to pick it up. UGH!

The other bad thing that affected us this week is Rite Aid is going out of business. So we have been switching every prescription to a new pharmacy. Second time we have had to do this in just a few months. What a pain!

Hubby and I went to our appointment to see the town assessor two weeks ago to dispute the $33,000. raise in our assessment for our home. They had raised us tentatively from $ 470,000. to $503, 000. The assessor agreed with us and they are leaving our assessment at $470,000. We have a letter to show that. We had to sign it and get it back to them. I did that the same day it came in the mail. Of course, we made a copy of it. Also we have qualified finally for a reduction of our assessment because we are old for the school taxes. We have been paying full school taxes since we moved here. So our assessment for school taxes only will be $ 383,900. Needless to say until we get the tax bills I won’t know what we will actually save. But I am happy about all of this!

We have barely had any sales on decent meat in my grocery or warehouse stores. Especially on beef and chicken. So we are working on eating the chicken in our freezers. However last week, Niagara Produce had cowboy steaks on sale for $13.49 a lb. Not a great price but since we have been doing very little shopping, we had money saved up from our grocery budget. I bought 6 for $ 168.00. That will give us some beef to grill along with the filet mignons and strip steaks that we already had. This should give us plenty of beef for the summer. However, I am always looking for those sales.

During the Walmart + benefit week, I was able to fill up our car at $.50 off a gallon. I was also able to get a Free Express order and not pay the extra $10.00 for it. I also used the scan and go and spent $15. on stock up items to get $5.00 Cash back.

We were able to save $4,000. for the month of April. We are slowly getting to our goal. We spent landscaping money to the tune of $1700. which was an extra expense.

That is about it for now. What have you done frugally the past 2 weeks?

Categories
Every Day

Cutting Costs Recently

I won a $10.00 Top’s gift card playing the Monopoly game. That will buy some meat the next time I go there.

Instead of going out to breakfast at Kalamatta’s Restaurant on Sunday, we cooked at home for my son and grandson. Hubby made waffles and I cooked the bacon, sausage, and eggs. I really wanted to go to the restaurant. But I decided it would save us the $80. it costs including tip to just cook at home. My son helped Hubby get all of the patio furniture out of the shed and get the snowblower put in there. West took our winter coats, gloves, and hats down to the storage bags in the basement. He also took a few bags of groceries to the pantry for me. They are a big help to us. After that was all done, we played rummy which is free entertainment.

Just as my son and grandson were leaving, my other son called. So we had a long enjoyable chat.

I cut open a free sample of toothpaste from the dentist to get the very last bit out. There is always enough left to brush my teeth at least two more times. The larger tubes have even more left in them. So don’t throw them away. Use it all.

One of the hems on a rather new dish towel came undone. So I repaired it.

I scanned many receipts into Fetch.

I took inventory of my canning jars, lids and seals. I have enough for this year so I was happy that I didn’t have to buy any of those things.

I baked 8 potatoes the other night. I used two for dinner and made potato salad with the rest yesterday. Thinking ahead when you bake something saves on energy. Fill up that oven.

My new gas and electric smart meters were installed yesterday. I wouldn’t let the girl put them in until I read our meters and wrote the readings down. She was standing right by the meters when I went out there and she said she would read them while I wrote them down. I immediately went in the house to look at my last bill’s readings which was created on April 17th. I realized that she had read the electric meter wrong. She had added 1000 kwh’s. I have never used that many kwh’s in 11 days or a month. My electric readings are very consistent over the 15 years we have been here. So I went out to tell her and she was very apologetic and said she would change the reading to correct it. What I actually used in that period of time was 184 kwh’s. I am glad we were home because they take the old meters back to the company. Then you have no proof. The gas reading was correct and appeared on the gas meter. But the electric meter started at 000000. They have to take the electric meter to the company and the reading and then they add the usage from the old meter and new meter together. I would have been shocked if I had a bill in May that was 1000 kwh’s more than we use. I will be calling the company tomorrow to make them aware of her mistake and make sure they have the correct reading. I also want to ask them how this all works online. They left no literature on it. But the moral of this story is that you should always read your meters when the company is replacing them.

Our landscaping company came last week and did the weeding, trimmed all the bushes, and mulched our many gardens. The owner decided to charge us the same amount as last year. I was thrilled because I am sure his costs went up the same as everything else has.

