Author: Precious

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Every Day

A Little of This and a Little of That

Sorry that this is a day late. We had the new furnace installed yesterday and they didn’t leave until late. I had about enough time to heat up a can of soup for dinner and then make my Monday night call to my sister. When I hung up with her, I went to bed.

They have all the rest of the add on work that I talked about to do today. They wanted to get the furnace in and up and running because it is cold here. They did not want us to be without heat. My old furnace was so noisy. This one you can’t even hear turn on. It is so quiet and much more efficient. It will be interesting to see if it makes a difference in my heat bill. They made sure that both the heat and A/C were running well when they were done.

Hubby can keep an eye on them and Eloise today. I have a hair appointment and I need to get a package of new furnace filters on the way home. This furnace takes bigger filters than our other one did.

I may or may not stop at Top’s. I think my list only has three items and I am going to take a look to see if I really need them or can substitute some things that I already have in my stockpile. Recently I had finally spent enough money at Top’s to earn a $10.00 gift card from the game they are running. So I will use that to pay the next time I do go.

I will be stopping at Panera Bread to pick up the Tuesday dozen bagel deal with my gift cards that I purchased many years ago. Panera and Home Depot are in the same plaza so no extra gasoline.

Last week I did my shopping at Niagara Produce. I just got 2 dozen extra large eggs because they were on sale again for $. 99 a dozen. The sale was finished last Friday but the new ad has the same price again. So I will get more next time I go there. We go through a lot of eggs for brunches and snacks. So I just keep filling up my 5 dozen box and rotate the eggs.

I have also been doing a lot of baking so that I can fill up the oven when I do turn it on. Baking takes a lot of eggs. I have been filling up my freezer with the baked goods so that when it finally gets warm here, I won’t have to turn the oven on. We will be set for the summer.

Meals have all been at home for the past 10 days or so with the exception of when my son took me and hubby out to breakfast for Mother’s Day. I have done soup out a can and homemade turkey soup that I had frozen in portions. I marinated two large pork tenderloins. One I froze with the hoisin sauce recipe that I used to marinate them. The other I cooked this weekend and we ate 2 meals from it. We had enough left that I was going to freeze a portion and make pork fried rice out of the rest of it. However Hubby has not been feeling well lately so I am lucky if I can get him to eat soup. So I froze the rest in 2 portions for 2 future meals. I also made pasta salad and we had that 2 nights and for 1 brunch. I made shake and bake chicken breasts and mac and cheese as a side for 2 meals. I also had broccoli which I could eat every day but Hubby doesn’t like it. So we have salads more often. Breakfasts have been muffin melts or eggs with bacon, sausage, or steak umms. We also have eaten some homemade pumpkin or banana bread with those meals.

I am faithfully writing down when I turn my appliances on. I just put them in my planner for each day. I put what appliance and the time that I turn it on and it turns off. This will give me a better idea of how many kwh hours I am using with each one. It is a lot easier than using the handheld kwh meter to do it. Our smart meter stats on the electric and natural gas company site are two days delayed. This way I can just look at my planner when each day gets updated and see what I am actually using per appliance and what is causing big spikes in the kwh’s. I am really trying to lower our bill.

I am still washing my laundry with cold water and hanging most everything to dry. I only run the dishwasher when it is really full which is about every three days.

Well that is it for now. What have you been doing to save a few $$$’s?

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Every Day

Emergency But No Panic

It has been a whirlwind this past week. Last Tuesday, our Heating and Air Conditioning Company came to check the A/C aand make sure we were ready for the A/C season. Since he had the equipment, he decided to take a look at the heat exchanger. He found 3 cracks in it which he showed Hubby. Our furnace is over 16 years old. He checked our warranty and found we had a 30 year one. The new heat exchanger would be covered but the labor would not be. There would also be a shipping charge that we would have to pay to have the part shipped in from another state. It would not be a cheap repair. When we purchased this furnace, the builder wanted to only put in the cheapest one they could get installed. We were not happy with that and wanted to upgrade it to a high efficiency one. The builder agreed to that but would only let the company that they used all the time into the house to do that. So we had the highest efficiency one at that time installed that their company sold. The first year that we moved into the house, we had to have a major repair which was covered by warranty. We had that done. However, now looking at a hefty bill for this repair, we decided to get a quote for a new furnace and then make our decision. From our many years of experience when you make major repairs, things just keep cascading down.

Over the years we have found other issues. One of our spare bedrooms is so cold in the winter that we need to run a space heater in it if anyone is visiting and using that room. That room has 3 outside walls. Whenever Alexa would come to visit, we would put the space heater in it. I always worried that she was not warm enough. Another problem is we did not like the way the exhaust pipes came out through the concrete wall. They just had pipes sticking straight outside. No elbow was put on the end of those pipes to turn it up so that we didn’t have to worry so much about snow building up in a storm and blocking those pipes. There has been a couple of winters that I have had to shovel back to those pipes and dig the snow out around them.

A major issue was that there was only one return in the house. Hubby put another one in between our master bedroom and the hallway right after we moved in. But that was not enough. Our house is all on one floor but it is 2112 square feet. It’s big.

There are other issues also. So our company sent the sales representative out to look at everything and give us recommendations. We are having 2 more returns put in and other add ins done.

