Cutting Costs

These are the things we did yesterday to cut our costs.

I have been paying for Netflix for a long time as a gift for my granddaughter. When she was here visiting recently she told me that she and her mom don’t watch it anymore. So we kept it these past couple of weeks to watch some things we were interested in. But it really does not have much that appeals to the two of us. Yesterday, I cancelled it. That will save us $ 16.73 a month or $ 200.76 a year. We have free Paramount+ and free Peacock to watch.

Remember a few weeks back I applied for the energy rebate of $50. for getting our furnace tune up? That $50. check from our utility company came yesterday. So the tune up actually cost us $19. out of pocket. That was money well spent with the cold winters we have here.

I cooked breakfast in the electric fry pan. I did egg omelets with sauteed onions and red peppers and some cheddar cheese and a piece of sausage for each of us.

As usual lights are kept off during the daytime. We only use them when it is dark out. We also follow the sun around the house and open and close curtains to let the sun in to help warm the house.

It was 79 degrees here yesterday so we opened the windows to cool the house and get some fresh air. I didn’t need to close everything back up until 10pm. It went down to 47 during the night.

We no longer are buying alcohol. Hubby can no longer have it and it really isn’t good for me either. So we will use up the beer and liquor in the house when we have company.

We had two large flowering bushes outside that needed to get cut back for the winter. Hubby does that every year, not our regular crew that trims and weeds. Hubby doesn’t let them touch these or the roses. We went out and Hubby sat and cut them down almost to the ground. I bagged them and carried them to the garbage area in the garage. They will get put out to the curb tomorrow night. Hubby can’t carry anything that heavy yet. By Hubby taking care of these and the roses it lowers the bill that we pay to the landscape company who maintains everything else at our home.

I took my navy shower which saves on our natural gas and water bills.

For dinner, I made https://www.ketofocus.com/recipes/keto-buffalo-chicken-enchiladas/. It was delicious. I baked it in our toaster oven which uses much less power than my big natural gas oven. I substituted low carb tortillas instead of the deli chicken, triple cheddar cheese instead of the Mexican cheese and I did not use the blue cheese. I go with what I have in our home. This meal will feed us again tonight and perhaps for a brunch.

I washed all of the sheets on all three beds in the house in one load to get ready for Thanksgiving company. Ours which I wash once a week needed to be changed so I decided I might as well throw in the others and those beds will be ready ahead of time. They were done in cold water with our homemade laundry detergent.

For entertainment, we spent a couple of hours catching up on our favorite shows that Hubby DVR’s every week.

We are still looking for a snowplow service to no avail. We have called at least 10 companies that advertise snow plowing but no one has called us back. I am starting to think that people hired early and that they have all the clients they can handle. Back up plan will have to be me. I can’t take the chance of an ambulance being called for Hubby and not being able to get him because of the snow. I have to go out today to Aldi’s so I am going to stop at the town hall today and see if they know of anyone. All of this has me thinking about making some big changes in our life next year.

Did you do anything that you could share yesterday to save some money?