I discovered water in the cabinet under our kitchen sink last week. Hubby could find no connections in the pipes that were leaking nor was the garbage disposal leaking. I have run the dishwasher twice since then and no water is leaking from that. So he has finally determined that the seal that holds the sink into the stone countertop needs to be resealed. It seems to be worn out in spots. He will be removing the old seal and installing a new seal today. A tube of that stuff is a lot cheaper than hiring a plumber.

I have washed a few loads of laundry in cold water this week and hung them to dry. When I spring cleaned my laundry room, I cleaned out the cupboards. I found a container with a bit of homemade powdered detergent in it. I am using it up instead of throwing it out.

This is Walmart + week. There are many benefits that members will have. It started yesterday. I will be taking advantage of the gas savings and the express delivery and perhaps a few more things.

I have started a new batch of vanilla using new vanilla beans and a very cheap bottle of vodka.

We continue to keep lights off in the daytime. I turned our heat off tonight finally. We will see if we will be able to keep it off.

I have started to reread 4 bookshelves of books that I own. As I finish each one, I will donate them.

Hubby is now only going to therapy once a week instead of twice. That is saving us gasoline and one $25. co-pay a week.

Peacock will be expiring soon. We have enjoyed it but not enough to renew it.

We are eating all meals at home this week. Have you noticed that beef and chicken rarely go on sale anymore? The word online is that fresh fish and seafood will be the next thing to skyrocket in price. So if you like fish, shrimp, or scallops get them now. I have been watching for sales these past few weeks on beef. Finally Top’s has their NY strip steaks on sale at $11.99 a lb. I purchased 6 of them yesterday. I will continue to pursue the sales on beef but it is very rare that I will see any. Pork is cheap here but nothing else.

That is it for today. How are you cutting your costs?

I am almost done with the post I have been working on. So that will be up when it is finished.

Categories
Every Day

A Little of This and a Little of That

The below post I wrote one week ago. I thought I had published it. But I must have forgot. Sorry about that.

It has been another busy week. We had 4 appointments this week and we have 4 next week. They take a chunk out of our time especially when they are scheduled midday. They will be easing up after that because Hubby is cutting back his PT to once a week. He will do the second one at home. He ordered the little bit of equipment that he needs. Fortunately, it cost under $35. We have a heating pad and ice bag which he has been using at night before bed. We joke about the ice bag. It is almost 58 years old. I purchased it when we got married. I suppose we could buy a new one but this one works perfectly fine.

In between all of the going out, I have been spring cleaning our home. Hubby has always cleaned and polished all of our hardwood floors and we have a lot of them. He can no longer do them so I have added this chore to my list. I did all of them this week and they turned out beautiful. I was very proud of myself. It hurts my back a bit but I am in better shape than Hubby right now.

I have also been getting my downstairs pantry into better shape. Over the past few months it has become messy when I don’t have time to put away the grocery hauls. It is starting to look much better now.

I have been trying to find time to clean and organize the downstairs freezer. But every time I schedule time to do it, something comes up.

I am hoping to get the SUV washed and clean the inside. I may take it to the carwash this week which will save me some time. Then when I get home, I will vacuum and wash the inside and do all the windows. Now that we finally have some nice weather coming, it should stay cleaner longer. It has been so cold and crappy here. We still have our heat on. I got a huge electric and gas bill for the past month. It was for $ 281.58. It is 66 right now as I write this but raining. It is supposed to clear up this afternoon and then be cloudy tomorrow and 52. Then 53 to 62 the rest of the week. That is much better than it has been. Maybe if the nights get warmer, we can turn off our heat soon.

This week we got a $10. rebate check in the mail along with a Pillsbury coupon good for any product up to $8.00. We also got a notice from Rite Aid to join their class action suit because my info was hacked. So got that taken care of today. So many companies are not keeping your info safe.

Hubby made a big pot of his homemade chili this week. We ate it for 3 nights and then had some on hot dogs one night. Last night we picked up 2 fish fry dinners from Chiavettas since it was Good Friday. They come with French fries. They were so good and we have leftovers for tonight.

Did any of you watch the Matlock Finale this week? It was so exciting and such an ending. I am happiest that it has been renewed for another season.

My son had a really busy week so he is staying home and resting this weekend. We will miss him and West but will see them next weekend. So I think I will continue to spring clean my home. I can work in a couple of bathrooms today and the laundry room tomorrow.

Now this is the current week. I cooked a turkey breast this week. We had turkey dinners two nights in a row. Then I put the rest in the freezer in 2 person portions to use in the future.

