We had the spaghetti with Hot Italian Sausage last night. It was so good. Since we have sauce and sausage leftover, I will make a pizza tonight using that and the Artisan flatbread I purchased today. I will also add some mushrooms for me.
I ran errands today to Top’s and Aldi’s. At Aldi’s I purchased three of the Artisan bread. Each package makes 2 pizzas for us. Since this is our favorite pizza crust and it is often out of stock, I put one package in the fridge and the other two in the freezer. Six crusts will last about 6 months for us. My total cost for this at Aldi’s was $ 10.77.
Last stop was Top’s where I purchased 5 Shake and Bake. When you bought 5 you paid $ 2.99 each. I love using these for a quick meal in the air fryer for pork or chicken. Especially in the winter when we are not grilling outside. The cucumber was $ 1.00. The celery and carrots were on B1G1F and ended up costing me $ 3.49 for both. The half and half was $ 5.99 for a half gallon. I stock this ahead in my fridge because it has far out expiration dates. We use it in our coffee and for any milk that we need. We used to buy milk for pudding, cereal, etc. but it always went bad before we could use it up. So I quit buying milk and we use half and half instead for everything. It works well for us. Out total for Top’s was $ 25.43. My total for today is $36.20. I also purchased a 60 ct. box of eggs at Walmart this week for $ 5.18. So my total for the week is $ 41.38.
I started with $ 391.08 in my grocery budget less the $ 41.38 leaves $349.70 left for the rest of the month.
I am off to do some cleaning. I hope you all have a great day!
Did you get any bargains at the grocery store this week?
I had every intention of writing to you about our special day last Saturday. However our celebration turned into the entire weekend.
On Saturday and Sunday, we celebrated our 56th wedding anniversary. Because we went out to dinner with friends last week, we decided to cook at home on both days. We had the same dinner each night which included a drink before dinner. Then Hubby grilled filet mignon each night for each of us. I baked a dozen potatoes in the air fryer so as to not heat up the house with the oven. We each ate one and one ear of corn on the cob each night. Dessert was cherry ices. With the exception of our son and grandson coming for breakfast on Sunday, we had a quiet weekend just enjoying each other’s company. We spent a bit of time outside in our yard because it was so beautiful outside.
On Sunday, I made scrambled eggs, French toast, many sausages and a pound of bacon. Our grandson is now a teenager and he can sure pack the food away. After breakfast, we played rummy.
It was a wonderful weekend full of good food purchased on sale, good conversation, and no cleaning.
On Monday morning, I made scrambled eggs and sliced up the leftover filet mignon and heated it through with some garlic and butter. We had leftover cold cut sandwiches and potato salad for dinner. Hubby made it from the leftover baked potatoes.
On Tuesday night, we had potato salad and grilled ham and cheese sandwiches. Breakfast was easy over eggs and leftover sausage and bacon from the weekend.
Breakfast this morning was a big slice of cantaloupe. Tonight I will be making spaghetti with Hot Italian sausage and sauce. We have not had spaghetti in quite a while and we are craving it.
I will be grocery shopping tomorrow for just a few things we need.
It turned into a bigger project than he thought though. The hinge is installed on the cupboard but it does not line up with the original holes. So Hubby will fix it as soon as he can get the stuff he needs to do it.
He also has been doing a great job keeping up with the weed whacking and dead heading the flowers. I have been pulling weeds as I see them.
Our lawn is lush and green again after having the sprinkler system repaired. Now it gets water every other day that it doesn’t rain.
I have done two loads of laundry this week using cold water. Some of the clothes were hung to dry and others were done in the dryer.
We should be getting our prompt from the utility company to read our meters in a few days. I can’t wait to see what difference the new efficient A/C does for our bill looking at the same period last year and accounting for the high heat we have had this time including some 90+ days.
On Thursday, I made another turkey sandwich for brunch to use up the rest of a tomato, some turkey, and more lettuce. I also added two very small pieces of bacon that were leftover last night.
Hubby made himself some scrambled eggs with sauteed onions and a bagel with butter.
That night we actually went out to dinner which is a rarity in our home. We have good friends who we go out to dinner with every once in a while. As a thank you for them helping us out a few times this past year, we treated.
We went here to https://spatricks.com/ We had good food, drinks, and lots of laughs. It was a very enjoyable evening. This does not come out of our food budget but from our entertainment budget.
On Friday, Hubby ate his leftover reuben sandwich from dinner for brunch. I pulled some deli roast beef and 2 kimmelweck rolls that I had frozen from the freezer to thaw. I cooked up a packet of au jus gravy and made a beef on a weck for brunch.
