Tag: cutting costs

Since I like to cook 12-16 ounces of bacon at a time, I decided to fry a 12 ounce package in my electric fry pan on Saturday. My pan is large so I can put all the strips in at once. My natural gas to cook on the stove is much more expensive to use. So we now have bacon for a few days. I made eggs for me this morning and Hubby had some of his homemade Keto pancakes that I had put in the freezer.

I have been rearranging things in my freezer so that I can get another turkey or two in my freezer. I have been taking things out of the packaging and using my food saver to repackage them. As of Saturday I still didn’t have all of the prices for my area yet. But whatever the prices are, it will be the cheapest meat we can buy.

I was going to go to Top’s on Saturday to get the cheap celery with a Super Coupon. I was hemming and hawing about spending the gas even though I had to also fill the car up. So I looked up Walmart’s reduced price for the celery as part of their reduction for Thanksgiving and found it was $ .98. Top’s with the coupon was $ 1.29. I will go on Monday to Top’s, Aldi’s, and Walmart. They are all a block apart. Top’s has Rao’s spaghetti sauce for $ 5.29 after an e-coupon and cream cheese for $ 1.39 after a Super Coupon. I will tank up my car while I am there too since I have $ .20 off a gallon there that makes it the cheapest place to buy gas. I have a small list for Aldi’s and a little bigger list for Walmart. This way I can get all my shopping done and tank up the car in one trip.

Hubby and I have been using up the shampoo, lotion, toothpaste, and mouthwash that he brought home from the hospital.

My son and grandson came for breakfast on Sunday. We had sausage, bacon, and eggs that I pulled out of the freezer. The eggs made perfect scrambled eggs so I know that I can freeze whole eggs with no issues.

My son helped Hubby put the grill in the shed for the winter, put the cover on our huge patio umbrella for the winter, put the snow tires in the back of the SUV so that I can get them put on the car this week, and move the snowblower from the shed to the garage in case I need it to do the sidewalk this winter. My other son will tune it up and get it ready for the winter when he comes for Thanksgiving.

On Sunday, I put two sirloin steaks(I had no stew meat) in the crockpot along with a whole bunch of fresh veggies. I used a little bit of low sodium beef broth thickened with xanthan gum. It was delicious and it made enough for the next two nights or more.

I have always wondered but never did the research to find out which of the lights in my kitchen take the most energy. I have 5 indoor LED recessed flood lights in the ceiling over my counters. I also have two ceiling lights in the center of the kitchen that take 3- 5W LED bulbs each. So that is 6 bulbs when they are on. My research told me that at night when we are using lights now that it is daylight saving time, it is cheaper to turn on the flood lights than the 5W ceiling lights. So that is what we will always do.

I ran a full load of dishes and air dried them. I did one load of wash in cold water and hung it to dry.

Today is Monday. I was up and out early to run errands. I filled the car up with gasoline. I used my $ .20 off per gallon points so I paid $ 3.599 a gallon.

Then I went in to Top’s to grocery shop. I thought I was prepared but I missed the fine print in the ad that advertised the $ .58 price on their store brand turkeys. You had to spend $30. without the turkey included in that to get that price. I only had a couple of other things on my list. So I got the cream cheese for $ 1.39 with the super coupon, the Rao’s spaghetti sauce for $ 5.29 after sale and e-coupon, and a SF cool whip for $ 2.79. Then I looked around the store to see what I might need that was on sale. They had the Bounty 4 double rolls on sale for $ 8.49. I had an e-coupon for $1.00 off on one. Since I was down to just one paper towel roll at home, I picked up 3 packages. The turkey was 18.87 lbs. at $ .58 a lb for a total of $ 10.94. Next time I will read the fine print in the ad online. UGH! I will not be doing that again.

But anyhow, I got my second turkey. I might be able to buy another one on sale somewhere when I take one out to defrost for Thanksgiving. That is if there are any left in the stores. At these prices, it is the cheapest meat you can buy. I like to cook one every couple of months over the winter. Then I food saver the meat and use it in place of chicken. I always make bone broth from the carcasses and skin and can it. That way I don’t have to buy it. So if you have the freezer space, think about getting a few turkeys for cheap protein.

