Tag: a little of this and a little of that

I still have not gone grocery shopping. I am hoping to do that today. Our week that wasn’t too busy has turned into a very busy week.

The company who we hired came out on Monday to check out our A/C. We have a leak. We had the man give us an estimate of what it would cost to find the leak. It was $1400. plus about $160. for the freon after they fix the leak. So $1560. + tax to fix it. Since our central A/C is 13 years old, we asked him what it would cost to replace the unit. The repairman gave us an estimate range but he said he would have to have a sales person come out to give us that. He came out about dinner time. That estimate was $6,000. + tax after giving us a cash discount. Plus there is a Federal Tax credit of about $1400. for 2023. Since this unit is almost at the end of it’s life, Hubby and I discussed what to do. The unit we have is a 13 seer. The manufacturers’ no longer make them. They have a few in stock but that was it. That sent up a red flag to us that if we replaced it with a 13 seer that they have in stock, how long would they continue to make the parts to repair them.

Since Hubby is an engineer, he discussed the seers of the units with the guy. Hubby determined that we would go with a 16 seer because it also qualifies for the Federal tax credit for 2023. It will be much more efficient than the one we have especially since the one we have Hubby had noted had slowed down last year. It took a lot longer to get the temperature where we wanted it. The price they quoted us was for the 16 seer. With utility prices up, an efficient unit is important to us. It will save us money in the long run and will be a selling point if we decide to ever sell our home.

It was important to me to ask the guy when they could install it. It is getting hotter here and we do not do well with humidity. They had one opening on Friday. I was relieved because we were thinking it could take weeks. So we have contracted for the new unit.

We are well aware that when they replace the coil in the furnace, they may find that the box is cracked. If that is the case, we will have to replace the furnace. That would be about another $6,000. plus tax. I believe there is a Federal Tax credit for the furnace if it needs to be replaced also. Hubby will be in the basement with the installers when they put the new coil in so he will know if it is cracked or not. We are praying that is isn’t. But if it is, we will do what we have to do.

I am often asked why we continue to be frugal. This is why. Things break and have to be replaced or repaired. If we had not saved our entire lives, we would be left having to finance these things and we hate debt! Debt brings stress and we wanted a carefree, stress free life in retirement. So if you are planning your retirement, account for repairs and replacements for your house and to replace your car when need be. The cheapest way to do that is by paying cash. You can usually get a cash discount if you ask and by not financing, you are saving all of that interest.

I also wanted to let you know that we got our electric and gas bill yesterday. Last year’s bill was $145.93. This year we used 11 less kilowatt hours in electricity and 1 therm more of natural gas due to the furnace being on longer due to how cold it has been here this spring. Hopefully it is now off permanently.

This years bill was $129. 24. A lot less but the bill was for 4 days less than the same 2022 bill. We have also been doing everything we can to keep our usage down.

Now I am off to the grocery store.

My company has left to go home. So I did my grocery shopping for the week at Top’s. There was not much that interested me this week. I opened the large pack of chicken legs to food saver them. Then I realized that I hadn’t taken a picture for you. The chicken legs were on loss leader for $ 1.19 a lb. This was 4 meals worth for us. We use the air fryer to cook them and then add heated Frank’s Hot Sauce mixed with butter to coat them. They have more meat than wings and these are cheaper for our football game meals this Fall.

They had rotisserie chickens on sale for $ 5.99 with a super coupon. Whole uncooked chickens were also on sale this week. However, this was already cooked and I don’t have to turn on my rotisserie oven and make the rub to cook it. I have a busy week so this suffices. I will take all of the meat off of it and freeze it into portions for future meals. Tonight, I will put the carcass in the crock pot overnight to make chicken bone broth. I may make soup this week or next.

The last thing I purchased was 2 sirloin steaks for $ 4.99 a lb. That is all I can fit in my little freezer. I am seriously considering purchasing another small freezer. Beef prices are down(at least for a while) because farmers culled many of their herds because they couldn’t afford to feed them. I will make a decision soon.