For dinner I ate my leftovers from the restaurant which was some turkey and stuffing with gravy, cranberry sauce, and a medley of steamed cauliflower, green beans, and multi colored peppers. Hubby finished the pork fried rice.
We have quite a bit of deli meat and rolls in our freezer from when we had company recently. I don’t like to freeze it for long so you are going to see lots of sandwiches until it is all used up. That is fine with me as I try to get my strength back from being ill. We also have a huge stockpile of paper plates and paper containers that are square that I got on deals. The plates were purchased at a low price just as Covid 19 started. So we are using up many of them. It is saving me from washing dishes so often and saving on water. I finally ran our dishwasher last night after 5 days because I had been using paper so often.
On Friday I went to Niagara Produce to get some fresh romaine lettuce for $ 1.99, green seedless grapes at $ 1.99 a lb, and some cheddar cheese for $ 2.69. I could have purchased the cheese cheaper elsewhere but it wasn’t worth the gasoline to drive there. My total was $8.92. Since my budget for July was $400., I now have $391.08 left.
Today is a very special day! I will be back to talk about that tomorrow. I hope you all have a great day.
I had a nice container for bacon grease. I dropped it and it broke. So rather than buy a new one for $25. plus a hefty shipping charge, I am using a canning jar. I have many of them. If you look hard you can see the grease from the little bit of bacon I cooked yesterday. I will just keep adding my bacon grease which I strain each time I put it in here. I keep it on the lazy susan near my stove. I use it for many things like cooking eggs, with veggies, etc.
Sitting next to the bacon I cooked is my brunch. I was not hungry for much yesterday. So these few triscuits and aged cheddar cheese filled me up.
Next time I won’t rush when I am writing to you so that I could run errands. Sorry about that!
Yesterday, I took everything out of the fridge that needed to be used up soon. While I was doing it, I wiped down all of the shelves and rearranged some condiments. These are all of the things that I need to do something with before they go bad. Sorry there are two pictures that have some things overlapping. But I couldn’t get it all in one picture.
I will start with the lettuce. It is about 6-7 weeks old. I wash and dry my lettuce when I purchase it and put it in canning jars with a paper towel in the bottom. Then I food saver it to get all of the air out. It keeps about 7 weeks perfectly. It is now starting to get old, so we will be using it up in sandwiches for dinner and a salad in the next couple of days.
The half full wine bottle was a gift from family for Easter dinner. It is still good but it is one that is really dry and we don’t like it. So I will find some recipes that call for wine to use it up. I will do the same with the chicken, turkey, and beef broth. I may make some soups. The chicken is half full but the other two there is only about a 1/3 of the container.
I have put the strawberries in a freezer bag and they are now frozen to be used for smoothies or desserts.
The turkey deli meat was purchased to make quick meals while I have not been feeling well. The apples are getting wrinkled so I will chop them up and saute them with onions as a side for one of our meals soon.
The two yogurts are getting old so I ate one for a snack yesterday afternoon. The black olives are a few that were leftover from making tacos. They will get used in a salad.
The tomatoes will be used for sandwiches. Under the bag of tomatoes is one thick slice of ham. Hubby may make ham salad out of it to spread on crackers or we may fry it up to go with scrambled eggs.
The cantaloupe is not quite ripe yet but when it is we will eat slices for breakfasts and for desserts.
The pork fried rice I made for dinner two nights ago will most likely get eaten by one of us for lunch today.
I had a few pieces of bacon raw in the fridge. So I cooked it up yesterday afternoon.
The last item is a bag of condiments from fast food over the past year. Eating fast food is a rarity for us so there are very few in that bag. But they will get used up for meals soon.
Some of the lettuce, the tomatoes, the cooked bacon, and the turkey deli slices all got used up in sandwiches on toasted rolls last night for dinner.
We also had some bananas that were getting very ripe. So Hubby made his delicious banana salad for each of us for dessert to use some of them up. The rest I will throw in the freezer for making banana bread this fall. It is too darn hot to turn the oven on now.
Now that I am feeling much better, I am hoping to run some errands before it gets to be 94 here today. I hope you all have a great money saving day.
Today is your lucky day! I have been busy while I have been ill so you get a BONUS post today!
I have asked this question of family, friends, and neighbors and I keep getting the same answer. Yes, we are sick of rising prices and having to spend so much more for the same products we purchased just a few weeks ago. If you shop at Walmart and/or Aldi, it seems their prices have really risen of late especially in my area. I see increases at my other stores but not as much because I always just buy mostly the loss leaders sales. The only prices that seem to have come down in recent weeks here are for eggs and butter. What are you guys seeing in your areas?