Hubby is out mowing the lawn on his rider. He said the doctor said he could try it and if it bothered him to stop doing it. I have been watching him while I type this because he is making me very nervous. But to far so good.

We are going to catch up on the shows on the DVR from last night when he comes in.

Dinner will be leftover stew. The rest of the day, I will be working in the basement going through boxes and only keeping what we really need.

Did you do anything in the last three days to save money?

Yesterday, even before breakfast, we went to our appointments at Rite Aid to get our flu shots that are covered by Medicare. I also made our bed and cleaned the bathroom sinks, kitchen sink, and all the counters before we went out. We used some cleaners from our stockpile.

Then we came home and I made us cheddar cheese, diced orange pepper, and onion omelets. Hubby had sausage with it and I had ham again. I have been trying to use up the ham in the fridge before it goes bad.

Then it was time to wash and prepare our produce in the fridge so that I can just pull it out when I need something. Things are stacked in no particular order. It has been driving me crazy!

This chaos is what I am talking about. One produce drawer was so stuffed that I had to pull things out to find other things. The other drawer wasn’t much better.

So I pulled everything out and washed the crisper drawers.

We don’t use much fruit so I have delegated both crisper drawers as vegetable drawers. The strawberries need to be used up today so we will eat them tonight as a dessert with SF whipped cream. The blueberries I froze to use for pancakes and muffins.

Then I spent some time cleaning and cutting up everything else. You are seeing the crisper drawers before I put covers on each item before I put them back in the refrigerator. All of this is ready for salads except the avocados which I can’t do ahead of time. They are easy enough to add to a salad last minute or to have with my breakfast eggs. Hubby is eating salad with almost every dinner. So this makes it easy to put together. We also like to use peppers in eggs, salads and stir fries.

This is the other finished drawer.

The bagged salad will get eaten pretty quickly. It is my favorite. The onions get used in a multitude of dishes. The rest of the bag of onions is in the pantry. Hubby likes celery stuffed with peanut butter for a snack so this celery won’t last long. The carrots are cut smaller when needed for dill dip. I also use them in soups and stews. The two cucumbers which you can just see over the top of the bagged salad will get used quickly because I like them for a snack. I never cut them up ahead of time because they get slimy.

Doing all this preparation lets me just grab what I need when I am putting meals together. It’s all washed and pretty much prepped. This way of doing things allows me to quickly determine what I need at the grocery store. Celery and tomatoes have already been put on my next grocery list.

BTW, all of the containers you see in my crisper drawers were bought years ago. I always use what I can find at home first before I buy anything.

My landscape company came out and put our winter fertilizer down on the lawn. I expect we will see our landscape crew soon to cut bushes back, trim trees, and weed. That will also be their last time this year. These things were all paid for last spring.

Hubby made coleslaw using the angel hair coleslaw that I purchased this week. It had no carrots in it so he grated some himself and made homemade dressing. We had that with the other half of the steak that we grilled last night. Hubby cut the rest of the steak up in thin slices and sauteed it with butter and garlic. It was a delicious dinner. He seems to be feeling better because he is enjoying cooking again.

What did you do to save money today?

Hubby went to the lab for blood work which will all be paid for by our insurances.

I made ham and eggs for me for breakfast. Hubby had some of his homemade Keto pancakes.

We had to replace our reusable cups for our Keurig a few days ago. We bought some stainless steel filter ones which fit perfectly in the Keurig without having to remove the piece that holds the K cups. They are so easy and left no grains in our coffee which was a good thing. Our old ones were very old and were leaking grains into our cups.

The Aqua Systems technician came today and blew the water out of our sprinkler system lines so that they won’t freeze over the winter. It is cheaper to have this done than to replace parts that freeze and break. Many times you have to spend some money to save much more in the long run.

I did a load of towels along with a terry cloth bathrobe in cold water using my homemade laundry detergent. I dried them in the dryer with my dryer balls to save on electricity.

I decided, since we have such a busy week, to get a Walmart grocery delivery. It came this morning. I needed avocados, a 46 ct. box of Slim Jims, some Quest tortilla protein chips, Enlightened (Keto friendly) ice cream bars, a pint of Rebel ice cream, a bagged bacon ranch crunch chopped salad, 2- 24 oz. Great Value bacon, and a bag of angel hair coleslaw. The entire order came to $ 46.93 plus tip. Expensive but cheaper than elsewhere for me. That is really all I needed this week. The avocados were absolutely perfect much to my surprise. And the bacon is the best value that I can find anywhere. Plus whoever is pulling the bacon for my orders really knows how to pick it. It is always extremely meaty.

