Category: Every Day

We spent from Wednesday to today with our son at his beautiful Adirondack property in Northeastern New York . We just got home about 3 hours ago.

Our plan was to spend Thanksgiving with him and our granddaughter. But you know what they say about the best laid plans. She was exposed to Covid19 at her private school so was under quarantine and we did not get to see her. Fortunately she did not contract the virus! She can go back to school tomorrow. We will see her soon. We miss her so much!

But we had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with my son and three of his friends. We enjoyed every minute of it. The other night it snowed there and the pines on his property were so beautiful with one of the first snows of the season. It is so rural and peaceful where he lives.

We had a good time going out to lunch one day and then visiting his business to see what work had been done on the building since last June when we were there.

Just spending quality time with family is the greatest gift in the world!

Speaking of snow, it is snowing here right now and it is gorgeous! I am happy that I can stay home now and just enjoy it.

I will be back soon this week to continue posting about saving in this environment. I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Since saving on the utility bills has been the topic of my last couple of posts, I have been waiting to see how much my current bill which I read last week came in at. We get billed monthly for what we actually use.

Well, we got it today. If you remember from my last post, we used about 98 less in kilowatt hours for electricity than the same period last year. We also ended up using 12.4 less in therms after they made the conversion from CCF’s to therms.

Last year’s bill for the same month was $ 156.91. The bill we got today was for $ 172. 35. Hubby looked to see what increased and he said most of it was the natural gas cost. The price of a therm was up about 45%. So the bill was $15.44 higher than last year for using a lot less electricity kilowatts and a lot less therms of natural gas.

I am very happy that we were able to keep our usage down and we hope to do that every month. I wish you all luck doing the same.

Since I will be busy the next few days getting ready for Thanksgiving, I want to wish you and your families a wonderful holiday. I hope you make many new memories.

This is the topic that I have decided to do today. Usually I start with food but with heating season upon us I think this is the most important one now.

We have cut many of our electricity costs over the past few years. We have LED bulbs in every socket inside and outside our home. They have come down in price compared to when they first came out so are relatively cheap to purchase. We had CFL’s prior to this and we saved a bit of money by switching to the LED’s.

We purchased a new refrigerator a couple of years back along with a new energy efficient washer and dryer this year. Both of those purchases have helped lower our costs.

But we still have to be cognizant of all the other things that we need to do.

What you are seeing in the picture is the meter that I use to check to see how much energy different things that take electricity cost us in our home. It tells us what we are using and the estimated cost. I haven’t used it in quite a while but I am cooking differently now so I want to check all my kitchen appliances that I am using to see what I am actually using. I only had it plugged into an outlet when I took the picture.

I am making chicken in my Instant Pot for dinner. I will plug the pot cord into the meter and then connect the meter to the outlet and just let it measure while my chicken is cooking. I believe that the instant pot uses less energy than my other small appliances but I want to be sure. So I will cook the same chicken recipe over the next few weeks in my air fryer, crock pot, and toaster oven to find out. After doing a lot of research, I believe the second most energy saving one is the crock pot followed by the air fryer and then the toaster oven. But I want to be sure so I will do this recipe in them all. We will be eating a lot of chicken around here.

I rarely use my oven or range top anymore. I am using the pressure cooker a lot. I also use my small electric fry pan and waffle maker for eggs, bacon, sausage, chaffles, and Keto pancakes.

On the rare occasion that I do use the range top, I try to keep covers on things especially if I am boiling water. I use the lowest heat I can that will cook quickly. I always turn the burner off before things are done by a few minutes and just let the residual heat finish the cooking for me. If I use the oven to bake or roast some meat, I make sure I fill the oven up with lots of dishes so that I have things cooked ahead and don’t waste all of that natural gas cooking just one item. I also turn the oven off 5-10 minutes early and just let things continue to cook. When I take them out of the oven, I leave the oven door all the way open to let all that heat flow out into our kitchen.

When I do the laundry, I use the ECO setting on my washer. I wash and rinse using cold water most of the time. I use laundry detergent when I have really soiled clothes like yesterday when Hubby was getting rid of most of the rest of the leaves that had fallen. He came in and his jacket was a disaster. So it got sprayed with stain remover and washed in warm water and the same on the rinse. Since I had just done the laundry the day before, I had to look for things to wash with it. I had a few clothes and then grabbed the bathroom towels to go in too. I always do full loads.

Now that I have back issues, I use my dryer for everything but my good tops, blouses, and lingerie or anything that is really delicate. Those things all get hung on the guest bathroom shower rod. I use 6 wool balls in my dryer which lets me dry clothes faster and they come out less wrinkled so I don’t have to dry them as long. I also use the EcoDry setting. After I remove the clothes, I leave that door open for just a few minutes to let the heat into the room.

We have a programmable thermostat for our heating. Hubby has it set at 71 from 9am to 10pm. It is set at 64 from 10pm to 7am. Then it goes up to 68 from 7am to 9am. Hubby is always cold so this is how we have to do it. Set yours at what is comfortable for you so that you can save some energy. I run around my house in shorts and a tee all winter, I sweat at 71 especially if I am doing a lot of work. But I can’t have Hubby cold. I think I have an internal furnace so I am always hot. When Hubby went to work during the years our boys were in school, I set the temperature down to 64 when they left and turned it back up to 70 about an hour before Hubby came home. I was quite comfortable at 64 all day.