The heat exchanger would have cost us under warranty about $2700. A new furnace will cost us about $4389. We have opted to go with the new furnace. It has a 96% efficiency rating. That is higher than we have now. We are also having a lot of extras done besides the returns and the exhaust pipes being done correctly. That extra cost will bring the bill up to $7350.

It is a lot of money and this was so unexpected. However for peace of mind and not having the heat go out in the middle of next winter or have the carbon monoxide detector go off, safety comes first.

I trust this company so I expect they will do a great job installing the furnace and all of the add ins. We will see if our bills go down with the new furnace since it is more efficient than the old one. Since it is freezing here, we still have the heat on. So we will see some heating charges on our next bill with the new furnace. But we won’t truly know until next winter.

They are coming to do all the work tomorrow. They have also booked out Tuesday to us in case they can’t get all the work done in one day. We are hoping it is only one day. We will have no heat from 9am tomorrow morning until when ever they are finished. We have temps in the 30’s-40’s in the mornings and it looks like our high tomorrow will be 54. However, we can bundle up during the day and can use the space heater to keep us and Eloise warm during the night if need be. We will not freeze.

The reason I gave you all this boring information is to show you that we didn’t panic when this emergency happened. I have told you many times that we save a large percentage of our monthly income and have even while we have been retired all of these years. So the money to pay for all of this work isn’t an issue. Our emergency fund is there when we need it. And we will continue saving because we will be having all of the ceilings in our home painted soon and we will have the outside trim, shutters and all the wood around windows and all the doors painted outside next along with some painting on our shed. Then the next project is to have all of the tile in our master bathroom ripped out along with the shower and soaking tub. We want to replace them with a walk in shower and walk in jacuzzi tub. We will replace the grout around these things with thin granite on the walls so there will only be a couple of joints that need grout and it will be easier to clean. So this is the year of projects and we are thankful that we have saved and can do these things.

I have had people, even some of my readers, ask me why we continue to save in retirement. This is why. Things still need to be maintained. We also want to leave a large inheritance to our children and grandchildren. This is all very important to us. Plus think how inflated everything is now. It ticks me off but we have been through these times before and survived. We will again. If we hadn’t saved, inflation would really be kicking our butts.

On Thursday, we were busy keeping an eye on our 5 man landscape crew. They were weeding, trimming bushes, transplanting some bushes, removing some overgrown bushes, and mulching gardens, etc. They were here all day. With tips, that job was $2000. This is another reason we save. They will come back whenever we need weeding or anything else done all summer and autumn.

So for all the people that think we are too frugal, we do spend money as you can see. We spend it on things that are important to us. We spend most of our time in our home so we make it the refuge we want it to be. Plus we want to stay in our home as long as possible. No nursing homes for us. So we save for when we need to hire people to help us as we age.

Many parents never teach their kids about money. Don’t be one of those parents. I am trying to teach my readers who still have time to save for retirement to do it. This shows you how important it is.

I will be back tomorrow with a little of this and a little of that post.

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Every Day

Happy Mother’s Day

I hope every mother who reads here has a wonderful celebration today. Enjoy your families and any special things that you are doing.

I had a great Mother’s Day weekend. My son in the Adirondacks sent a lovely flower arrangement that I have been enjoying. I can actually smell it as I sit here and write this. He will be coming to visit the end of this month. We can’t wait to see him.

Since my other son will spend today with his wife and son, he came yesterday morning and took us out to Kalamatta’s for breakfast. I usually get their ribeye steak, eggs over easy, home fries and rye toast when we go there. I was in the mood yesterday to try something new. So I ordered their Muffin Melt. I will be doing that again because it was so delicious.

Sorry that I have not been posting this past week. It has been very busy around here. I will catch you up on all that has been going on with a couple of posts soon. One I will work on right now while Hubby is still sleeping. Then another one later on.

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Every Day

Back To The 1970’s

I keep hearing how the baby boomers had it so much easier than now. It is just not true. We had a very high period of inflation that lasted into the 1980’s. Inflation peaked in 1980 at 14.6% and mortgages were at 16%. We had a neighbor who moved in that we became very good friends with. When she told me their home interest rate was at 16%, I was shocked. Ours at the time was 8 and 1/2% because we had had our home built in 1978 and that was high enough. The mortgage rates just kept rising. Inflation reared it’s ugly head during the Carter administration because of high unemployment, rising oil prices, and government spending. It lasted just over 10 years from the 1970’s through 1980. Sound familiar?

Our salary in 1970 was around $11,500. We were a one income family. I was a stay at home mom to two sons who were born in the early 1970’s. It was cheaper to stay at home rather than pay a babysitter. My mom worked and Hubby’s mom was older so there was no one to help. You were on your own. Hubby was offered a different job in 1971 which he took that paid a bit more.

But we survived. It was not any easier than it is now. After taxes, social security, health insurance, etc., it was a small amount that you had to live on each month.