Dinner was steak done on our outdoor grill. It will probably be the last one cooked out there this year. The grill will be put in the shed for the winter this weekend when my son comes. I added a Caesar salad to our steak and that was dinner. We have enough steak left for another meal or breakfast.

Did you save any money yesterday?

We started our day out yesterday eating chicken salad in a lettuce wrap. I made it with leftover shredded chicken from the rotisserie chicken, diced celery and a little mayonnaise.

I spent some time browsing books on the Hoopla app which I get via my local library. I have made a list of what I want to read over the long cold winter. This is a great free service that you can get via most libraries. Mine also has the Libby app. I love the fact that I don’t have to leave my house and go to the library to borrow books. It is a savings of gasoline and time! Plus I don’t like going out in the cold and snow unless it is absolutely necessary.

A lot of my time yesterday was spent hemming two pair of pants by hand. I wish I was a normal size but even my size in short is too long for me. So they always have to be taken up. I could have taken them to the seamstress up the road but she is expensive and I didn’t want to spend the money.

The only small appliances that I leave on my counters in the kitchen are the air fryer oven, toaster oven, Kitchen aid mixer, and Keurig coffeepot. They are left out because I have a lot of counter space and I use them all of the time. I used to keep all the others in the basement but they were heavy for me to carry up and down the stairs. So Hubby built me some wire shelves in the garage. The problem with that is Hubby also was using those shelves for all the garage stuff and it was starting to encroach on my appliances. Plus garages get dirty meaning I had to wash the appliances whenever I wanted to use them. Plus the garage gets cold over the winter. So I wanted to remove them from the garage and put them in a space that would be convenient for me without having to spend money on something to house them. I finally decided to rearrange things that were in the guest room closets. I put a lot of things in the donation pile that I no longer needed. The guest room closet of the room that mostly adults stay in had a shelf of board games, card games and puzzles in them. I decided to neatly put them on the closet shelf in the room the grandchildren stay in.

Since the room where the adults stay now only has some spare blankets and pillows and my cases of canning jars, etc., I decided to put the extra small appliances on that shelf. It is right down the hall from the kitchen and they will stay clean in there. Dilemma solved and no money spent on housing those appliances.

Dinner tonight was taco salads. I made them with romaine, onions, sliced black olives, tomato salsa(for Hubby), guacamole salsa, taco meat, triple cheddar cheese and sour cream. Lately I have not been able to find decent avocados. So instead I purchased the guacamole salsa. I had never put salsa on mine so I tried the guacamole and it was spicy and delicious.

My supermarket ads came for next week. I only saw two things at Top’s that I need. But Aldi’s had quite a few so my two shopping lists are ready for me to go next Tuesday which is senior discount day at Top’s.

Tonight’s entertainment will be Thursday night football free on Twitch which we will stream to our big TV.

Did you save any money today? If so please share with all of us in the comments.

First I want to apologize to all of you who wrote such nice comments on the post about Hubby’s heart attack. I am sorry that I didn’t get a chance to respond to them until this morning. I am trying to get caught up and have now responded to each and every one of you. Your prayers are greatly appreciated and so is your kindness. Hubby is taking his medicines and taking it easy like he was told to. He sees our cardiologist next week so we will see if he approves of the changes in the medicines that were made by the hospital doctors. I am very interested to see what he has to say about his heart attack. Thanks again to all of you!

Hubby had a low carb wrap with ham, provolone cheese, and lettuce for brunch. I was too busy to eat.

I had an appointment at Supercuts to get my hair cut. The stylist did a good job. I like the cut she gave me. With tip it cost me just $25. I noticed that my roots are really starting to come in. The stylist says it looks like my hair will be white with a sprinkling of gray. Hubby thinks it will make me look 20 years older and that I will hate it. I think he is right. So I am on the hunt for a coupon for hair color and I will do it myself. Yesterday Cindi told me that they have a senior discount. I don’t know if the stylist automatically gave me that or if I have to ask for it. I will ask next time. Thank you so much Cindi for that tip.