I have been working so hard this week that Hubby decided we should treat ourselves and go out to dinner on Thursday night. We have a new brewery in a close by city called the Big Ditch. It is a beautifully renovated space. The food and beer were excellent. Service was outstanding. We will have to take your Hubby there Chris when you visit again. I think he would like it.

We ended up with 4 appointments this week and our only free day got booked by our landscape crew to do the spring cleanup and mulching. They will be back to take 2 trees out that died. They got a blight. They will replace the one out front and just seed where the other one is. It never did well on that side of the house because of the wind tunnel that goes through there anyhow.

This week I picked up some shelf stable milk at Dollar Tree. I also picked up a few items at Aldi’s one of which was a carrot cake that Hubby and I love and it was marked down by $2.00. That was about it for shopping.

We got our tentative assessment for our property. They raised us again this year by $33,000. That brings us almost to the assessment that they tried to raise us to the last time that we fought it. So we have an appointment to fight it again next week. Housing has not been selling in our neighborhood. The house partially behind us has been on the market for over 2 years. Getting the builder to have the lawn mowed is another problem we have. When it gets higher, I will contact the town about it. I dealt with the sales rep last year and she was nasty. So I will report them this year. It is a code violation. A neighbor put their house on the market for three months and took it off because it didn’t sell. I believe they are not selling because interest rates are too high. Anyhow Hubby is working on the grievance so that we have a strong case.

Well that is it for right now. I have another post that I have been working on to help you. It is 1/2 done. I will try to get it on here within a couple of days.

What have you gals and guys been up to?

Categories
Every Day

A Large Grocery Haul

Sorry I have been away for a while. Between cleaning and organizing, doctor appointments, Hubby’s therapy appointments twice a week, etc., I barely find enough time in the day.

This week had some good deals so I spent more than I usually do in a week. I went into Walmart for a change. I got broccoli florets(they are so good)for $ 1.16 and one case(12) of Cherry Limeade Clear Waters for $ .84 each for a total of $10.08 plus bottle deposits but I get those back when I return them. I also purchased 12 oz. of cooked shrimp for $5.47, a Chobani Vanilla Zero Sugar for $ 5.97, a box of Bubba Burgers for $ 13.97, Bison Onion Dip for $ 4.12, Lenders Onion Bagels for $ 2.46, 1 French Onion whipped cream cheese for the bagels for $ 3.97, and 2- 90 min white rice for quick meals for $ 1.42 each. Not shown in the picture besides the clear waters is a 20 count Scott Toilet Paper for $ 16.98 and a box of Hefty strong large black trash bags for $16.52. I left the trash bags in the garage so Hubby can bag our grass clippings, the toilet paper is in our master bath, and the clear waters were also left on a bench in the garage. Those sodas are heavy for me. I can just grab a few when I want them in the kitchen. The total including bottle deposits and tax was $90.59.

My next stop was Top’s where I purchased 1 tub of fresh grated Parmesan cheese for $2.99, 3 packages of Ronzoni pasta(pictured below) for $.99 each, 2 Margaritaville Coconut Shrimp (for this Friday’s meal) on B1G1F so both cost me $9.99, 1 hot dogs rolls for $2.19 and 1 hamburger rolls for $ 2.19, 3 lbs. of Sahlens’s hot dogs for $ 10.99 using a Supercoupon, 1 Rosina Homestyle meatballs for $ 7.99, 1 Roldgold pretzels for $ 3.50, 2.50 lbs. of green seedless grapes at $ 1.99 a lb. totaling $ 4.98, and 1 Diet Coke for Hubby for $.99 with a Supercoupon. My total for Top’s was $48.91 including tax and a deposit.

My last stop was Niagara Produce for the best deals. I got 3 dozen Extra Large Eggs for $ 3.99 each. Top’s had medium eggs on sale for $ 2.99 each but NP’s were the much better deal. I got a 3 pack of Romaine lettuce for $ 2.99, 2.84 lbs. of bananas at $ .59 a lb. totaling $ 1.68, 1.77 lbs. of beefsteak tomatoes for $ 3.52 for a total of $20.16.

All of these filled in the gaps I had in my stockpiles in my pantries, refrigerator, and freezers. I was getting very low on broccoli which is my very favorite vegetable. The eggs were too good to pass up even though now I have 8 dozen eggs. We eat a lot for snacks and brunches especially when my family comes on Sundays. This morning when I am done here, I will hard boil a dozen for the rest of the week in my Instant Pot. Hubby is craving banana salad. The pasta is a replacement for some we have used up.