When we were a couple, I had $25. a week to buy food when we were first married. I squeezed every penny. When the boys were born, we upped that to $ 80. every two weeks. It stayed at that amount for years until they were teenagers. I shopped once every payday which was every other week. That included food, diapers, personal care, and household products. We had one of the first “warehouse clubs” called GEX at that time. I would go there and buy the needed items that were on sale. Then I would fill in with fresh produce in season at the farmer market stands. When produce wasn’t in season, I would meticulouly research what was cheaper: fresh, frozen, or canned. Meat was purchased on loss leader at the grocery store when we could afford it. I remember trying TVP(textured vegetable protein) plant based that mimicked ground beef because we could not afford regular ground beef. It was the worst tasting food ever. I only used a 1/4 to a 1/2 lb. at that time in a casserole. To finish up the lb. I had to doctor it up with sauces to make it edible. We never purchased it again. I have never purchased plant based meat today and never will.

I portion controlled all of our food and we never wasted a scrap. I would look over the food ads for the sales and cut any coupons that I could use. I shopped with a list and didn’t buy anthing that wasn’t on it. We would have a sweet dessert about once a month and we rarely purchased junk food. We ate a lot of spaghetti back then because it was cheap. I would sprinkle some ground beef into the sauce. Many meals were meatless. Peanut butter and jelly or eggs for lunch along with some fresh fruit. We ate lots of homemade soup, stews, and chili for dinners. You could stretch the meat in those things.

We had a small garden with strawberries and vegetables when we lived in our first home. Then we planted and enjoyed blueberries in our next one.

I washed cloth diapers for two babies and hung them to dry on our outdoor clothes line.The only Pampers I would use was when we would go out visiting at someone’s home. I got a box at GEX for $.99 for 12 and they would last us a few months. I used my washer to clean all of our clothes but I hung them to dry outside. I did not use the dryer. We were an all electric house until they lifted the ban on installing natural gas. Our electric bills back then in the winter in the late 1970’s were $600 or over for 2 months.

Gasoline was very expensive and we had shortages for a very long time. Hubby and a friend carpooled to work to save on it. They would alternate weeks. Work was 30 minutes away. On the week that our car stayed home, I would only go out to get needed groceries, take a child to the doctor, and sit in line to fill up the car. Many, many times I would sit in line for an hour and they would run out of gas before it was my turn. Then you would have to keep trying to find a station that had some gas again. I did this with the babies with me. It was so much worse than it is today. We did not go anywhere else with the car until they were old enough for nursery school and we carpooled that with 5 other families.

We cut down on Christmas gifts when they were babies. Only necessities were purchased and perhaps a stuffed animal or small rattle or toy. Many of those years we did not exchange gifts with anyone outside of our own little family.

We bought absolutely nothing that wasn’t a necessity back then. When the boys were born, baby showers gave us many items. I was offered many hand me downs and I took full advantage of those. Then I passed all of their clothes down to my cousin when she had a boy. I had a sewing machine at that time and made some of their clothes too.

Necessities were not wants. They were you can’t go without these items.

The difference I see today is all the tech stuff that costs a lot of money. Many children when they grow up want everything their parents had and more right away. They aren’t willing to save for it and then buy it. They charge these items and then get into a cycle of debt that many never get out of. We, baby boomers, always saved for the things we needed. Then we bought them.

The other difference I see from the 1970’s to now is that we always made savings a priority. Each and every paycheck had a portion set aside for emergencies. The savings rate today is abysmal.

Perhaps the way to survive everything going up today is to go back and live the way we did from the 1970’s through the early 1980’s. It’s your choice.

An example: We need some furniture. We have the money to buy it but I refuse to pay the prices today. Will it come down in price? Eventually, it will but not to the prices it was in 2020. Experience has shown me that.

I will say that we did have one advantage. We had TV’s but they weren’t on all day. There were commercials but not many and there were only a few shows a day. Every night, the TV stations signed off at midnight. Today, you are bombarded with commericials on TV, on You Tube, on Facebook. They are everywhere. I hate them so I ignore them. We DVR our shows so that we can fast forward through them.

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Every Day

A Little of This and a Little of That

I did just a bit of shopping this week for things that we really needed. I went to Dollar Tree and got 6 shelf stable whole milk and 2 shelf stable chocolate milk for $ 1.25 each. I know this milk has chemicals to preserve it but I don’t feel the pasteurization of regular milk is that great for it either. It tastes just like fresh when chilled. It also keeps a long, long time.

Next I went to Top’s and got tomatoes on the vine for $1.88 lb. One we have already cut into for hamburgers we had one night this week. But there are 4 whole ones left. I spent $ 2.97 for them. FYI: Tomatoes are going to be in short supply this season. 80-90% come from California and they have drought and a lack of water. The ones you are able to get will be very expensive. I have plenty of canned tomatoes of all kinds purchased when they were cheaper. If you don’t and use them, you should stock them now before the prices go higher than they are. If you can grow tomatoes, do it. If I see them at a good price at a farmer’s market or at Niagara Produce, I will buy just to eat fresh for BLT’s. Otherwise, we will go without fresh.

I had to go to Walmart to pick up 2 prescriptions for me. While I was there I browsed the grocery and household sections. I was absolutely shocked at how understocked they were. Their pasta section has shrunk down to one very tiny section. It should be gone by now. Their produce sections looked awful. Half of the shelves in some aisles were empty and fronted. Their candy aisle that usually is one full set of shelves on one side of the aisle had hardly anything. Their vegetable, fruit and canned meat and fish aisles weren’t much better. I have never seen it this bad. Either it is because the Strait of Hormuz is closed, people are worried about shortages, or worried that prices will skyrocket this month and are stocking up. The only things I purchased were in the household goods aisle. I got 2 boxes of 80 kitchen garbage bags for $11.22 each and 2 boxes of 30 gallon 40 ct. black garbage bags for $ 8.97 each. I hated to spend the money but this is one household good I can’t go without and I was down to my last box of each. Our garbage service will not empty your barrel unless everything is bagged. I may pick up a few more this month.