After my appointment, I stopped at Aldi’s to get the 5 lb. bag of chicken legs they had on sale for $ .89 a lb. They had none left. I wasn’t too disappointed since I have some in the freezer along with lots of other cuts of chicken.

I have 2 medical statements that came in the mail last week one of which was incorrect and didn’t show my cash co-pay that I made when I was in the office of $25. Fortunately, I always get receipts and keep them. I got that straightened out with the billing office yesterday. Medical bills are high enough without paying what you don’t owe.

The second was a medical statement from my insurance company that looked like a denial of claim that I would have to appeal for my ER hospital visit in July. I called them because the explanation of why they denied it was not there. I was told “Oh that is just a standard letter we send out when we need more info from the hospital”. It would have been nice if they had explained that and told me why instead of telling me they weren’t paying it. The representative said updates will be coming and I have no responsibility for any of that bill at the moment. I hate dealing with insurance companies on bills.

I texted my neighbor who is a good friend of ours to tell her about Hubby. I asked her if she or her Hubby knew anyone who could snowplow our driveway this winter. She told me she would tell her Hubby because he might know someone. He yelled over to me yesterday when I was leaving the house to go to the hair salon. He said he had a friend who said he would do it. We talked with him last night. He will do it from first snow through the last snow. His flat rate for the winter was very reasonable also. That is a huge load lifted off of my mind! My son who lives in the Adirondacks and is coming for Thanksgiving offered to teach me how to use the snow blower and tune it up for us for the winter just in case. I am going to take him up on that offer even if I only need it to do the sidewalk that leads to our porch. I used to snow blow once in a while when the kids were growing up but I need a refresher course.

We ate the leftover chicken enchilada casserole from the night before along with some string beans I cooked up from fresh. Waste not, want not!

Hubby and I continued last night to catch up on our shows on DVR. So that was our entertainment for the evening.

Did any of you save any money yesterday?

These are the things I did yesterday to cut our costs.

You all know that my expensive hair salon has been something I have needed to take off my list for a long time. Hubby has always told me to keep going there because I like the hairdresser. However, her prices have gone up and I can no longer justify paying almost $150. every 4-6 weeks for haircuts, root touch ups, and highlights. So I cancelled my next appointment. I will be making an appointment at Supercuts for a haircut which I desperately need. I don’t know what they charge but I am sure it is way less for a haircut than I have been paying. I will also be looking for a coupon to defray that cost. I will be letting my gray or white hair grow in over the winter. I have no idea what color it is. At my age, I don’t care about getting it colored anymore. As long as it is clean, neat, and cut, that is all I will concern myself with. If for some reason my natural color turns out to be awful, I will color it myself. A box of hair color purchased with a coupon will be so much cheaper than what I am paying now.

I used the electric fry pan(cheaper than heating up the gas stove) to make Hubby some Keto blueberry pancakes for breakfast. I actually made a whole bunch to freeze for future meals when he is craving them.

The temperature outside has been in the 70’s and will be 69 today so the heat only seems to come on overnight when it is colder. That will save us some money. We just got our natural gas and electric bill for the month ending October 21. We only used 390 kwh instead of the 451 kwh we used same period last year. I have really been watching our usage and cutting back. We did use 1 therm more of natural gas than last year but it has been colder. Our bill last year was $ 115. This year’s bill was $ 144. so $ 29. more. It would have been so much higher if I hadn’t been cutting back on the electric.

I washed a very large load of wash with cold water and rinsed in cold water. About 1/2 of the load, I hung to dry. The rest was dried in the dryer using my dryer balls to save on how long it needed to run to dry. I used my homemade powered laundry detergent in the wash.

Hubby had been procrastinating on taking the 6 hour course for NYS online that saves us 10% off our car insurance. You take the course and you get 10% off each year for 3 years. The course saves us on average $119. per year. The course only costs us $ 25. So we end up saving $332. Today he is sitting at his computer and taking it. It needed to be taken by October 31st. So that is now done.