We really had a great relaxing time with our company. We only went to a party that we go to annually where a friend smokes briskets, pork bellies and this year she did peppers with cheese and bacon wrapped around them. They were delicious! She invited our extended family which we really appreciated! It was a lot of fun! The rest of the time, I cooked 3 meals a day and Hubby did all of the grilling. I am exhausted. But it was all worth it.

Food prices have risen so high that there are many things that I am just not purchasing any more. If they aren’t on loss leader and we can go without them, we do. I substitute many things. We are eating more salads this summer and we will be making more soups this fall. They are easy and cheaper to make especially the soups. We are making more salad dressings and condiments. We have a bread machine so we make breads. I do have some bread dough in the freezer that needs to be used up by baking it in the oven. But I won’t do that until the A/C has been off for the season.

We are eating leftovers for a few days because I refuse to waste them. So we have hamburgers, some pork tenderloin, cold cuts, wild rice, broccoli, corn on the cob, blueberry muffins and blueberry pancakes to use up. I won’t cook until they are gone. Then I will cook a meal that will last us 2-3 days. This is how I am keeping my utility bills down. More on that tomorrow.

Are you getting any good deals this week?

It has been a while since I have been able to talk with you. It has been a busy month and I have not had time to prepare a post. So I am just going to speak as if I was just chatting with you.

I have again been dealing with health issues which means lots of running to doctors, many tests, being rushed to the ER at 4am one day, resting when I can, etc. I am still dealing with doctors the next 2 months and now a chiropractor every week. Getting old is not fun!

But I have missed all of you during this time. So it is time to get back to frugality.

How is your grocery shopping going? I was finally able to get out and do a quick shop at two stores yesterday. I went to Aldi’s and Walmart. I was surprised at how few people were in the stores. There was only about 1/4 of the number of people that I would usually see on a Monday. After looking at some of the prices, I think that I understand why. There were many things that I would not pay the inflated prices for. I imagine that many people are not shopping these days because of the prices. I hope that they stocked for a few months when prices were lower. I have also heard on the news that many people are using the food banks more.

All I had to pick up at Aldi’s was heavy whipping cream at $ 3.89 a quart. Not only do I use it in my coffee in the morning but we make Keto ice cream with it. So I picked up 4 while they had them. I also got a large container of vanilla yogurt. Since eggs have gotten so expensive, I now have some yogurt with a sprinkling of blueberry cinnamon Keto nut granola for breakfast every other day.

At Walmart, I picked up fresh tomatoes for our salads at $ 1.48 a lb. They were beautiful. Aldi’s had them on sale but they were rotten. Walmart’s produce section has shrunk to 4 wooden boxes of veggies and some prepared packaged items. They also had tons of bananas at $.47 a lb. I was really shocked at how poorly stocked they were. As I walked the store, I saw many holes in freezer cases with frozen veggies and potatoes very low.

I was looking for a favorite cookie for Hubby. The cookie aisle had two stacks of fig newtons and no other cookies. They had filled the aisle up with chips. Wherever there were holes on the shelves, you would find these chips even amongst the crackers which were very lean. Just about every aisle that had items was filled up with items that didn’t belong there, mostly junk food.

As I was walking through the cereal aisle, I found a few packages of Oreo’s at one end. I was able to get 2 packages of what Hubby wanted. Lots of shelves were fronted with items but nothing behind them.

While I was perusing the dairy aisle, I noticed that there were not many eggs. I checked the price on the 5 dozen box that I usually buy. Two weeks ago I paid $ 8.60 for it. Now it is $ 13.83. Ugh!

Hubby is having allergy issues this spring. I am very low on Kleenex. I looked at Aldi’s for some and they had none. I got the last 4 of 7 on the shelf at Walmart. There was plenty of toilet paper though. I told Hubby if I can’t get more, we will revert to using our handkerchiefs.

The clothing sections were sparse also.

I couldn’t help but wonder if China keeps their people locked down, will we have food and clothing in a few months? And many other items. The worst thing that happened in the 1990’s was that we went to a global economy. We make hardly anything here anymore and that is not a good thing.