My last stop was Niagara Produce to pick up 2 dozen xtra large eggs for $.99 each. They have already been put in my 5 dozen box in the order that they expire. They also had the 3 count bag of romaine lettuce for $ 3.99.

I did stop at Top’s to get a lb. of Jimmy Dean bacon for $ 4.99 but they had none. So I got a raincheck.

I had a dental appointment earlier in the week and that is when I got all of the groceries. Six months ago when I got a cleaning, it cost me $ 276. This week it was up to $ 293. We have no dental insurance. At least the hygienist gave me a great goodie bag. It had 4 tubes of toothpaste, a toothbrush which I use for household cleaning( we have electric toothbrushes), 2 floss, etc. It has all been added to my stockpile.

While I write this, my dishwasher is running on the quick cycle and it is really full. I will open it to let the dishes air dry. We have been using really cheap paper plates when we can so we don’t have to run it as often. It should make a difference in our bill at least a little bit.

This week I only ran one load of wash and hung most of it to dry.

Our sprinkler system company came to open it up for the season and make sure everything was in good working order and all of the sprinkler heads were adjusted to hit the areas they should. We have no idea what the bill will be because they mail it. It will be interesting to see how much it has gone up.

Today is the deadline that NYS says the counties and towns must post the proposed assessments online that our next school and property taxes are based on. I have been very worried about that because each year they have been majorly raising it. Since we have lost our senior deduction for the school taxes in September, I did not want to see the assessment raised too. I was so happy to see that my assessment was not raised from what it was last year. That gives us a needed break at least for a year.

Besides hamburgers this week, we have had cheeseburger skillet dish with sausage that I had cooked up and put in the freezer, Chinese food, and ham sandwiches. Our breakfasts have been eggs and sausage, cereal with fruit, and English muffins with homemade peach jam.

Now that it is May 1st and I have all of my figures for April, we had extra income in the amount of $ 2644. 25. April was a good month.

How have you guys saved a few bucks this week?

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Every Day

More Money Saving Days

Let’s get you caught up since last Sunday on what we have done to save a few dollars and a few that we spent too. First, I want to mention to you that I forgot something on my last money saving post. I used a $15. off coupon that I earned at BJ’s to buy a big container of cashews for Hubby. It was $17.99 so I only paid $ 2.99 OOP.

Sunday:

We had hamburgers and FF’s for dinner and eggs and sausage for brunch. They were all cooked from our stockpile. I cut up some carrots and froze them before they went bad. They will be used in soups ot stews or just cooked up as a side.

We had a lot of celery too. Celery does freeze but when it gets used in casseroles, stews or soups, it tends to disintegrate. So we use it up spread with peanut butter as a snack.

We ate a lot of salads with our meals to use up romaine lettuce before it went bad.

Hubby and I watched the golf tournament on TV. I was disappointed that during overtime, Scottie Scheffler did not win. I just love watching him. Hubby has been watching our Buffalo Sabres in the ice hockey tournament.

Monday:

We finished the leftover spaghetti for dinner and made the rest of the bread into garlic bread to go with it. Breakfast was granola and oatmeal.

I started washing some outsides of windows. I had already done all of the insides. They will get done slowly but surely. Some I will have to have Hubby do because they are too high up for me. At one time, I thought about hiring someone to do them. That was a few years ago and they wanted about $ 600. I can’t imagine what they want now. So we will do them.

Tuesday:

I made eggs and bacon for breakfast. I always cook the entire pound and we use it for many meals. Dinner was chicken patties on buns with Chick Fila Sauce. We weren’t real hungry so we just added dill pickle slices as a side.

I spent some time straightening up the basement pantry. My grandson had taken some bags downstairs that had been lingering at the top of our stairs. So I needed to work on getting those on the shelves.

I did a load of wash and hung it to dry. I used cold water as usual.

Hubby again watched the Buffalo Sabres game. We also watched The FBI that we had DVRed.

Wednesday:

I had eggs and salmon for brunch and Hubby had granola again. For dinner, I used up the rest of our discounted Subway gift card that I purchased at Amazon. It got me a sub and Hubby a wrap. I was just too tired to cook.

I again worked in the pantry in our basement.

I am again back on our treadmill to get some exercise. I love it but some days my back is so bad I just can’t stay on it long.

Hubby mowed the lawn.

Thursday:

Breakfast was eggs and bacon. As I mentioned to you last week, we went out with our new neighbors for dinner to the Big Ditch brewery. I had a double mushroom swiss smash burger with fries and 2 beers. Hubby had a double bacon cheese smash burger with fries nd one beer. It was happy hour so the beers were only $4.00 each. We did bring home 2 desserts. The entire bill just for us was $90. with tax and tip. We always tip 20%. This was expensive but it was so worth it to enjoy our new friends. They are such a pleasure to spend time with. We have decided to go out once a month for dinner with them. We save in other areas so that we can enjoy this pleasure. We know restaurants that they don’t and vice versa. Perhaps next time they will pick a restaurant that they like and we will experience a new one.