Since Hubby was taking the course and could reach me on our cellphone if he needed me, I took a quick trip to Top’s. I picked up 4 Two Good yogurts, a package of romaine lettuce, some all natural deli sliced turkey and roast beef to put on salads, 1 G Hughes salad dressing, 4 cream cheeses, 1 cheddar cheese block on sale and 1 pkg. of mozzarella sticks for a chicken recipe, a rotisserie chicken, 2 Skinny Pop, 2 on sale sour creams, 2 Rao’s spaghetti sauces and a pill splitter. The rotisserie chicken was on sale so it cost me less than buying the whole chicken and roasting it myself. I will put the skin and carcass in the freezer until I get a second carcass and then I will make bone broth. Total cost for all was $ 77.64. Just outrageous! But they were all things we needed.

Dinner was easy. I had already cooked Jalapeno Cheddar Sausages leftover from last night. They just needed to be reheated in the microwave. I served them with healthy homemade coleslaw that we had had the night before. I always try to cook for 2 meals at a time to save time and energy.

I have many, many, paper plates right now. So I have been using them when I can to save on running the dishwasher as often as I have been.

Our entertainment for the evening was Hubby watched Monday night football and I called and chatted with my sister for an hour.

Did you do anything to save money yesterday? Please share with us in the comments so we can learn from you.

I think all of us would have to have blinders on to not realize how expensive food, water, OTC, personal care, soaps, and cleaning products have gotten.

But utility bills, gasoline and diesel, insurances, cable TV, telephone service, streaming services, etc. have also gone up.

Lumber, clothing, auto parts, parts to fix just about everything, and just about everything else have also risen.

Our tax assessment went up by $140,000. this spring. Hubby has estimated that our school tax bill due in September will go up by $786. using the numbers that our town gave us. Our property tax will also take a major hit because of it in January. We do get a basic star rebate on our school taxes each year which every homeowner is entitled to but we do not receive the enhanced star for seniors nor a reduced property tax because we make too much money. To make things even worse, our school district is considering having a capital project in addition to safety and security upgrades. They want the residents’ feedback on a multi-purpose turf athletic field, re-routing of bus traffic to get it off a certain road, pool reconstruction, and a Pre-K addition. I foresee a special vote to pay for all of this. You can bet we are putting our two cents in on those items. This period of inflation is a horrible time to hit the residents with more expenses after the huge increases in tax assessments.

I expect that prices will rise into 2024 or longer. As long as our government continues to spend money they do not have, inflation will continue to rear it’s ugly head.

I am seeing seniors and other people in the markets checking out the prices on meats, produce, and other items and not buying them. I have gotten to the point that I am very selective about meat purchases. If I feel it is too expensive, I will not buy it. Most of the meat that I do buy is always on sale. That has mostly been ground beef and chicken to can. I did buy 2 sirloin steaks about 2 weeks ago that were on sale for B1G1F. We have given up buying filet mignon since the last sale in early spring. The price has gotten too high and the quality has gone down the tubes. So my sister told me that the sirloins were good. We have never liked them. But at the sale price they were worth a try. We have only eaten one that we split into 2 meals and it was delicious – flavorful and tender. If they go on sale again for a decent price, I will buy more.

You know that we do our best to keep the utility bills down as much as we can even though the rates continue to rise. We do not use lights when it is daylight out. At night we only use one in the room we are in. I think about what appliance will be the cheapest when I cook anything. We eat a lot of cold food so as to not have to use electricity or natural gas. We use our A/C sparingly. I only run the washing machine with a very full load. I do the same with the dishwasher.

Our cable, home phone, and internet bill was $192. in May. On that bill they put a note that new pricing and packages are coming in June. That means the bills are going up. We have a cable box on a 2nd TV that is costing us $10.00 a month plus taxes and fees. That is the TV that I only use with my ROKU to watch You Tube. Hubby always turned the news on at late night on this TV. But I noticed that lately he has not been doing that. So I took our 2nd box to UPS to return it to Spectrum this morning. Yes that is how we do it here. I now have a receipt dated today to show that it was turned in. So I should not be paying for it now. This $10.00 a month plus tax will save us $120.+ a year. I can’t wait to see the new rates! NOT! Then I will do more cost cutting if need be. I also had an Amazon return to take to UPS so I got them both done.