Over the past 2 and a half years, it has been very difficult to work within a budget for food. Would I like to go back to what I was spending back then? Sure I would but with inflation that is never going to happen. Even if they finally figure out how to get inflation back to about 2% a year, these prices you see now are not going to go back to what they were. It makes it so difficult for families to stay within a reasonable budget.
Many months I have spent more than these figures. It all depended on what we wanted to eat those months. Hubby is always adding to my grocery list things for complicated(lots of ingredients) recipes. One of his hobbies is finding recipes he wants to try and then I buy expensive ingredients( think spices) that only get used once. I need to find him a less costly hobby. I am guilty of going to the store with a list and coming out with more than what is on the list. How many times have you guys done that?
The other problem at least in this home and I would bet in all of your homes is you don’t eat what is already in your refrigerator, freezers, and on your shelves. Yes, I keep a pretty good check on leftovers, produce, and meat. I try to alternate my shelf food by eating the oldest first. We have very little waste in our home. However, I go to the store almost every week and buy more food because there is a great sale! How many of you are doing this? How many of you are stockpiling food for a disaster like a collapse of the economy, war, hurricanes and tornadoes just storms that take the power out? Do you have enough? What is enough? Three months, a year or two?
Well, I have decided that we have ENOUGH! This cycle of buying food every week has to stop. If we need it that is fine! But if we are just buying more each week just because it is on sale, I need to stop. Anyone else feel the same way?
So on July 1st, we came up with a better way to control our spending on groceries, etc. And we are not paying attention to what the government tells us we need to spend! I am tired of putting out money on overpriced products and watching the large corporations earn record profits every year while so many families are just trying to eat. The only way to get these prices to come down is through supply and demand. So I am going to do my part to lower my demand and buy fewer products. Over the past few weeks, I have already refused to buy products that I deemed way to high in price.
We have set a budget of $ 400. per month for the two of us. This will include all food, cleaning products, and personal care products. Our OTC medicines get lumped into our prescription budget. I will not spend one penny more and we will not starve. We will start incorporating what we already have into our meals. We will never waste food. Hubby has agreed to stop hunting for recipes and I will cook as simply as I can not only to use up what we have but to save on utility costs. I am actually hoping to save some of that $400. a month to build up some money for when it comes time to replenish on the sales.
Soda and junk food is out! We will finish what we have and I will not be buying more. They are empty calories and so very expensive. I drink water now and so does Hubby. We also drink iced tea and coffee. That soda and junk food money can be used for real food like fruits, vegetables, and meat. We will have treats but I will make them here in our home. Popcorn has lots of fiber, is cheap, and a 50 lb. bag lasts a very long time. The best part is that you can control any butter or salt.
I expect you guys to hold me accountable. I will show everything along this journey. I will show you all of our meals, what I purchase at the grocery store, how I use up leftovers, etc.
I know I have talked many times about mortgages. But I have never spoken about home equity loans.
A home equity loan (HELOC) is a loan against the principal on your home. Some people take this type of loan to do improvements in their home. But I always wondered what would happen if the economy crashed or there was a recession.
You may have a mortgage and a home equity loan at the same time. The home equity loan is then your second mortgage. Usually the banks will allow you to borrow up to 85% of the equity in your home between your mortgage and the HELOC. A HELOC is a revolving form of credit with a variable interest rate. The rates are usually higher than a mortgage rate.
The new reality of the housing market is a recession which I believe is coming creates uncertainties for borrowers. Remember back in the Great Recession, banks froze previously approved lines of credit. You are seeing banks now limiting the credit lines on your credit cards and increasing interest rates. Can your lender do the same with your HELOC?
Your lender can legally freeze or reduce your HELOC if the value of your home declines, your income declines, or your credit score drops. Here is some good information from Citizen’s Bank about a freeze or reduction:
Many people take out a HELOC to consolidate credit card debt because the interest rate on the HELOC is usually lower than the interest rates on their credit cards. That is the advantage.
The disadvantages of taking out a HELOC is that it is a secured loan against your home. The lender has the right to take whatever you put down as collateral. With a HELOC, that is your home.
Nobody pays off their credit card bills and takes out a HELOC with the intention of ever getting into debt again. But too many people do not develop good financial habits and just continue using their credit cards. Then they end up with credit card debt and HELOC debt. If they continue along this path it may become more than they can handle.