The same can be said for oil, natural gas and electricity. We are all getting hit hard with those prices. My gas and electric bill has gone up 24-28% every month since we turned the heat on for the winter even though we save on using electricity and and natural gas every day. We still have our heat on because our nights are still very cold. Our gasoline has gone down a little to $ 4.28 a gallon. However NY State and my county will both drop the sales tax on gasoline effective June 1st. NYS is dropping it 16 cents per gallon and our county has capped how much they get so we will see what that does. But I have the feeling that as long as we have a war and this administration does not open up our production, the gasoline prices will continue to rise. I am also concerned that we will see shortages of both gasoline and natural gas.

Well, I hope to be posting more frequently now that I am getting a little bit better. My property taxes are rising again with a huge increase in my assessment. But I will talk about that another day.

Let me know how you are doing with the rise of prices on just about everything.

Since Hubby and I love to do drumsticks in the air fryer, I finally got up to Aldi’s this week and got two packages at $.79 a lb. The price came off the receipt at the end. This is the best price that I have gotten for these in a very long time.

Once I got home I immediately used the food saver and froze them into meal size packages.

On Thursday, I had a Walmart delivery. I was pleasantly surprised that they sent all of these things free. They were inside that snowman bag. Since we are getting low on floss, I was happy to get that. Hubby can’t wait to try the mustard. I tried the coffee this morning. I put the GV knockoff of Nutella away for when my granddaughter visits since she loves it. You have to love freebies!

Hubby and I have been taking it easy and watching a lot of movies and shows on Netflix and Amazon Prime. We have been watching football games too. I have been trying to keep him off of his foot so that it will heal. It is getting there but I don’t want him to do too much too fast. So I have been doing all of the work and waiting on him.

He was craving beef barley soup so I made a pot last night. We will have it again tonight. I rarely measure anything when I make soup. It was just beef broth with chunks of beef, sliced carrots, diced onions and celery, and pearled barley. He loved it!

Since we have everything done for Christmas, we have been working on our financial plan for the New Year. We have a number of projects planned through out the year. If and when we can all travel again, we will be doing some of that too.

I have been planing out my blog posts for 2021 and listing the topics. I am hoping to teach you many more things.

Are you all ready for Christmas? Have you written your goals and plans for 2021?

What I had planned to do today went out the window after waking up to our first real snowstorm of the winter. It is still snowing pretty heavily and I don’t know how long it will keep up. The weather forecast showed most of the snow going way south of us. But I guess they were wrong again. So unless it stops soon, I will be spending the day indoors. I had planned on going to Tractor Supply and Aldi’s but that will have to wait.

The only grocery shopping that I have been going out to do is to pick up meat specials, especially beef. A reader mentioned that beef goes on sale in December and I had forgotten that. In my estimation, this month may be one of the last ones to get beef at good prices, even though they have gone up in recent months. I may be wrong but remembering all of the cows that got slaughtered last spring when the meat processing plants closed for a while, I expect that beef will be in short supply and that prices will soar next year.

So instead of paying $ 6.79 a pound, I purchased these two roasts for $3.49 a pound. They are eye round roasts. They had bottom round, top round, eye round and sirloin tip roasts on sale for this price. I was a bit leery of buying them since the last time I purchased eye round roasts at Top’s, they were tough as could be. So I went and talked with the head butcher. I asked him which of these roasts should be the most tender if you roast them in the oven. I told him we like them medium. He said he would buy the eye rounds. He said to roast them at low heat and slice them thin. I hope he is right. Otherwise they will become stew meat.

For many, many years, I purchased eye round and sirloin tip roasts and they were always tender roasted. But the past few years, they have been tough. I wonder what is different. Does anyone know? Can anyone tell me what kind of roast they do in the oven that comes out tender? I would greatly appreciate your opinion before I buy any more.

Well, I guess I better go down on the treadmill before I start cleaning today. I hope you all have a great day.