We use Top’s gasoline points to get our gas cheaper. Right now we have $.40 off a gallon but the car is only 1/2 empty. When the tank empties a little bit more, I will fill it up. We also have discounted gasoline at the warehouse clubs which I only use if I am down in that town running other errands. I will not drive 14+ miles each way just to get gasoline. If none of those options are there, we have a cash only price station near us that has a good price. So I am always checking the prices per gallon.

I am watching our grocery budget very carefully. I will only buy on sale or where a needed product is the cheapest. I am buying mostly store brands these days. There are just a few name brands that I continue to buy. Name brands have gotten way too expensive. I buy most of our produce on sale and I am very selective because it seems to be rotten more often than not on the store shelves. I have had bags of onions and potatoes that turn bad very quickly. I will buy veggies and fruits frozen if they are cheaper per pound. They seem to be much fresher too.

We rarely buy liquor or wine anymore. It is not worth the money. I would rather use the money instead for nutritious food.

I continue to baby the tomato plants. I think they will make it. We bake potatoes in the air fryer a lot in the summer as a side to go with our grilling outside. When I do that, I make enough for a couple of nights. We grow our own chives to go with the sour cream we put on top of them.

To be honest I am always looking at ways to cut expenses. Each day I think about what I am doing that day and how I can cut that expense. I am always looking at what I can discontinue buying and make a substitution for certain things.

We no longer purchase liquid hand soap or body wash. I have lots of bar soap and it works just as well. I rarely buy bread. We make our own in our bread maker. I only wear makeup when I leave the house. I am actually considering giving it up all together. Even when I do wear it, it is very basic. I don’t purchase mascara or compact powder.

I purchase many things from the Dollar Tree. They carry my deodorant, tissues, our shampoo, 2 pound boxes of spaghetti, rice, dry beans, Himalayan pink salt, frozen peppers and onions that I use for making fajitas, a winter blend of cauliflower and broccoli, etc. I purchase all of our greeting cards that we use for a year in January.

I am going for my haircut today. My salon is right next to Rite Aid and we have prescriptions to pick up. The Dollar General is across the street and I will go in there to pick up a few things. I try to make the most efficient use of gasoline by doing many things when I do go out.

Since I have been so busy this week, I did a grocery delivery. It not only saves me time but it prevents me from just wandering in the store and seeing other things to buy. I needed new soap dishes for the bar soap we are using because mine were getting really old. I moved some of our old washcloths to our rag pile today and purchased some new ones on my grocery delivery. I love the half length spaghetti. It lets me easily use a smaller pot and it is so much easier to get it in that pot. Best part is it is the same price as the regular full length spaghetti.

I hope you all have a wonderful July 4th weekend! We will be watching the fireworks around us again this year.

If you would like to share with all of us what you are doing to survive this high inflation, please feel free to add your two cents in the comments.

This little tree was made from a larger tree. The angel on top was made by my Hubby in kindergarten. It is over 70 years old. I am surprised that it has held up as well as it has. I am waiting for our new tree skirt to arrive and it will be finished.

Now that we have put up our little Christmas tree, have written our cards, and have all of our Christmas giving taken care of, my mind has turned to the little tips and hacks that we will use to help us save money this month and next year in this inflationary cycle. These will be in no particular order. I will just write them as they pop into my head.

We will be eating from our food pantry. As we do that we will make sure to eat the proper portions which will ration the food that we have. We will only buy meat if I see a rock bottom price and then I will buy what we have room for. We only have a small chest freezer and the regular refrigerator so not a lot of freezer space. I do have the supplies to can meat that I see on sale. However, I am running out of shelves to store it on. I will buy fresh produce and dairy as I need it. We will do our best to not waste food as I told you in a prior post. I do believe that food prices will continue to surge. There are certain things that I will not buy now because I deem the price to be too high. Red meat except for ground beef and chuck roasts, coffee, soda, most fish, bacon, most junk food, etc. come to mind.

I will be keeping track of every penny of our money and tracking what is spent with the online program that we use. I will be better about using my price book to track prices as they go up so that I know what the best deal is.

We will continue to close the heating vents in our two spare bedrooms, close the doors, and put the draft snakes in front of the bottom of the doors. We will heat them back up the day before we have company coming the end of the month. This should help with our natural gas bill. We will make sure that we keep the bathroom vent and door open in the bathroom between these two rooms so that the pipes don’t freeze.

