Savings Goal & How We Cost Cut

Remember a while ago, I told you we wanted to save a large amount of money to get to our net worth goal of well over $100,000. The goal is in a prior post. We have been working really hard on that this month of June and will be cutting every cost we can possibly cut for the rest of the year. After the month of May’s savings, we are getting very close to our goal. We are hoping to reach it by the end of the year or before.

We needed gasoline so I filled up using points and saved $.30 per gallon. Hubby has had to go to PT for weeks and most of those weeks he has gone twice a week. The therapy center is in the next town so it is a hike. Needless to say between those appts. and other appts., our gasoline bills have skyrocketed. We used to be able to only fill up once in about 6-7 weeks. Now it is every two weeks. However, the last scheduled PT appointment is the end of this week and then he goes back to the doctor to be reassessed. It would be nice also if he could just do the therapy at home and we wouldn’t have to pay $ 40.00 in co-pays a week.

Yesterday I had to go to the dermatologist to get a precancer on my ear taken care of. The doctor froze it and said it should be gone and give me no more trouble in about 6 weeks. If I hadn’t noticed it and had it taken care of it eventually would have turned into cancer. While I was there she asked if I wanted anything else taken care of so I mentioned that I only had 3 warts that I would need to have removed. She said they take those off by freezing them also. I told her that I would think about it knowing full well that I would find a way to take care of them myself. When I got home and told Hubby about the warts, he said he sees the cans of the stuff to freeze them advertised on TV. Since I don’t watch TV, I never knew that. I did my research online and ordered a can. It will be here tomorrow. The cost was $ 16.49, no tax, and free shipping. That is a whole lot cheaper than it would have been to have her remove them.

We got notice yesterday from our health plan that effective January 1, 2025, there will no longer be co-pays for insulins or for telehealth visits. This is June and they are just getting around to telling us? Weird! But we knew about the insulins because the drug stores have not been charging us. However, we did not know about the telehealth visits. We will take full advantage of that for anything minor.

I have been very picky about what I buy at the grocery store. This week strawberries and corn on the cob have been on sale. The strawberries were already going bad so I skipped those. Our local strawberries will be ready soon. They ran out of the corn the first day of the sale ($.39 an ear) so I got a raincheck for a dozen ears. We eat some but most of it we cut off the cob and freeze it. You can’t even buy a can of corn for that price and this tastes so much better. The only thing I did buy was 2 packages of fresh Italian sausages for $2.99 a lb. which was cheaper than I have been able to pay for them in about 2 years. Each package had 4 large ones. So that will give us 8 meals. I mostly use it in spaghetti sauce. They also had BS chicken breast on sale for $ 2.49 a lb. But I got some at $1.99 a lb. over Memorial Day. I am hoping they will repeat that sale for the 4th of July. Then I will stock up again. Extra large eggs at my store are $ 2.99 a dozen. When I get close to running out of eggs, I will be stocking on those.

Hubby and I treated ourselves to appetizers from Applebee’s. We had enough for two meals. We used our discounted gift cards that we purchased the end of last year via a Top’s deal to pay. I am afraid that Applebee’s is not going to be in business much longer so we will be using these cards up sooner rather than later. We did the drive thru to pick them up and ate them at home.

I am very mindful of scanning my receipts into Ibotta and Fetch. I want to keep those free gift cards coming.

I used to do mystery shopping in Arizona and loved it. I am looking into doing it here.

I received $4.00 in rebates last week. They were online ones so I didn’t have to use a stamp. BTW, remember, that they are going up on July 13th so get your Forever stamps if you need them before the increase of $.05 each. I will be getting a 100 count roll.

I have been watching the price of silver for a very long time. I have never seen a price this high ever. I believe it will go up a bit more. We have a lot of sterling silver pieces that we no longer use. I will sell it soon and make some money off of it instead of letting it sit in a cupboard.

We continue to leave the lights off in the daytime hours. If I can cook something on the outside grill, I do. If I cook in the crockpot, I do it outside to keep the heat out of the house. Heat has been off since my last post. We have had 3 days that it was near 90 and humid here but we did not turn on the A/C. We kept the shades and blinds drawn on the sunny windows. If it cooled off at night, we opened a couple of windows. We would like to keep the A/C off as long as we can. If it gets stuffy and hot in here, we use the ceiling fans.

I have been watching our daily energy usage online. The data is always 2 days old. I am seeing that we have a spike at brunch time and from 4pm until we go to bed. We are trying to be mindful during those periods. They are mealtimes, downtime so TV’s are on and darkness.

I did the $30. gift card deal at Chewy’s when I purchased Eloise’s food. I am saving it for the next time I need food or litter.

Our driveway is being sealed today. The company is only charging us $140. which is cheaper than we can buy the product to do it ourselves.

Top’s again has sent me 4 weeks of $5. off a $50. order coupons and 4 Free coupons for fresh bananas, pasta, shredded cheese, and ice cream. They start next week.

I got my Amazon CC bill and earned points worth $ 12.36 from buying a few Amazon purchases and charging over $700. in dental bills to that card. That money will be used when we actually NEED something.

This is it for today. I will be back soon. How are you saving as much money as possible?