Hubby again watched the Buffalo Sabres game which we won. We are now 1 game ahead of the Boston Bruins.

Friday:

Breakfast was apple fritters. For dinner, Hubby cooked strip steaks on the outside grill. We had them with tater tots which he loves. We brought home some French fries from the restaurant that Hubby couldn’t eat. I warmed them up to add to my dinner. We again had a small salad with it.

I went out when Hubby got up and picked up a prescription for him. Usually our co-pay is $60. for this script. Yesterday, it was $.00. The cashier said insurance paid it because it looks like he has hit the gap because this medicine is majorly expensive. So it should be $.00 for the rest of the year. It was the most expensive co-pay that we have. So here is $ 60. we can put towards the loss of our school tax deduction.

When I got home, I took a long nap. I was so exhausted.

Later we watched the finale of Matlock. Wht a surprise that ending was! Now I can’t wait for it to come back in 2027.

Our ads for next week came in the mail today. Two things popped out at me for next Wednesday at Aldi’s. They have avacados on sale for $.49 each and grape tomatoes for $ 1.49. The ad doesn’t start until next Wednesday.

The Top’s ad which starts on Sunday has a Zero Powerade for $ .29 when you add the doorbuster coupon to your card. I like to keep these for when we do not feel well. They also have Top’s 8 oz. chunk cheese for $ 1.88 with the super coupon, limit 1 and 1 lb. of Jimmy Dean bacon for $ 4.99 with the super coupon, limit 1. In produce, they have vidalia onions for $1.28 a lb. They are our favorite onions. Tomatoes on the vine are $1.88 a lb. I may get some of those because tomato prices are skyrocketing. We like them for BLT’s. That is really all that interested me. They have on SALE four 80/20 ground beef burgers for $8.99. It will be a cold day in h*** that I will pay that price for ground beef on SALE. Remember that Memorial Day is coming and I am hoping to catch a sale at a good price for ground beef. I also am lacking in my mayonaise storage so I am hoping condiments will be on sale too. I only have two jars and that will not last with salads this summer. I could also use a good sale on ketchup.

We watched NCIS Sydney for our entertainment.

Today:

Hubby and I had 1/2 of our strip steaks left from last night. We will make eggs and garlic butter steak slices to go with our eggs for brunch. I will also have an avocado.

I have already cooked up Italian sausages to use in our meals. I got them discounted at 50% off recently. I did two bags worth. One will go in the freezer for a future meal and one will go on our pizza that we will make for dinner tonight. I will use Aldi’s naan bread for the crust. Then add leftover sauce from the spaghetti, spices, the sausage and mozzarella cheese. Following the directions on the back of the bread, it only takes 9 minutes in the oven. Since it is only 42 outside and it has been raining all night and still is, I don’t mind heating the house up with the oven. It is so chilly today. Because of this I may fill my oven today with some breads and brownies to freeze for later this season when it is hot out.

If the sun ever comes out, I will open the blinds and shades. For now I only have 2 window shades up because Eloise likes to sit in them and look outside. Hence, I have 2 lights on until that happens so that Hubby and I can see. It is so dreary and dark outside.

Sports will most likely be the only thing we will watch on TV today. I may do some reading. I will definitely go back to the pantry in the basement to do some work.

Tomorrow:

I plan on ribeye pork chops done on our outside grill for dinner. Our son and grandson will be coming for breakfast. We haven’t decided if I will cook or if we will go out for breakfast. They both do so much for us and spend so much gas to get here and back to their home. They live an hour and 1/2 away so we like to treat them once in a while. They do this 3 hour round trip quite often and gasoline is so expensive right now. They haven’t been here in a few weeks and we have not taken them to Kalamatta’s in a while. Hubby will ask my son to put the snow tires up on the ceiling rack now that our tires have been changed over. He will also ask him to help get our furniture and large umbrella out of the shed. Then we will be set for spring and summer. We will enjoy their company for most of the day.

I have no idea what else we will do except watch the Buffalo Sabres game.

How did you save some dollars this week?

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Every Day

Do You Feel Like You Are Being Robbed?

With the prices going up day after day, do you feel like someone is always reaching into your wallet and taking the dollars systematically away from you? I am not a conspiracy theorist but something crazy has to be going on.

I feel like we are being pickpocketed. You have to take more and more money to the grocery store these days. The dollars are just slipping away. Every week it seems like these companies are raising prices, shrinking the amounts in their packages and even shorting us on the pounds and ounces that are in our meat packages and in our bagged produce. People have to weigh their purchases now to make sure that they are getting what they are paying for. I sometimes feel like I am at war but I am not sure with who. Is it the grocery store, the middleman, the rancher or the farmer, the state regulators or the elite globalists? I really do not believe it is the rancher or the farmer. They are being screwed too. Feed and ferilizer prices are astronomical! I am so glad that we paid for our yearly ferilization of the lawn last February for this whole year and got a 3% discount. The price went up year over year but only by $15. If you are paying on a monthly basis now, the price just keeps going up. I have talked about what we are doing: eating our stockpile that we have had for a couple of years purchased at lower prices, eating the proper portions of food, not wasting food, and only buying when things are on loss leader. I did pick up our two large packages of chicken breasts with our raincheck this week($2.19 a lb.) while I was out picking up prescriptions. I will elaborate on this topic in a future post.