Now that our gas grill is uncovered for the season, we will have many hamburgers and hot dogs. Yum!

Tonight I will use half of the meatballs to make Sweet and Sour Meatballs using those, pineapple chunks, and sweet and sour sauce.

We snack on the grapes and put them in chicken salad. We had everything to make another batch of our party mix except the stick pretzels. Now we can make a batch around Easter.

We were getting low on parmesan cheese and the soda is a treat for Hubby. I am now stocked on the cherry limeade for the summer. It is very refreshing on a hot summer day.

The bagels and cream cheese will be some breakfasts soon. The last time I bought a dozen at Panera, we couldn’t eat them all. So 6 is a better number.

The shrimp is already gone because I made our favorite Shrimp Fra Diavolo for dinner the last two nights.

Onion dip is a treat to dip veggies in. The yogurt I use for brunches with a little Keto granola sprinkled on top.

More blog posts coming soon.

Did you get any good deals this week?

Also for the person who wrote me but didn’t want me to publish it, the answer to your question is no. One of the problems I had using Google Blogger was things like that. I have never had a problem with Word Press.

Categories
Every Day

How We Are Saving Dollars

I am using the cash station to fill up our SUV because the price is $ 2.83 per gallon vs. $ 2.99 at the Top’s station. With no gas points to use because of the lack of much shopping, we save $ .16 per gallon and it is much closer to my home.

I had to go to the Urgent Care on Monday. I was diagnosed with a sinus infection and 2 ear infections. The Urgent Care is only 3 miles from my home. My doctor is 17 miles and couldn’t get me in for a few days. The Urgent Care had me in and out in 15 minutes. Fortunately the 2 drugs they prescribed were cheap. So I picked those up along with another one that had been refilled for me and only had to pay $13.75 for all 3.

I got a $ 5.00 liquor rebate in the mail. I have more coming. Every little bit helps.

We earned a $100. cashback rebate by using my credit card. We never pay interest so this is a win-win.

We had a meal of the free potstickers last night. Hubby steamed them and they were so good. We finally finished up all the chicken I had cooked.

For dinner tonight, we will have Chef’s salads to use up some of the produce and meat in the refrigerator. I will hard boil some eggs in the Instant Pot.

Breakfasts this week have been eggs, French toast, and bacon and grilled cheese and meat sandwiches. I think today, I will have soup that is leftover in the freezer. Soup is my comfort food and I don’t have much of an appetite with these drugs that I am on.

We have decided to go to Applebee’s one night this week for dinner again. We have discounted gift cards that will pay for it to use up. I am worried that with all the restaurants going out of business, we will lose that money.

Hubby has been trimming our bushes little by little. He is doing it so that when the landscape crew comes they won’t have as much to do. Plus we won’t have to pay for trimming when they do the spring cleanup and mulching.

I am now using a larger box that I already had for Eloise’s cat litter. She was using a much smaller box and when she would go in there and kick to cover everything up, half of it would go on the litter rug that is underneath the box and on the tile floor. She is almost full grown now and she is a very long cat so this is working much better. The past two nights since I put it in there, she has not gotten any litter outside this box. Less for me to clean every night. When I made the change, I spring cleaned the entire laundry room that the box is in. It felt good to get that done. Besides working on the freezers and pantries, I am trying to spring clean a room every couple of days too. Today I will be cleaning our master bathroom.

I was going to go run some errands today because it is Senior Discount Day at Top’s. But I don’t feel that good today so I will have to do it another day this week. I lose that 6% off but I only have 4 items that we need and my health is much more important to me.

We are trying to be very careful with how much electricity and natural gas we are using. It is still cold here. Overnight it was 27. I think about it every time I go to cook, do laundry, take showers, use the computers, and the TV’s. I am very conscious of lighting. No lighting during the daytime unless it is stormy and dreary. It is sunny today so that will help the heating bill. I have the window coverings open when the sun is on them.

As I go through each room that I am spring cleaning, I am getting rid of clutter. I do this every year. Since it is garbage day on Thursday, it will go or be donated to Goodwill.

We had some big expenses in March. Our homeowner’s and auto insurance we pay yearly was due. It reminded me that we have been in our home here for 15 years. Time flies! But because of that we were only able to save $4500. towards our goal.