We made a decision this year to only minimally decorate our home with lights so we could save that cost in our electric bill. So our little tree is all the lights we have. It is enough for us to enjoy each evening. As we age, it is also getting harder to drag all of the decorating items from our basement to the upstairs. I think when my son and granddaughter come the end of the month, we will share decorations for my son’s tree with him. He doesn’t have many in his new home since his divorce. I will also let my other son take any that he wants. Then we will donate the rest of them to Goodwill.

Clothing prices have gone up here. I will be buying some jeans and tops for Hubby and myself when I see them go on sale after we lose some more weight. But I will be looking for a sale at that time. And the amount we will buy will be minimal.

I do not pay for shipping unless I ship something myself out of our local UPS which I will be doing today. Fortunately we have AAA. That gives us 5% off our cost to ship. I have free shipping for anything on walmart.com because I have their grocery plus delivery plan. I only use Amazon when I have the minimal amount of money that you have to spend in order to get free shipping.

We are setting our budget for 2022 this week. It will be as bare bones as we can get without cutting things that we enjoy like cable TV.

We will be spending on things that help us stay in our home that we love like landscaping and maintenance services. They are a necessity.

We rarely eat out but when we do, we support a family owned business. The food is better than the run of the mill big chains. In 2022, we will plan on eating out about every three months. Other than those occasions, all food will be cooked and eaten at home.

We plan on repairing as many things that we can ourselves before we call a repairman or buy new. We have stocked on a number of things that we might need to do that. You Tube is a great resource when you need to know how to repair something.

I will be planting a larger garden this spring so that we can cross some more of the things we buy off our list.

We are learning to make things that we have always purchased. Hubby is now making all of our salad dressings as the prepared ones run out. His latest is Italian Vinagrette which is delicious.

We will be making the little bit of bread and rolls that we do eat. Desserts, with the exception of some ice cream when the grandchildren visit, will be made here at home.

Our one main goal in 2022 is to become as self reliant as possible. Things are not going to get better in this country anytime soon and there is nothing we can do to control that. So we will work all year on the areas that we can control. When we had a period like this in the 1970’s, we survived by being very creative with everything we did. It actually was fun to do all the little things that helped us thrive and get through it.

Most importantly we will do all of this with gratitude in our hearts for the things that we do have and can do that makes our lives so much richer.

Have you thought about how you will cut expenses in 2022?

After our homemade coffee, Hubby and I headed to appointments in another town. I dropped Hubby off and ran a different errand about 15 minutes away(finished my Christmas shopping). I managed to get back for my appointment an hour after Hubby’s. Because we now have dental insurance, it paid for Hubby’s X-rays and cleaning today at the dentist. The only cost was $36. for a fluoride treatment. I got a new denture at no cost to replace the third one that broke. The dentist and the lab finally think they have it figured out. My bite is so strong with my lower teeth that they adjusted the thickness and the bite. Hopefully, this one will work. On the way home, we stopped and voted.

When we got home, I made us salads for brunch using up leftover tomato dices, leftover black olives, leftover onion dices, lettuce, and some shredded cheese. Dressing was homemade Italian. The cheese was colby- jack that I purchased in a block for $ 1.69 and shredded using my Kitchen Aid. Shredding my own is much cheaper than buying shredded. Plus it doesn’t have wood pulp in it. We just keep it in the fridge in a reused gallon bag.

Then after grabbing my grocery list, I headed to Top’s. It is Senior Citizen Discount day. I got 6% off my entire grocery order. This day is only on the first Tuesday of the month so I always try to take advantage of it.

Pictured above is the small order that I picked up. I purchased 2 rotisserie chickens. One is pictured and the other is in the ziploc. When I got home I shredded it. They were on sale 2 for $11.00. The reasons I purchased them is they were cheaper cooked than I can buy them raw and I forgot to thaw something before we went out this morning. The celery was on sale B1G1F. The beef broth was on super coupon for $.99. The Ragu spaghetti sauce was on a 5 for $5. deal which made them all $.99 each which is a great price for here.