We keep an electric blanket on our bed so that we are warm while sleeping, Usually I just heat it up until I am warm and then turn it off for the night.

I am going to have to continue this post tomorrow because I am tired and it is time to rest. I have a lot more to say on this topic.

I am hearing of so many people struggling right now. Times are getting tough for a lot of people. Prices, as you all know, have risen pretty quickly on food, clothing, OTC medicines, cleaning products, hygiene products, gasoline, propane, oil for heating, etc. Doctors and dentists have raised what they charge. We have just gotten notification that our private health insurance and Medicare will be going up January 1st. The Medicare costs will eat in to the Social Security increase for next year. People who rely on that to live are going to have a much tougher time next year than they have had this year even though they should end up with a small increase.

Your local towns and cities will likely raise your property taxes at the highest percentage increase that you have seen in years. Their costs have risen too. I know I am planning on my January property tax bill being much higher. Some may raise your sales taxes or those fees and surcharges that you see on everyday bills like phone service, cellphone service, and your utility bills. We all know that the media and our government have warned us that it is going to be a rough winter because electricity, natural gas, oil and propane bills are going to be huge. I have seen predictions of 30 up to 40% increases. People who have filled their propane and oil tanks already have felt the higher prices. We get billed monthly for natural gas and electricity. We saw an increase last month. I just submitted our readings for this past month yesterday. I am expecting a much larger bill than the same period last year even though we cut our natural gas by 15 CCF’s and our electricity by 98 KWH. We live in a very snowy and cold climate in the winter and our heat has been running all month so I am expecting this bill to a doozy. But that will just be the beginning of these costs rising. I believe it will get worse. I could get into the politics of it but I think you all know why those prices are rising.

Let’s talk about the pain at the pump! UGH! We are paying $ 3.50 per gallon here for gasoline. I am sure there are many people across the country paying a lot more than that especially in states like California. I expect that the prices for the Thanksgiving travel will rise. So if you work from home or are retired get your gasoline tank filled before the prices go up. Even if you aren’t traveling and just need gasoline to go to work next week, fill up today or tomorrow so that you don’t have to fill up next week. Those that are traveling may have to fill up next week too but at least you will have gotten one tank of gas at a cheaper price.

We have gotten notification from our homeowners insurance that the cost to rebuild our home has gone up(lumber prices) so when we get our renewal in March, it will cost more. Not only because of that but their costs have gone up too just like yours and because of so many weather disasters across our country this past year. Many have mentioned that they have gotten their policy increases this Fall and they are way up.

So what do you do if your income hasn’t increased or it has decreased? You get back to basics or what I call a bare bones budget! I have lived through a period like this back in the early seventies when I had little ones. It happened right after we purchased our first home and my oldest was born and then my youngest. Fortunately, our mortgage interest was only about 7.5%. But many that got mortgages shortly after we bought were at 16%. That is what happens when there is inflation. We have not even seen what inflation will really be like in this country because the Treasury has been controlling the interest rates. Just wait until they start allowing those to go up! Every time the government prints money, our costs go up. You have already seen and it is going to get worse and worse every time they spend money that they don’t have. So many people thought that the stimulus checks were free. They weren’t free; we are all paying for them through the printing of money which is devaluing what your dollar is worth. Every time they pass something that is going to cost money, the $ gets devalued more and more. We haven’t seen anything yet. Obviously we survived the inflation of the 1970’s but I believe this will be even worse. So I have some experience working with a bare bones budget and will be writing articles on what you must do to be able to survive it. I will tackle one topic at a time when I can because I am still dealing with health issues. If I am up to it, I may write the first one later today.

So what are you guys doing to control these increases? Share in the comments so that you can help other people who may be able to use your advice.

We a did a little cost cutting today but not much. I took Hubby to a shoe store in town to find some moccasins to replace the ones he has that are falling apart. He found nothing he liked. So he now is looking online. I am hoping he can find what he wants at a good price.

While we were out, we went to Top’s again and then to Aldi’s. I ran into Top’s to see if they had restocked the Ragu spaghetti sauce. They had so I picked up 5 more jars at $ .99 each. Hubby loves the Crystal Light Raspberry Iced Tea and I have not been able to find it in a while. I spotted 2 of them and got them for $ 3.19 each.

At Aldi’s they had Hellmann’s Mayo for $ 3.77 so I got 3. I can’t find it cheaper anywhere else. It is Hubby’s favorite and he goes through it quickly. He found the 2 honey dry roasted nuts for snacks. My last purchase was the on sale 3 packs of organic ground beef for $17.96. I bought 2 of them because that is all they had. Normally I am at the store on Wednesdays when they open. But we didn’t go until noontime because we were up very late watching the election returns on TV.

My Top’s and the shoe store are in the same plaza. Aldi’s is only 2 blocks up the street. So we only drove a few miles round trip. I try to use as little gasoline as possible by going to places that are close to each other.

So how did you cut costs today?