I hope you guys are saving what you can. I know it is hard because everything is so expensive. But if there was ever a time to be frugal, it is now. President Trump and Elon and Doge keep reminding us how fragile our economy is and the mess that they inherited from Biden. It is not an easy fix and the accountant in me is really worried that we could all lose everything if our economy collapses. Biden and his administration brought us right to the edge of the cliff. They are trying to fix it but only time will tell if they can. Personally I think these people who robbed us to enrich themselves should all go to prison.

What have you been doing lately to be frugal and save some money? It doesn’t have to be big. The little things add up faster than you think.

Categories
Every Day

My Project That I Am Working On

I am trying to get more organized in my freezers again. It seems that I have been so busy over the past few months that things have just gotten thrown in them wherever they fit instead of being really organized with a good plan.

So this past week in between appointments and other things, I have been tackling my two freezer drawers in my refrigerator. First thing I did was make a plan. I decided that all frozen vegetables and fruits, potato items like French Fries, quick prepared meal items(any purchased from the market or homemade leftovers), breakfast meats, ( bacon, sausage, ham, Steakums), ice cream, homemade preserves, and the meat I would be using in the next two weeks for dinner would go in these drawers. That will save me from running downstairs so often and opening the chest freezer.

The jars are the preserves and leftover homemade soups. Things that we can grab quickly for brunch.

We always keep a bag of frozen potpies because they are my guilty pleasure, some tortellini which I use in soup, avocados to go with my bacon and eggs once in a while.

I just went to B’J’s on Thursday. Hubby had his physical therapy that day. So I dropped him off and went to the warehouse club to pick up one item. B’J’s was only 2 and 1/2 blocks away. I had a free coupon for a 56 oz. Ling Lings Potstickers that was expiring this coming Tuesday. It was free because we have no tax on food here. By going with him I didn’t have to spend any more for gasoline doing a second trip.

You will see in these drawers that I have two plastic bags with white things in them. Sorry about the pictures but I am still having trouble with my phone. The white things are the potstickers. I repackaged them so that we could get 4 meals out of them and be able to fit them in these freezer drawers. I have a bulletin board on my refrigerator where I put directions from packages so I have them when needed.

I think this plan is going to work well for us. Time will tell. If it doesn’t, I will tweak it.

It took me a long time to do this with the short period of time I had because I had to go through my chest freezer to pull out the things that I wanted upstairs. Then I had to bring things from upstairs downstairs to make room for all of the things. Now my downstairs freezer needs major attention so I will work on that this week in between two medical appointments for me. That is going to take a lot of the rest of my time.

My son and West came for breakfast this morning. Afterwards I planned on going to our town’s electronics recycling with the frame that died the other day. My son said he would take it to his college’s recycling. That saved me a trip. I made eggs, bacon, and French toast for breakfast today. Everyone was happy!

We have been eating chicken for the past few days. We should finish it tonight.

I think I have a sinus infection and possible ear infection. I doubt that I will be able to get an appointment quickly with my doctor. So I may make a trip to urgent care in the morning.

That’s it for now.

Categories
Every Day

A Little Of This And A Little of That

It has been a busy 6 days. I finally had my haircut at the new salon where my hairdresser went. She does a great job and I warned her what a horrible job the new girl did on my hair at Great Clips where she used to be. So she had me wait a couple of more weeks for it to grow in so she could fix it. Yesterday was the day. She was shocked at how bad it was. But she also had other clients who this other girl had butchered so she wasn’t surprised.

She cut it really short so that she could take care of most of the damage which was fine with me. She said at my next appointment she thinks it will be grown in enough to get back to my normal haircut that she always did. Best part is she only charges $20. for a haircut. Anything else is extra. She is renting a chair at the salon. Thank you Erika for doing such a great job yesterday. I was so sick of walking around looking awful or wearing a hat when I went out. Hubby loves the cut you gave me.

While I was out, I ran most of the rest of the errands for the week. I went to Home Depot to drop off another ION battery at their recycle bins. I missed it when I brought the other ones up.

Then I went to Top’s to get our groceries this week. Their ad was not very good. But I did pick up needed celery for $.99 and 1 lb. of Oscar Mayer Center Cut Bacon for $5.99 with a Super Coupon. I will be going to B.J.’s tomorrow combining the shop with an appointment. I have a Free coupon for a large bag of Ling Ling’s Potsticker’s that is expiring on March 30th. It will be no cost to me because we have no tax on food in my state.

