Month: September 2022

We had our gas furnace tuned up and checked by our family owned company that we use. We had a coupon to pay $ 69. for it. Then I checked my utility company site and found out that we could apply for a $50. rebate. Make sure that you check your utility sites for any rebates they offer. The heating guy checked our humidifier on the furnace too and said the water wasn’t moving in it. He said he needed a certain part to fix it and that he didn’t have it on the truck. Hubby didn’t think that it needed that part so he told him he would fix that himself. Sure enough, the tube was clogged. Hubby has repaired that.

I took my granddaughter bowling. I found a $10. coupon to defray the cost.

We had pizza delivered on Monday for dinner. They were running a football deal because it was Monday night football. We took advantage of that.

We all watched the Buffalo Bills game on Monday night. It was cheap entertainment. Go Bills!

My granddaughter and I spent many hours just chatting and playing UNO. We do not have to spend a lot of money to have a good time.

Lights are off during daylight hours.

We took a trip to the Amish store where we picked up some treats, fresh jalapenos, oatmeal, rice, bacon and spices that I needed. Their prices are so much cheaper than the supermarkets.

I did a load of laundry and threw my granddaughters clothes in to make a full load. That will save her from having to wash them when she goes home. We washed in cold water and hung many things to dry.

We are caulking and foaming places that need it to make sure we don’t lose heat this winter.

I am still picking tomatoes. I have been busy with my granddaughter since last Friday, so I froze them to can when I am not so busy.

Hubby cooked a sirloin steak on the outdoor grill rather than use the broiler in the house.

We have been trying to eat up all the leftovers: donuts, banana bread, chicken strips and tater tots, broccoli and cauliflower, deli meats, salad greens, etc.

Hubby sauteed the leftover steak in butter and garlic in the electric fry pan. We ate it with scrambled eggs for breakfast.

Our A/C has been off for over a week.

The nights are getting cold here but rather than turn on the heat we have piled on the blankets. I am debating whether we will use our electric blanket this year. A few regular blankets will save us money.

My son drove Alexa to our home and he stayed a couple of days. It is a cross state trip. Rather than us drive her all the way back on Saturday, we drove 1/2 way and met her mother who took her home the rest of the way. It saved us time and gas. I already miss Alexa. We had so much fun while she was here for 8 days.

We got our September 2022 electric and natural gas bill. We used 597 kwh and 4 ccf’s of natural gas. The bill was $ 122.62. The September 2021 bill was $ 132.12 for 828 kwh and 3.1 therms. It is a good thing that we watched our usage. If we had used 828 kwh like last year, our bill would have been huge. We watched everything we did power wise and it made a big difference. We will continue to conserve as much as we can. While I was looking at the bill, I decided to see how much we spent on these utilities the past year. From Oct. 2021 through Sept. 2022, the total bill was $ 2055.58. I would love to get that figure under $2000. but with prices on the rise, I don’t think it is possible. But you know I will try my very best to keep it down.

Hubby and I used up many leftovers last night. We made Chef’s salads for dinner. We used up the rest of the lettuce, one tomato, some purple onion that was diced up a week ago, leftover black olives and deli turkey, leftover sharp cheddar cheese, and leftover cooked bacon. We even finished up a bottle of ranch dressing. It was delicious! Tonight, I am hoping to incorporate either some leftover tater tots or rice. So we will either have tater tot casserole or fried rice.

What have you been doing lately to save some money?

Here are the frugal things we have been doing:

• We have Walmart + for grocery delivery. Yesterday, they added Paramount + streaming service free as one of their benefits for belonging. Hubby and I have already binged watched 3 episodes of “1883” which is the prequel to “Yellowstone”.
• Hubby sharpened the blades on our John Deere riding lawn mower instead of sending it out to be done.
• For dinner one night, we tried an Old El Paso Dinner Kit that I got on a sale back in 2020. It got lost in my kitchen pantry. The expiration date was February 2021. It was the Japanese one and it was delicious. The tortillas that came with it were in a sealed mylar bag so I knew they would be just fine. Mylar keeps things fresh for years. All I added to it was about 3/4 of a pound of diced chicken breast and a medium onion sliced. Hubby loved it. So I checked out the ingredients and realized how easy it would be to make from scratch. So that is how we will make it from now on. I actually have all of the items needed to do that in my pantry. We do have leftovers for a lunch.
• My garden is producing tomatoes so well that I have had enough to can a few batches for sauce.
• We have made an appointment with the local business that we use to have our furnace checked out before heating season. We want to make sure that it is in tip top condition over the winter. I found a coupon for that to be done for $ 69.
• Hubby finally took back the bottles to Fast Cash that have been stacking up in the garage for months. He got $ 9.10 back in deposits. While he was out he also filled up our gas cans. It was on his route.
• I went to the grocery store just once this week for some fresh produce and combined that trip with a trip to the drug store to pick up a prescription.
• We have had another string of rainy days so we didn’t have to use the sprinkler system. We already got our quarterly water and sewer bill which was for most of the summer through the end of August. It was $253. Now that things have cooled off we should not have to water things for much longer and our next three bills should be back to normal which is about $60.
• We are still doing a great job of not wasting any food. It is just too expensive to throw any of it away. I had some onions that needed to be used up so I diced them and froze them for future use.
• My son and grandson will be coming to breakfast tomorrow. I have plenty of eggs but I think all of the bacon is gone because we have been eating a lot of BLT’s to use up fresh tomatoes. I will just grab some sausage out of the freezer to thaw. I have a couple of almost empty bags of shredded cheese to use up. I am thinking I will put those in the eggs.
• I only did one load of wash this week using cold water and half the amount of detergent that it says to use on the bottle. I hung the clothes to dry.

What have you done recently to save some money?