My opinion on this is that there are other ways to pay back credit card debt than putting your home at risk. The one that comes to mind is to consolidate your debts onto a zero interest credit card then do everything possible to pay your debt off within the zero interest period. You can also work with a reputable counseling service to consolidate the debt and pay it of over time. But while you are doing this, cut up your cards. Keep one for emergencies. I mean a true emergency which is not a vacation, dinner out, going to the movies or Starbucks or any other frivolous thing that comes your way.
I know times are hard right now but getting further into debt is not the answer. If you can’t pay for food, use the food banks. That is what they are there for. I know this is a touchy subject. People will say that you should buy food first but if you are truly in a bad way using the food bank is okay. Spend your money to pay your mortgage and/or HELOC or rent so that you have a roof over your head. Use your car to go to work, to a doctor’s appointment, and the food bank. Then park it so that you can save on gasoline.
Continuing my opinion, taking out a HELOC loan against your home to pay off credit card debt is a very bad financial decision. I’ve been alive a very long time and over the years I have seen too many people buying their first home and then using it like a piggy bank. They take a mortgage and then a home equity loan. They pay them off and then continue that pattern their entire lives. There are seniors who still owe mortgages or home equity loans because they did this. When your income has been reduced in retirement that becomes so stressful! Eventually the dam breaks!
If you took out a HELOC to fix up your home and know that you can make the payments, that is not a problem. But think twice about taking out a HELOC to pay back credit cards. It is a vicious cycle that can ruin you financially.
With our economy teetering and inflation rampant, I would be very careful about making any financial move unless it puts you in a better position. Don’t be the one who ends up making all the wrong decisions and regrets it later.
You all know that I advocate you paying off your mortgages early and that goes for HELOCS too. We have had quite a few of my readers who have done this. They can tell you how freeing that is. It is so nice to own your own home and not have to worry about anything but repairs, maintenance, and taxes. Many more of you are on the way to being mortgage free. Congrats to you all!
In my opinion, the best thing you can do in this economy is work on paying off any mortgage/ and or HELOC that you have. Just make sure that if you are paying extra on them, that the extra amount goes directly to the principal and that you are not prepaying interest. If you don’t advise them, they will do what they want. What we did way back when we had a mortgage was to make the payment and then give them a second check advising them on the check that this is to be applied to our principal only.
Good luck to anyone who is thinking about paying these off early!
It looks like a long weekend ahead. I hope that you can all have a great time with your families. Stay safe, eat well, have fun!
Hubby and I will be staying home and indoors. The smoke from Canada came in with a vengeance overnight yesterday and is still here in Buffalo. It was so bad yesterday that you could see it at ground level and smell it. They hope it will go away about midnight tonight but won’t really know until it happens. I had to get a prescription my doctor ordered for me and you can bet I wore my N95 mask. Didn’t think I would ever have to wear them again. But I was very glad that I had it.
I have a very bad sinus infection and that is why you haven’t seen me posting on here. It started last week and the pressure from the pain kept getting continually worse. Finally I called my doctor on Tuesday. He was very concerned that I had Covid 19 but after a test, it was negative. So he determined it was a bad sinus infection. I am on a strong antibiotic for 10 days. I have been told to push fluids, take my medication and rest. If I don’t feel better in a few days, I am to call him. So I am following his orders because I want to be well.
But in the meantime, I will be working on a whole bunch of financial and frugal posts for you that I will post every couple of days after the 4th. I can type while I rest in between naps. Too many people need help and I will be here to tell you what I would do and what I will be doing in the future to try to stem the bleeding from this inflation. It is hurting all of us no matter what income group you fall in. Our wallets are getting lighter while the corporations are making billions.
We got our natural gas and electric bill yesterday for the past month. Our meter reader did the reading this time. The total bill was $ 50.27.
Right away, I knew there was something wrong. In all the years that we have lived here, we have never had a bill that low. The electricity bill showed we only used 7 KWH for 33 days. The natural gas was only 14 ccf’s for 33 days. Since the meter reader read it, I knew it was correct. I also double checked the readings since we had only gotten home Tuesday afternoon and I knew there wouldn’t be much usage for 1 day.
I did the reading last month and submitted it. Evidently, I read it wrong. So I paid for most of this past month in that bill. The sun was shining on the dials and I remember coming into the house and telling Hubby that I thought I had read it right. I guess I didn’t. I even called my utility company to verify all of this. They agreed with me that I read it wrong for the prior bill. So again I prove that I am not perfect. But it sure is nice to have such a small bill this month. I will try not to make that mistake again.