But today, I want to concentrate on our electric and natural gas bill. We got our April 21 bill yesterday. I expected it would go down quite a bit because we have had some warmer days this past month. Just when you think spring is here, you get a couple of small snow storms and you realize winter hasn’t left yet. That being said, we are on the warmer side with a few cold ones mixed in. I will remind you that my last bill was $300.+. Yesterday’s bill was $ 296.77. So for the warmer days, we saved about $3.00. Our usage was just a smidgen more than last year yet the bill was $71.54 higher. Yes, I do know that the higher oil prices helped with that.

Hubby went and got the figures for our bills year over year. From April of 2024 to April of 2025, we spent $ 2,000. From April of 2025 to the current bill from April 2026, we have spent $3,000. That is a $1,000. increase. Our average kwh’s or electric and gas therms have remained about the same so the smart meters that were installed in our neighborhood has nothing to do with this.

When you question this, we are told that the AI centers that are being built and our stupid Governor Hochul and her green agenda is causing this. Perhaps that is the case. I do know that supply and demand does play a big factor. But a $1,000. increase for the same supply and demand is ridiculous over a year period. Our company that supplies our gas and electricity is in Spain. I would love to know how and why the Democrats allowed that to happen.

There isn’t much I can do about it except to vote for Bruce Blakeman in November and hope he wins. He says he will get rid of this nonsense. Anyone would be better than Hochul.

Politics aside, we have to do something to lower our bill more than $3.00 in a month’s period. So I am concentrating right now on what we can do for the spring and summer.

We will be cooking as much as we can on our outside grill. We have a full tank of propane that we got for $ 4.+ last year. I don’t think their weight scales were accurate. The guy insisted they were right, so I got a bargain.

If and when we use the stovetop, we will fit the pan to the burner and cover them. We will use our crockpot and instant pot if they are needed outdoors or in the garage.

We will also be eating a lot of salads and other cold dishes.

I will be doing a bunch of baking using the full oven so that I can stock the freezer with those goods for the seasons ahead while it is still colder here. We have a couple of cold days ahead. Then the oven will not be used until October.

We still have our heat on because the nights are cold but we should be able to turn that off in May.

We will only use the A/C if the humidity is high. Otherwise, it will remain off. We can open windows and/or use our ceiling fans. We grew up without A/C and we can do it again.

We will be having the A/C checked by the company we use so that if we do need it, it will be in perfect operating order. Hubby has found a coupon that we can use so we will only pay $79. for this. There is another company putting a coupon out there to get it done for $39. However, we have heard they always find something wrong that they can charge you for which will be more than the difference in the coupons. So no thank you to that. We have used our people for years and they have never screwed us.

We already use cold water to wash our clothes and will continue that. My detergent plus a scoop of oxiclean gets all stains out. We will hang as many clothes as we can. We have a drying rack and we use shower rods to hang shirts, etc. Dryer usage will be minimal.

I continue to take navy showers and use the warm up water to either flush a toilet or water some outside flowers.

I have written about other ways we can save on electricity and natural gas in prior posts.

If I have misspelled anything or made any mistakes, please excuse me. Eloise got me up at 3AM again and I am really tired. I only got 3 hours and 16 minutes of sleep. When Hubby gets up, I will be going back to bed.

If you guys can give me and everyone else some tips on how to save on these things, please comment so that we can save as much as we can. We can all help each other in this community.

Categories
Every Day

My Money Saving Days

Thursday:

We are again eating only from our stockpile of food here at home. We do have a night out for dinner next week with friends but the rest of the week I will be cooking at home.

We started this morning with coffee that I purchased back before the prices went up a few years ago. Then I cooked an egg and sausage McMuffin using 1 egg, an English muffin with butter, and two small sausages. Since our natural gas is cheaper to use to cook than electricity, I opted to cook the egg quickly in a small frypan. The sausages were already cooked but frozen so it was just a matter of putting them in the microwave for 40 seconds. Hubby opted to have a small apple fritter for breakfast.

We only eat 2 meals a day so dinner was grilled strip steaks, baked potatoes, and a salad. We had romaine lettuce that needed to be used up so we will probably have salads the rest of the week. We had planned on grilling outside but the rains came. So we did them inside using the air fryer setting on our countertop oven. We plan on using our outside propane grill to do most of our cooking this season when it is dry outside.

The Top’s flyer that came in the mail yesterday got thrown out without reading it since I will only be using the raincheck for the BS chicken breasts. I didn’t even bother to look at the Aldi ad that started yesterday. I do have to pick up some scripts that will be ready for Hubby next week so I will swing into Top’s and get that chicken. Walmart and Top’s are only one block apart so I will not be using up much gasoline.

I forgot about sheets that have been in the dryer since last weekend. Fortunately they were dry and I don’t care that they are a little wrinkled. So I folded them and put them away.

Eloise did not wake me up until after 4 am this morning. I was grateful. I fed her from her stockpile of food purchased a while ago on sale. Once it was light out about 6:15am, I opened all of the shades and blinds to let the sun in. It is supposed to rain later so I will use the sun while I can. Lights were turned off after the sun rose except for one lamp that Hubby only used while he did his newspaper crossword puzzles. Lights will stay off until dark.