We got our Electric and Natural Gas Bill for the past month. It was $270.84. I used 84 more kwh of electricity than the same period last year and 10 more therms. The bill for the same period last year was $208.81 so this one is much higher but $ 41.00 less than last month so at least we are headed in the right direction. Hopefully, it will warm up soon but we are in a bitter cold spell and it is snowing right now.

I am hoping that one of my sons has a chainsaw. We no longer do. We have 2 trees that need to come down. They aren’t that big so I think it is okay for us to take them down without hitting the house. I hate to pay a tree service to do it. They are so expensive. We had two trees that were close to our home taken down last year and it cost a fortune.

We have been trying to use up leftovers the past week or so. We have had 2 turkey BLT’s using up turkey that we thawed, bacon for brunch meals of eggs and bacon that was leftover, tomatoes that needed to be used up and the same for romaine lettuce. Other meals have been rib eye pork chops with fried apples and crispy crowns(emptied a bag), stir fry with chicken and sesame sauce on rice. Tonight will be grilled filet mignon, baked potatoes( I will bake extra for potato salad), and brussel sprouts.

I have done 2 loads of laundry in cold water and hung one and dried the other of sheets in the dryer.

We had a weird thing happen to us yesterday. I heard a noise in Hubby’s office. Every few seconds I would hear it. Eloise followed me because she heard it to. We couldn’t find anything but it sounded like it was in the wall behind one of our ladder bookcases. I am thinking mouse but we have never had one. Eloise was interested but not that interested which surprised me. I got Hubby but I didn’t know if he would hear it because he has lost hearing in one ear and most in the other. He could just barely hear it but couldn’t see anything either. It was above my pantry. I was getting worried that we might have a mouse down there. But we have never had one. As I was about to leave the office to go down and check, I saw our electronic picture frame(on the shelf of the bookcase) turn on and the screen become black with a red line across it. I told Hubby and he quickly unplugged it. We listened and the noise was gone. We haven’t heard it since. We got this electronic frame when Alexa was born that holds lots of pictures which recycle in it when you turn it on. It was almost 18 years old so I guess it bit the dust. So we have thrown it out. But I am glad it wasn’t a mouse! And I am happy we have those pictures on other devices.

I have been working on our food storage a few hours this week and I continue to do so. I will be showing you what I am doing on Friday. I don’t think I will have time tomorrow.

So what have you been doing? Saving any money?

Categories
Every Day

Cutting Costs on Groceries, Etc.

We are now making our own yogurt. I had to buy one container to use as a starter. But with each successive batch, I save some to make the next batch.

We eat what is in our home already. The biggest reason is so that things do not go to waste. The next reason is that some of the prices over the last couple of days are starting to come down especially on eggs. They are now down $4.00 for a 60 count since the last time I purchased that box. By keeping my price book, I can tell when something has been reduced. I think they will continue moving in that direction so I will be buying nothing that is already on our shelves or in our freezers. That food was a whole lot cheaper than the prices now so while prices fall I will use up that food.

We continue to make more and more bread items. We are now making our own pizza dough every 2 weeks.

I buy fresh potatoes so that I can make baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, wedges, French fries, fried potatoes, hash browns and potato pancakes. I can get the fresh for about $ .40 a lb. That is a lot cheaper than canned or frozen.

We make our own puddings and jellos from the boxed. Buying the ready made is so much more expensive. I stockpiled about 100 of each over the last 4 years at $.68 each. They are now $ .98 each and up.

We buy generic(store brands) when we can. They are much cheaper. But they have to have very few ingredients when I do that.

I always shop with a list. That prevents me from impulse buying.

Hubby is hooked on diet cola again. I am trying to get him to drink more iced tea. We do buy pomegranate juice that we each drink about 1/2 cup a day for our health.

I am now buying chunks of cheese and grating my own. We have decided that we don’t want the cellulose in our food.

Ninety eight percent of the time I only buy on sale items. I will buy a lot when there is a a good deal. That way I rarely have to pay full price for anything.

I use Fetch to scan my receipts to earn gift cards which I use to defray the cost of groceries.

Well that is enough for now about groceries.

The picture above is of my brunch yesterday. I had my pomegranate juice with 2 eggs over easy and a piece of salmon. One of the reasons we watch our pennies is so that we can afford to buy salmon occasionally. This had been in my freezer for a couple of months. I bought it on sale for $7.99 a lb. which is a great price for my area. It was such a treat. Yes, I pan fried it in butter. I like the crunch.

