A Little of This and a Little of That

These are the things we have been doing to save a few dollars here and there.

We got another $10. rebate in the mail. That will get deposited in the bank soon.

We have been eating from our pantry and freezers. Our fridge is quite stuffed right now. So I will be taking inventory of it so that none of the produce goes to waste. We have a lot of romaine lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, etc. So we will be adding salads to our meat entree each night instead of a canned or frozen veggie.

Dinners have been strip steak, meatloaf, chicken skillet dinner, and pizza. We have a lot of shrink wrapped organic ground beef that is older so we are trying to use that up. I may have Hubby make a big pot of chili this weekend. Tonight we will have leftover meatloaf. Hubby loves it as a sandwich. Me not so much. But if I warm it up, I can tolerate it.

Today, I need to go to Walmart to pick up some prescriptions that are ready. All of the scripts should be $0. co-pay. I may stop at Aldi’s for a few things while I am out.

I needed Christmas cards for this year so I got them at Walmart. Sometimes I just have to spend money but I am very careful to get things on sale if at all possible. The cards were really nice and only cost $ 6.67 for 18. So I got two packs. They will do the 25 people I have to send them to this year and some leftover for next year. I will pick up some more after Christmas when they are dirt cheap. Fortunately, I stocked on Forever stamps before they went up in price.

I also purchased a new woman’s rechargeable razor to shave my legs. I have been using an old one of Hubby’s for at least 20 years replacing the blades when need be. It just doesn’t work anymore. So I had been watching prices to get a great deal. I found one at Walmart marked down from $30. to $16. It works great!

The last thing we purchased was also from Walmart. It is a 32 inch Reacher Grabber with a Light. It was marked down from $50. to $10. Hubby had been looking for one for me to get things off the top shelves of my kitchen cupboards. My upper cupboards are very tall and being that I am only 5’5″, I can’t reach them without getting out a step ladder which is very annoying and dangerous.

So we saved $ 54. on just two of these purchases by watching prices for a while so that we knew when a deal was really a deal. We spent $39.34 on all of these items but it was money well spent only on needed items.

We continue to try to save money towards our goal which I talked about in a prior post. We should reach our goal within the next 6 months. We are getting really excited about it.

You know that we always do the best we can to try to save a few dollars on our gas and electric bill. We continue to do all the things including turning the heat down to 64 at night until 8am in the morning. We have lots of blankets so we are very comfortable. But Eloise always seems cold when she gets me up early morning. She has two warm soft beds to sleep in which she does but her back always seems cold. I gave her a blue velvety blanket the other night. I drape it over a chair and she loves it. She crawls under it and sleeps and does not seem cold when she wakes up. I am glad that I found a solution that does not involve turning up the heat at night.

I neglected to tell you about my October electric and gas bill. We used just 425 KWH over 33 days. It cost us $ 115.41. They say we used an average of 13 KWH per day. We used 21 ccf’s of natural gas over those 33 days. They convert that to therms for billing purposes. Our gas bill was $ 48.48. Our total bill for October was $ 164.84 including fees, taxes and surcharges.

Last years October bill was a total of $ 128.98 including fees, taxes and surcharges for 27 days. We used 400 KWH of electricity and 19 ccfs of natural gas. The electric bill was $ 88.36 and the gas bill was $39.67. So year over year this October bill has gone up $ 35.86. Granted they made this billing period 6 days longer. But it is still outrageous! No matter what we do to conserve, the bill just keeps going up and up. We are paying for all of the chip plants that the billionaires need for A1. I see no end to these increases in sight!

Are your electric and natural gas bills rising no matter how much you conserve?