Yesterday, I meant to put a few pictures up. A couple were of Alexa’s ice cream cake and one of the nice fire we had that evening. So for your viewing pleasure, here they are 🙂
On Friday morning we left on a 5 hour trip across our state to my son’s home in the Adirondacks. This was to celebrate my Granddaughter’s Sweet 16 Birthday and to celebrate Father’s Day for Hubby and my son.
For all of you who remember my granddaughter’s birth, when I first started blogging and how excited we were, yes she is 16 now and old enough to get her license. The time has flown and now she is a wonderful, smart, young woman. We love spending time with her and especially enjoyed celebrating this birthday.
I asked her a while ago where she would like to have her birthday dinner. At first she chose Red Robin. But then she changed her mind and wanted to go to Denny’s. So off we went that evening to Denny’s. We have not been in a Denny’s in years and they have sure changed. The food was delicious and the service was fantastic. We have one near our home and we don’t go there but we will consider it in the future. The bill including tip was $100. which I didn’t think was too bad for the 4 of us. She loved it and that is what was most important.
On Saturday night, we all went to Texas Roadhouse to celebrate Father’s Day. Hubby had never been to one. Even though it was very crowded the wait was not too long. My son used the app so we were able to wait in the car instead of in the crowded front of the restaurant. When they called us to come in to wait, we were bumped up to the front of the line and were seated pretty quickly.
Our steaks were so tender and so was the seasoned shrimp. My granddaughter was happy with her chicken tender dinner. With drinks, tax, and tip, dinner came to $177. for the 4 of us. However I had $150. worth of gift cards that I purchased for $120. last December on a deal at Top’s grocery store. So my OOP was only $27. But the true savings was $30. after purchasing the cards. Hubby loved the food and service which was excellent. He wants to go again. So the next time we visit my son, we will do that. I am hoping that Top’s will have that deal again this Christmas and I will accumulate some more gift cards.
After two dinners out, we were tired of eating out. So we celebrated my granddaughter’s birthday on Sunday with presents, dinner grilled outside and her ice cream cake that my son had made at a local ice cream place in the area. Then we had a fire in the fire pit in my son’s yard that evening which was very enjoyable.
We took my granddaughter back to her Mom’s on Monday about noontime so that she could spend some birthday time with her. So all in all she had a wonderful birthday celebration and we loved it all.
On the way back to my son’s home, he took us on a tour of Clifton Park which is where we lived for over 3 decades and where we raised our boys. It was a wonderful place to raise them. It actually made a list a couple of years ago as the 2nd best place to raise a family in the country.
I had been in Clifton Park about 14 years ago so I knew how much the area had grown. But Hubby had not been there in over 25 years. He could not believe how much construction both residential and business had occurred there since we moved to the desert. The traffic is so congested. There is so much more shopping than when we were there. But we both quickly decided that we would not want to move back there. It is so much more peaceful and quiet in the Adirondacks. Beauty is all around you.
Tuesday morning, we headed back to our little town in western NY. The thruway did not have much traffic so it was a nice ride. We hated leaving my son and granddaughter but we were happy to be safely home.
We spent a bit of money this weekend but it was worth every penny. This is one of the reasons that we are so frugal. So that we can do things like this which are very important to us. We did save a bit of money on the trip though. I packed our lunch for the trip out and we ate in the parking lot of a rest area. We also brought coffee, water, and snacks with us. I also made two loaves of homemade pumpkin bread to bring to my son. My son wanted to make us breakfast before we went home. But we were so stuffed from all of the food this weekend, we declined. Since we left early, we knew that we would be home by 1pm and could eat here if we needed to. However, we were not hungry and never ate until dinner when we made shrimp cocktails.
Today our new landscape company is coming to do all of the yard work, put in a new garden with bushes and a tree in the backyard. weed and mulch all of the gardens. I have a telephone call to make to find out about putting in something new here in our home. I will talk about that some time later when it is occurring. I also need to run some errands. Our terrific neighbor who lives next door watered all of the our flowers and hanging baskets so they wouldn’t die while we were gone. So I need to pick up some craft beer as a thank you. We also have a short grocery list.
Oh BTW, I forgot to tell you. I went grocery shopping with my son to both a Hannaford and a Market 32 while we were there. My mouth dropped open when I saw the very large reduced priced meat sections in both stores. It was a shopper’s dream! I have never seen anything like it. Market 32 which is Price Chopper merged with the Top’s corporation a while ago. I don’t understand why we don’t have sections like that in our Top’s stores. But I can tell you that the next time I go to visit my son, I am bringing 2 large coolers so that I can get meat.
I hope you all had wonderful Father’s Day celebrations! TTYL!