Now it is time to go out and clean/detail our SUV. It is so dirty so this is going to take me a while. But since I will be not be spending $ 200. to get it done, I don’t mind doing it at all.

I called Spectrum to try to get the bill reduced. The only way I could do that was to go to a lower TV plan. They sent me everything that was included in that plan. So Hubby compared it to what we have now and he was not willing to give up what he already has. To keep him happy since he watches much more TV than I do, we are keeping what we have right now.

Friday:

Eloise again slept until 4am. I am liking this change.

I noticed when I fed her this morning that we are getting low on her delectables, dry food, and her cat litter. Chewy is offering a $30. e-gift card when you spend $100. You have to make sure that what you are ordering is in the deal. It doesn’t expire until the 19th. I was able to buy her delectables in bulk and get 2 of the cat litter using the discounted autoship prices and get the giftcard. That will allow me to buy her dry cat food which was not part of the deal uing the $30. gift card. Pet supplies are so expensive now that working these offers saves a lot of money.

While I was doing this deal, it reminded me to mention something to all of you. Amazon is no longer giving free shipping to anyone unless you have Amazon Prime no matter how much you spend. I refuse to pay $139. per year for that. I can get most items cheaper elsewhere or on Walmart with my + membership.

Brunch this morning for us was homemade egg McMuffins and coffee.

Last night when I baked the potatoes for dinner, I baked an extra 3 so that I could make potato salad for tonight. That has been done. We will have it with it with fish fillets for me and chicken tenders for Hubby. We are trying to use up small amounts from the freezer.

I emptied a thick large bag of toilet paper today. I have saved the bag to empty our wastebaskets into it until it full. The thickness of this bag satisfies my garbage company’s requirements.

I gave Eloise a dry shampoo bath. She does not like bathing in the tub. Since she is the cleanest cat we have ever had, this will suffice. She licks herself clean about 6 times a day. The dry shampoo also has aloe in it which is good for her skin and coat and won’t harm her when she licks.

Hubby and I watched 3 DVRed shows from this past week tonight for entertainment. Then I went to bed early so that I could get up early. Hubby watched football.

Saturday:

Again I was able to sleep to 4am before Eloise meowed at our door.

Breakfast this morning will be cereal. Oatmeal for me and granola for Hubby using shelf stable milk. We will have spaghetti with sauce and meatballs and homemade garlic toast on the side for dinner.

I need to do a load of laundry in cold water and then hang it to dry.

Having noticed that we had a spike in electricity a week ago, I started writing down when things are being used around here and at what time. We normally use from .53 to .81 kwh’s according to our hourly stats using our smart meter. At 8am one morning, we had a spike to 4.9 kwh’s. I found out what it was a couple of days later. I had turned on the flourescent light above my computer desk so I could see to do some work. I realized it when a couple of days later, I had turned the light on again. When the stats showed up online, I again had that spike. Needless to say I will not be using that light again. I will use our overhead lights in the kitchen because they use much lower kwh’s.

Today will be a reading day for me. I want to find some recipes using what we have in our stockpile. I also continue to read frugal books again before I donate them to the library.

I hope you are all having a money saving weekend. Please share with us so that we can learn from you.

Categories
Every Day

A Little of This and a Little of That

Since gasoline is so expensive, I bundled errands yesterday. First stop was at Top’s for some loss leaders. They had Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts on sale for $ 2.19 a lb. But they were totally out. The new sale ad just went into effect the day before. I find this quite aggravating. The butcher told me that they would get a truck in last night. Since I am not about to waste gasoline and make another trip chasing this sale, I got a raincheck for 2 large packages. The raincheck is good for about 6 weeks. I will use it next time I need something at or near Top’s.

For those of you who have freezer space, Market in the Square is having a chicken sale if you buy 40 lbs. Info:

𝐏𝐫𝐞-𝐎𝐫𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝟒𝟎 𝐥𝐛. 𝐁𝐨𝐱:

(MUST order online before Tues. 4/14 at noon)

40lb of Chicken Breasts: $79

40lb of Chicken Leg Quarters: $39

40lb of Whole Chicken Wings: $59

40lb of Chicken Drumsticks: $35

Plus… No sales tax! 💰

* Pickup: Fri 4/17 – Sun 4/19 from 8am-4pm

* Available from both West Seneca & North Tonawanda Meat Departments

This is a great deal. The chicken breasts work out to $ 1.795 per lb. I don’t have the freezer space. If I did, I would be all over this sale.

I did pick up 3 chicken broths and 2 beef broths at $1.49 each when you buy 5. This was a really good deal for here. I can my own chicken broth but sometimes I am out so these fill in when that happens. I never have enough beef bones to make beef broth. Bananas were on sale with a super coupon for $ .39 a lb. Limit 5 pounds. Each week during the Moolahville game that Top’s is running they have a coupon for a deep discount. So I picked up this package of hamburger buns for $ .49. If you shop Top’s, make sure to add this coupon to your digital wallet attached to your bonus card. That is all I got. We still have lots of stockpile items to work our way through.

