Month: December 2019

Yes, that’s right! My next 2020 goal is that I will no longer employ any servants. I can hear the question now. American Dreamer you use a servant? You must be very rich! 

Nope, I am not rich. I would bet that all of you have  employed servants at one time or another.

If you have purchased any kind of convenience food, you are paying for a servant. When you purchase, cut up fruits and vegetables, you are paying for someone or a company to do that for you. Their pay is included in the price you pay and the price is not cheap. Fire those servants and do the cutting yourself! Save that money!


When you purchase any TV type dinner that is just heat and eat, you are paying for the company to make it for you.


When you purchase many things like frozen pizzas, bread, rolls, cinnamon buns in a refrigerated can, cupcakes, cakes, brownies, or cookies at the bakery,  things like Spanish rice packets, mashed potatoes in a box or packet, macaroni and cheese in a box, and a myriad of other prepared meals, you are paying for that.

If you buy spaghetti sauce, spaghettios, ravioli in a can, you are paying for a company to make that.

When I buy Fresh Express salads or salad kits, I am paying a premium for someone else to make them.


Salad dressings is another big one. They are easily made at home. Why pay someone to make them for you? 

Frozen packages like green beans in butter sauce or broccoli with cheese sauce cost you more money than making them yourselves. Why pay a servant to make them for you! Frozen cakes, pies, and many other desserts you are paying for someone  to make for you.

Frozen vegetables with just the vegetable in them are fine. They were frozen at their peak so are cost efficient especially when they are out of season. But you don’t need cheese, butter, or cream sauces on them. If you want sauce on them, make them yourself. 

Buy what ever vegetables are in season for the best prices. But I do check to see which is cheaper per pound, frozen or fresh, and that is what I purchase.  

Snacks, like junk food, you are paying a huge premium for. Have you ever figured out what you are paying per pound for those items? It would blow your mind. I would rather buy meat or poultry than pay the exorbitant prices for junk food. I can make celery and carrot sticks with dip, cheese and meat trays, cut up fruit, pop my own popcorn, etc. for snacks.  

I have been guilty of paying for servants for years. in 2020, I am not going to pay for servants for things that I can make myself. 

We will be sticking to basic ingredients that we can make other things from. Will it be easy? Nope. I will have to think about every purchase I make and the cheapest way to make it.

Certain things like SF  products that I can’t make, like the SF syrups that we use in our coffee would be impossible. But most things I can do myself.

There will be another exception. My grandchildren love ice cream so I will buy that. To make it from scratch would not save us any money. I can buy it cheaply with coupons or at Aldi.


Will we use up what we have already purchased that we can eat that is in our stockpile? Of course, not to would be a waste of money. 

So those things that we pay a hefty price for will be gone from our shopping! 99% of the servants that we pay for will be banished from our shopping. 

Will we go out to dinner once in a while? Sure. But we don’t go out very often. Just a few times a year and the money for that comes from our entertainment budget. Not from our grocery budget.

Fortunately, we have never purchased food from places like Home Chef. I think they are the biggest waste of money there is. You are really paying a huge premium for them to prepare that package for you and you still have to cook it.

Do you pay for servants that you could fire? 

We have been working on our 2020 goals. Today I will tell you the first one. It is one that will save us the most amount of money.

We are planning on eating down our stockpile which we have already started doing. As you have heard me talk about, we have been doing it for months.

The difference between then and now is that I was still stockpiling some things (like turkeys, chicken, and other meats as I saw them on sale). Because of that, my freezers are again full. I plan on no stockpiling until all of the food is gone. The things we eat will get eaten and the things that we don’t will get donated.

The reason for this is two fold. First, we are eating different foods than we used to eat. Now that Hubby is on board with his diet, there are a lot of things in our stockpile that neither of us will eat. Before they expire, they will get donated. Secondly, I want to use up all of the food that we have in this house and not be putting large amounts of money out for food that we don’t need. It is time to use up everything that has been stored that we can eat and use up that money that we spent to buy it.

Then I can defrost the basement freezer and put it to better use than before. I have used it for frozen vegetables and fruits, bread, an occasional frozen pizza, meats, poultry, fish, ice cream, cool whip, etc. 


I have come to the conclusion that my 7 cu. ft. freezer would better serve us if I only stored the expensive proteins mentioned above. Those are the things that I save the most money on at rock bottom prices. I have also recently found a few more places to shop that have rock bottom sales on meat, poultry, and fish. So when I am buying these items again, I will have more prices to scrutinize.

The other items that are frozen can be stored in my 2 freezer drawers in my refrigerator. We don’t eat bread anymore so there is no reason to store it. Nor do we eat fruit with the exception of occasionally eating some applesauce. When the last frozen pizza is gone(cheat nights once a month will be instituted), we will not be buying those. The SF Cool Whip and the ice cream for my grandchildren can be purchased when needed. Some kind of frozen veggies are on sale almost every week and can be found by doing a quick search on Flipp. I can always purchase them at Aldi’s where they are usually the cheapest. Hubby and I also eat a lot of fresh veggies which we can always buy at the store even if they are not in season.


So because of all of these changes, my plan had to change. We will still purchase necessary items like half & half, eggs, breakfast meats, milk and fresh veggies as we need them and anything else that we run out of that we deem a necessity. But if we can substitute something else that we already have, we will. 

By donating what we no longer eat, it will get it off our storage shelves and make it easier to move all of our storage when Hubby is ready to carpet the pantry floor. 

When we are starting from scratch, I will document how I do it at rock bottom prices for those who may need a refresher or be new to my blog.

I will also occasionally show you what we used up in a week’s time and what we had to shop for or if we had to shop.

So if you are in the same situation as we are you might want to make this one of your goals for 2020. It seems senseless to keep buying food when we have so much.