This will be our low spend year. I will aim for one or two no spend months as we go along. January will not be a no spend. The reason is that there are a lot of meat sales in that month. I don’t want to miss out on any of those great prices.
Since we are on the topic of food, I have cut our grocery budget back from $ 500. a month to $ 400. a month for 2025 for the two of us and it will also cover any company that we will feed. This connects with our Use It Up strategy. I will be very mindful of what we buy by always buying on sale and always checking our pantries, freezers, and refrigerator first. I will look for markdowns and reduced price items anytime I am near a market of any kind. If I run an errand or go to an appointment and there is a market on my route, I will stop in for a few minutes and just scour the store for those things.
We will try to cut back our utility costs which I have talked about in prior blog posts. We will also cut back the amount of water we use because those rates have gone up. We will be mindful everyday of how we are using water so that we don’t waste it. Eloise loves to drink out of our bathroom taps. But I felt we were wasting water while she was drinking. So we purchased her a fountain that was on clearance for $20. It recycles the water and we only have to fill it up every 3-4 days. It runs on a rechargeable battery so we don’t use a lot of electricity. Eloise starts the fountain running when she steps in front of it. Then when she is done it stops running. Thinking out of the box will be another of my mantras this year and I will share it all with you.
Every area of what we spend on will be scrutinized to see where we can save. What we spend on will be different than what you spend on. We each have our priorities. For example, we do spend on Cable TV. Hubby enjoys it so that will not be cut anytime soon. If it was up to me, I would cancel it because I watch it rarely. When I have some downtime, I watch You Tube to learn something new. That is so much more important to me.
An example of learning something new happened while my son was here a few days ago. We went out to breakfast the morning that he was leaving. We had put our kitten in her cage but his dog was loose in the house. He is an old dog but such a sweetie. I was the first to walk through our great room to go let Eloise out of her cage. I spotted quite a bit of blood on my off white carpeting. Well we soon figured out that the dog had broke a nail. I told my son I would get some cold water and a cloth. He said, “Mom do you have any hydrogen peroxide?” I said yes. He said get that and a cloth. He blotted it with that and I was shocked at how fast that removed the blood from my carpet. There is not even a trace that it was ever there. Being in the medical field for about 40 years, he knew about this. Hydrogen peroxide breaks down protein in the blood because of the oxygen in it. He told me it works on blood that has been dried on also. He told me if you get blood on clothing just put a bit on the spot and then wash the clothing. In all of my years and I am pretty old, I never knew this. So I learned something new that day! Thanks son!
I am frugal not cheap. For example, when I realized that the USDA had put some restrictions on ranchers selling their steers to meat processing plants recently which will make a severe beef shortage, I purchased two whole prime beef tenderloins and had them cut into 1 and 1/2 inch filet mignon portions. They were very expensive but it is something that we love. Knowing that they are going to cost more in the future had me stock up. We will be eating two of them and a tossed salad to ring in the New Year tonight. We will also be enjoying a bottle of champagne with our meal. The bottle is 4 years old so we will use it up. Every year we would tell ourselves that we would drink it and we would always go to bed early. I think tonight is when we will use it up.
Happy New Year’s Eve to you all!