I have to tell you a little story about an elderly couple( I estimated them to be in their mid 80’s.) who were getting the Ragu while I waited next to them. They each had a cart and they were loading the Ragu sauce into the carts in many multiples of 5. I was hoping they would leave 5 for me. They just kept loading it. I waited and then I noticed that they had also loaded into their carts many, many pastas that were on sale. When they were done, she looked at me and said thanks for waiting for us. As they left, I looked at the shelf and they had left 5 for me. When I left the shelf was empty. As I was walking around the store, I noticed them in line with their carts and there was nothing else but the pasta and sauce. I smiled to myself and was happy that they had gotten all of those things. Because even though I don’t know why they bought all of those things, we have a lot of senior citizens in our county living on small social security checks. If God blessed them with those sales today, I am happy that they can eat.

I was really beat when I got home, so Hubby and I watched the NCIS’s that he recorded last night. I am going to take it easy the rest of the day.

Hubby is making us BLT’s with chicken for dinner tonight. It is one of my favorites.

I hope you are all having a great day! Did you do anything to cut costs today?

We started our day off this morning by making our own coffee. We NEVER, EVER buy coffee at a drive thru. Yes, we have a Keurig but I make my coffee with a reusable cup using whatever I have found on sale. Buying coffee out is very expensive. It’s so easy to make your own. For a long time, I have made Hubby’s using Decaf K cups. Our stockpile of them is almost gone. So when they run out, I will be making his from bagged Decaf coffee which I stockpiled at lower prices when we made this decision. Using regular K cups is expensive and they expire quicker than sealed coffee. When we go out, we bring our coffee with us in a travel mug.

Next it was time for my navy shower. I catch the water in a bucket while it warms up when I turn it on the first time. This saves water. Utility bills keep going up so every little bit helps. For those who don’t know what a navy shower is, you wet down, turn the shower off, soap up and wash your hair, then turn the shower back on to rinse off. We have a window in our Master Bath that gives plenty of light so no need to turn any light on. When I am going to be home for the day, I use no makeup so no light needed for that or to comb my hair. I let my hair air dry. I don’t let the water run down the sink while I am brushing my teeth. I turn it off until I rinse.

After my shower, I squeegee all of the glass in the shower to keep the soap scum down. Then I use my homemade shower cleaner spray on the tile walls for the same reason. That way it can go longer without a deep cleaning.

About noontime we had our first meal of the day. Since we waste zero food in our home, I heated up some beef stew that I cooked a couple of nights ago. It just had beef, carrots, potatoes, and a little gravy. When I made it for dinner, I used the crock pot on high for 4 hours. Over the summer I purchased 4 strip steaks from the meat market. We grilled 2 and they were awfully tough. As I said before the quality of the meat has gotten poor along with the high prices. So not wanting to waste them, I used them as the meat in the stew. This made them very tender.

Today is my day to clean the bathrooms. I use bleach to clean the entire inside and outside of the toilets. I stockpile bleach to purify water in case we have a water outage. Bleach only lasts about 6 months. So when it is reaching it’s expiration, I clean the toilets with it to use it up. I used a bottle of Scrubbing Bubbles that I need to use up to clean the bathtubs, sinks, shower floor, and counters. Once that is gone, I will make homemade cleaner for them. Floors and baseboards were washed down with Pine Sol in my bucket with my spin mop. The mirrors all got done with Windex. All the cupboards were dusted before I did the floors. Towels were thrown in the washer to wait for a full load and new ones were put out.

I had so much energy when I got done that I decided to clean the Master Bedroom. So sheets have been stripped and new ones put on. Baseboards, lamps and bulbs, and furniture have all been dusted with my reusable duster. Drawers were straightened up and mirrors and paintings were cleaned. The walk in closet was very neat so it didn’t need any attention. Last, I vacuumed all of the carpeting.

Then Hubby and I watched NCIS LA that aired last night. He DVR’s any program that I want to see each week for me. Sometimes we just wait until Friday and marathon all of the shows. I hate commercials and he can skip over them when he replays them for me.

Then Hubby went to clean his office. Believe me, it needed it. It’s the one room that I don’t clean because he knows where he keeps everything.

I did our net worth statement which I do the 1st of every month. Then it was time to watch some You Tube.

Dinner was last night’s planned overs. I made two dinners of spaghetti and sausage. We just reheated it all in the microwave. It saves us time and money.

What did you do to cut costs?