We have been eating reuben sandwiches the last couple of nights using up the corned beef that I cooked for St. Patrick’s Day. Hubby makes them using the indoor grill in our home. I think we will probably have them again tonight. The rest of the corned beef I will freeze for other meals.

Hubby and I have watched our shows that we DVR for entertainment this week. We have also taken advantage of the warm weather and sunshine by sitting outside.

Hubby has been trimming the bushes. Our landscape guy will be coming the beginning of April to do the real Spring cleanup and mulch all of our gardens. Unfortunately we have lost 1 tree and are about to lose 3 others in our yard. Our pear tree which was so beautiful is dead due to a blight in this area. The same blight is killing 3 spruce trees that are about 20 ft. tall. We are trying to figure out what we want to do to replace them or have them cut down. Trees are so expensive. We are getting older every day and probably won’t be around to see them grow. So most likely we will have them removed and take the stones up that encircle those areas and plant grass.

It was our turn to read the electric and gas meters so I read them yesterday and submitted them to the company. We used 120 ccf’s of natural gas which is about what we used for the same period last year. Our electric usage was 490 kwh which is about normal for us. I expect our bill will be huge. I will let you know when we get it. I never realized until President Trump mentioned that New York state has the highest energy prices in the nation and that is why he is working with our Governor to bring the pipeline in. He says it will lower our costs. I hope so because right now it is so expensive.

I perused the new ads for next week and I don’t see any good deals that I can use. So I will probably not grocery shop.

That is it for today.

Categories
Every Day

Things That We Have Been Doing to Cut Our Grocery Bill

I don’t have to tell you how expensive groceries have gotten over the past 4 years. As I track the price of things that we buy over and over again, it is really obvious. There are many things that we will not buy because the prices have gone up.

At the top of our list is junk food. We no longer buy candy, chips or any other snack like these. Instead we are buying fresh mandarins when we can find them on sale. Lately they have been on sale for $ 2.99 for a 3 lb. bag. If we need a snack in the afternoon, we just grab one of these. They satisfy our sweet tooth and are a good source of fiber. We also buy apples on sale for snacks and to make pies. Both of these last a very long time in the refrigerator.

If we need muffins, brownies, a cake, cupcakes, or cookies, we now make them at home. No more sweet treats from the bakery at exorbitant prices.

We want zero waste of food in our home. We did well this week. We used up all of our leftovers. Yesterday, I had one hamburger and some potato salad left from two other meals. That was it. So Hubby wanted to finish those. I thawed a bowl of turkey soup that I froze when we had roasted our turkey not too long ago. This week we will eat a lot of produce and leftover ham and turkey in salads. Last night, I made a homemade pizza. Today, I will make corned beef and cabbage since it is St. Patrick’s Day. I ended up buying another corned beef for $ 4.89 a lb. this past week at Aldi’s. It was about $ .80 cheaper per lb. than the one I purchased at B.J.’s. These will give us many reuben sandwiches over the next year.

We still buy eggs even though they are so expensive. We just don’t have them every day like we used to. They are a part of our diet that we do not want to give up. I am happy to hear that the price of eggs will be coming down in the next couple of months.

We are trying to stick to proper portions of beef, chicken, lamb and pork when we have them. The same goes for fish and shrimp. I have not purchased scallops in over a year because the price is too high.

We eat salads a lot for dinner. Sometimes for brunch instead of eggs.

We want the prices of food to come down. To make sure they do we are only buying foods made in the U.S. No foreign food for us to avoid the tariffs. It is harder than it sounds. I have been researching the products we buy and a lot of it comes from Brazil, Mexico, China, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany and Vietnam. You even have to watch your fresh meats and fresh produce. Many are coming in from outside our country.

We no longer buy fresh milk. Hubby and I do not drink milk so many times after making puddings and other recipes, we ended up throwing it out because it had spoiled. We use evaporated milk, powdered milk, and shelf stable milk when we need some.

I have started to replace Eloise’s food with homemade. The store bought prices are outrageous. I have made a recipe with ground cooked chicken, rice, and gravy that she loves. She hates liver and I won’t give her tuna because of the mercury. But we are working on some other recipes for her.

Hubby and I thought about buying a second freezer because there have been so many sales lately on them. However, we decided against it. We have a full freezer right now that we need to use up. If we had a second one, we would fill that up and things would not get eaten in a proper amount of time and spoil. We have decided to use what we have and then replace those items with steaks, hamburgers, chicken, pork ribeyes, etc. These will be things that we will grill outside over the summer instead of using electricity and natural gas to cook in our kitchen. The money that I have been saving on our grocery bill each month will help us buy those meats when they go on sale.