Then I went to Walmart to pick up some special toothpaste that the dentist recommended for Hubby. It was cheaper for a 2 pack at $ 12.47 than one tube for $7.49. I also picked up his 3 prescriptions. They shocked me when they told me the bill was $ 3706. I told the cashier that I didn’t think they applied our insurance. Sure enough they hadn’t so they fixed their error and the total came to $78.+ before they added the toothpaste on.

We got a disappointing letter in the mail yesterday from NYS. They informed us that we did not qualify for the Enhanced Star Rebate(must be over 65 and own and live in your home) for our school taxes in September. Each year they up the cut off income amount. Unfortunately, we made much more income for the 2024 year than they based it on. They go 2 years back so 2026 taxes are based on 2004 income tax year. I was so happy when we qualified last September. We had not qualified in years. But looking at our income on our 2025 taxes which they will base the 2027 cut off on, I don’t think we will qualify again for 2027. I know we should be happy that we make more and more income each year. But this reduction was quite a bit of money last year. It saved us $ 1080.49 last year. Every year we will be chasing it so I don’t think we will qualify again. Our investments keep our income high. I will make that money up by doing some more cutting back.

I have decided to clean the inside of our SUV myself this year. It is pretty muddy and dirty from the winter. I got a $ 200. quote from the company who did my carpet cleaning and it is a good price. However with the disappointing letter on the school taxes, I will save that $200. by doing it myself.

On a different subject, we had our new neighbors over for dinner on Saturday night this past weekend. We had a terrific time and enjoyed their company very much. I made the best chicken in wine sauce that I have made in a long time. We added a caesar salad and broccoli for sides. For dessert, I stuffed cara mia oranges with orange sherbert and spooned fresh strawberries in a bit of juice over the top. I just cut off the tops(about 1/4 to 1/3 down) off the oranges and cut out the insides and save them to go with breakfasts. Then fill the shells. Put them in the freezer until you are ready to serve them. This dessert is so refreshing and easy and the combination is so yummy. You can also add a pinch of coconut on top of the strawberries if you like that.

Have you saved any money recently by getting a great deal? Please feel free to share with us.

Categories
Every Day

Just a Bit of Cutting Costs

We had a nice Easter dinner with our son and grandson. Everyone else was sick so they stayed home. We have been eating those leftovers and finally finished them today.

I needed to buy some bourbon and Chardonnay for company that we are having to dinner on Saturday night. We have a new liquor store that opened a couple of months ago near me. Their prices are lower than the one I have been going to since we moved here. So this is where we will go from now on. They also built a beverage center next to the liquor store. I love one stop shopping. So I was able to get a 12 pack of Yeungling for Hubby. He likes to have a beer once in a while after he mows the lawn. I came home and submitted a rebate online for $6.00 for the beer.

While I was running errands, I stopped at Top’s gas station to fill up my tank that was getting pretty empty. The price at the pump was $ 4.20. I got $ .60 off a gallon using points. So I only paid $ 3.60 a gallon. That was high enough. Yikes!

We hired a carpet cleaning service to clean our great room and master bedroom wall to wall carpeting. Both off white carpets. They also cleaned all the carpeting on our stairs going to the basement and the landing at the bottom and our great room sofa and matching chair. Hubby has been cleaning all of these for the past 16 years with our Bissell Shampooer. His back does not like that work anymore. Hence the need to hire someone. They did a fabulous job. All of these look new with the exception that she could not get a spot of newsprint off the sofa arm. Hubby’s hands left that after reading the newspaper at home in prior years. However because she couldn’t get it out, she took $70. off our bill. That was a bonus we were not expecting. We would hire her again.

This morning, Hubby had an appointment at Dunn Tire which has been purchased recently by Discount Tire. We have been going to Dunn for 16 years and always had great service. We needed to have the snow tires taken off and the regular tires put back on. His appointment was at 10am. Hubby called me to say they still hadn’t taken the car in to do it. That was at 11am. He wanted to let me know so that I didn’t worry. But he was also quite pissed and he let them know it. Evidently the service there has gone downhill since they were purchased. So he got the telephone number of corporate and had every intention of calling them to complain when he got home. Believe me, I have been married to Hubby for almost 60 years and I don’t remember him ever being this pissed. When they finally finished the car at 11:30am, they let him know it was ready. He went to pay at the register and he was told there was no charge. The manager evidently made that decision. The cost to do this was $100.+ tax which would have been another $8.00. However, Hubby had a 50% off coupon with him. so it would have only cost us $50. and $ 4.00 in tax. Hubby still is going to file a complaint with corporate. They should know of the lousy service at this location. But he will let them know what the manager did for him. Hubby said none of the people who serviced us for 16 years there are employed there anymore. They probably hired cheaper labor and the customer service just isn’t there.

We had our heat turned off for most of the day because it was 54 outside and the sun was shining. I had all of the window coverings open. It was just beautiful. I have now turned it back on because it will be cold tonight. We had snow yesterday. This time of year the weather is a mixed bag. Hopefully we will be able to turn the heat off by the end of May.

I did a load of laundry today in cold water and dried it in the dryer using the tennis balls which caused it to dry faster than it would have.

Hubby did the first mowing of our lawn today. He was enjoying doing it on his rider and soaking up the sunshine.

We have been cooking and eating all of our meals at home. The prime rib just got finshed up today. I will be happy to make a Chef’s salad for dinner tomorrow night.

That’s it for now. Have you saved or not spent any money this week?