I had planned on doing this post last Friday but life got in the way. We had company, nice weather to enjoy, and many appointments to deal with. Getting old is a pain in the butt. Too many doctors to deal with. UGH!

I am going to try to post as frequently as I can. We will see how this week goes.

What are you doing to cut some of your grocery costs?

Categories
Every Day

Cutting Costs

One of the most important things that we do to cut costs is to use our time wisely. We all only have a finite amount of time to live our lives so we must use it well. Hubby and I are not ones to play online games. I realize that some people use it as a means of entertainment but I could easily see how that could take up immense amounts of time that you could use to cut costs, cook from scratch, track your budget so that you can really see what you are wasting your money on, and track grocery prices, etc.

I did Solitaire for a while because I felt it kept my mind sharp. But I finally realized that I could do that by writing my blog and reading. I love to read but don’t do it as much as I would like to. So I will be adding time for that into my schedule each week.

So getting up in the morning and immediately wasting hours of time online is not in my wheelhouse. I do check my e-mail and facebook messages during the day but very little time is spent doing that. My computer is turned off most of the day unless I am writing a blog post.

We have cut our morning coffee costs. Hubby very rarely has a cup of coffee in the morning. I used to drink 3-4 cups a day. I only drink one with my brunch now. Today I had that cup with my scrambled eggs and SteakUms. Hubby had a toasted cinnamon raisin English muffin that was in the freezer.

The only deals that got me to grocery shop the end of the week were 2 dozen medium eggs for $ 3.49 each at Top’s. And a few things I needed at BJ’s. I got 2 very large boxes of raisins for $10.49 each, one large bag of Skinny Pop( my guilty pleasure) for $ 6.79, and a 8.23 lb. corned beef for $5.49 a lb. for a total of $ 45.18. My total for all groceries this week was $ 79.93. The corned beef was the best price I could find in my area. Most of them were $ 8.09 to $8.69 a lb. Since it was so big, I cut it in half and we will have it for St. Patrick’s Day and I froze the other half for some meals late in 2025.

My shopping was combined with my two doctor appointments this week so as to not waste gasoline.

I have an envelope that I put receipts in so that I can enter them into Fetch every week to save for Walmart gift cards. I did enter them this week. It only takes a few minutes and it is so worth it.

We got our quarterly water and sewer bill midweek. It was for $ 58.03 and included a $ 3.+ sewer rate hike. We used the minimum amount of water. For those who don’t know, I take Navy showers which does not take much water at all. I use the dishwasher about twice a week but wash many dishes by hand like pots and pans, wooden utensils, wine glasses, and the lids to glass containers, etc. I use a dishpan with soapy water and a pan to rinse.

When I boil water for pasta, etc., I use the same water to water plants or flush a toilet. No water goes to waste in this house. We do get a large water bill when we use our sprinkler system to water our lawn about 4 months a year.

On Ash Wednesday, we had coconut shrimp with mango sauce for dinner. On Thursday, I made 2 meals of spaghetti and meatballs. I made garlic bread from a $1.00 loaf of Italian bread to go with it. On Friday, I went to Chiavetta’s and picked up fish fries and French fries. I was hungry so I ate all of my fish. Hubby has some fish left for dinner tonight. We have plenty of French fries leftover. Those items will get heated up in the air fryer. I am going to put some chili on top of my FF’s. Tomorrow night we will finish up the spaghetti and meatballs with more garlic bread. That should finish all the leftovers in the fridge. Waste not want not!

The only other spending we did was to get some Burts Bees Waterless Cat Shampoo for Eloise and some new underwear for me. Mine was 4 years old so it was time for some new. I never put underwear in the dryer so it lasts me a very long time. That was all under $35. I also spent $13.00 for a car wash. Of course the next day, it rained while I was out at the doctor’s so it is a bit dirty again. If it gets a little warmer in the next couple of weeks I will wash it in our driveway.

This afternoon I used my Instant Pot to hard boil a dozen eggs for next week’s brunches, snacks, and salads. I also used some shelf stable milk to make some SF pudding for the week.

In between errands and doctor’s appointments, I have been doing some spring cleaning. My windows are so dirty that I can’t wait until I can wash them.

Well I am off to hang my laundry. I will TTYL.

What have you done to cut costs lately?