Tag: frugality

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Every Day

Back To The ’90’s and 2000’s

In the ’90’s both of my sons graduated from their private high school. One son chose to go to a NYS Community College that cost $2500. a semester. He was able to commute and live at home. We paid his tuition as he went. My other son chose to attend an expensive private college doing a 5 year engineering program. He got scholarships for each of his years there. So we paid for his room and board the first year and and an additional $12,500. for his tuition every year. He also took the FAFSA government loans each year with interest that he qualified for. We had too much income for him to get any FAFSA loans without interest. His second year he moved into an apartment with other students and got a job to pay his rent. When we would visit, we would load him up on food at Sam’s Club. He did condo and apartment living until he graduated. My son who graduated from community college chose not to pursue his 4 year degree. Instead he went to work. When he was married and had a daughter, he did what Hubby did and got his degree the hard way pursuing it nights.

Hubby and I worked hard to do this for them. We took our lunches 9 out of 10 days to work. On the 10th day, we would eat from the food trucks near where we both worked. In the winter, we would go out to a reasonably priced restaurant or get takeout Chinese or pizza on one day every 2 weeks. Most of the years that I worked we carpooled. We never really splurged always keeping our eye on making sure all of their tuition was paid before we did. We cash flowed it. We had made a promise to ourselves that we would not use any of the retirement money that we saved for their tuition. Matter of fact Hubby met with people at my son’s college and told them that they had to up the amount of his yearly scholarship or he would have to go somewhere else. He explained that we were retiring soon. They knew that he had been offered 11 college scholarships from other colleges. They must have wanted him badly because they upped the yearly scholarship by quite a bit. Don’t ever be afraid to ask for more than they give your student.

In 1996, the book “The Millionaire Next Door” was first published. I bought the original. It has been published many times since. I read that book cover to cover. It was so interesting. We were well on our way to getting to be one. So we saved every dollar we could before we retired and have saved every dollar we can without going without anything since. We have given our sons and their families money many times through out the years keeping within the government yearly limits.

My eldest son moved to AZ after he married. We had been thinking about retiring for a long time and wanted to get out of the snow and go south. We had never considered AZ. But after visiting our son, we loved it there. The weather was dry and my arthritis loved it. So we had a house built there two years before we retired. I had left my job by then so I was free to fly out and stay for a few weeks at a time which I did a # of times. We had an HOA so my son and his wife made sure our property was kept up. Keeping up two homes with all of the expenses was a pain. Our home in AZ was paid in full by the time we moved there. Our home in the eastern part of NY sold quickly just before Hubby retired. That home had been paid off many years early. We sold it ourselves so there was no commission to a realtor. It was so easy that I think we would do that again.

My youngest son graduated and went to AZ to see how he liked it there and to find a job. I don’t think he liked it there because he did not look really hard for a job. He came back to NY and found a job within days. He still works there. Luckily after he came back, he met his wife. They married about 10 months after we moved to AZ.

Hubby’s retirement party was before we moved. I don’t remember if we moved the next day or a couple of days after. Atlas moved all of our things. We road tripped it there in my car because it was only a couple of years old. I was so proud that I had paid cash for it. Hubby donated his Jeep to the fire department because it had no A/C. We decided we would try to function with one car and we have been doing that for all these years that we have been retired. We had to trade my car when it started giving us problems in AZ. So we bought a minivan and paid cash for that too. We had to get rid of that after we had been here a couple of years. That is when we bought our SUV and paid cash for that. It is now almost 12 years old. We only put about 4800 miles on our car a year. We maintain it well and it is still going strong. But if we have to buy a new one, we will pay cash for that one too.

Those of you who have been following me since I started blogging pretty much know what those years were like in AZ. I started blogging 6 years after we moved there. We loved it there. We had a beautiful home and pool. We had planned on staying there forever.

My granddaughter was born there but unfortunately my son and DIL moved back to the eastern part of New York when she was almost 2 years old. I was heartbroken. Hubby and I decided we would not follow them. A couple of months later my other son called us to tell us that they were having a baby. That was it. We were moving back to NY. Even though it was the 2008 housing crisis that had made the housing market extremely bad in AZ, we decided we would sell. But first we came back to NY to find a house that we loved. We found a builder in this area and contracted to have our present home built. We looked in the Eastern part of the state also but there was no one building there at the time because of the housing crisis. We went back to AZ and called a realtor. She told us it was taking about 9 months to sell a home in their terrible market. There were houses all around us that had been for sale for months and some for a couple of years. We put it on the market and it sold in 36 hours for the price we asked for. It didn’t hurt that it had been showcased on the Phoenix News a few years before.

Then we had the problem that our house wouldn’t be ready till months after ours closed. But that didn’t deter us. We hired Atlas to move our things cross country into storage for 4 months. We road tripped it to this area and had rented a two bedroom apartment and lived there while our home was being built. That way we were here when West was born. Finally we moved into our home. But we had to wait about 2 weeks for our furniture to be delivered. So the first few days in our new home, we slept on an air mattress on the floor. Our sons came out that weekend and moved all of the furniture that we had used in the apartment so we had our bed and a living room chair. Then we went shopping in Rochester to buy furniture that we needed in this home. We had sold some furniture to the buyer in AZ. Furniture that we would not need here.

The rest you have all seen on the blog ever since.

Do we continue to save? Yes, we do. But we live well, eat well, and are happy! We don’t go without what we want but we have few wants. I am one of those people who leave things in online carts for a few days before I buy them. Most of the time, I end up emptying the cart because those items are no longer important to us.

We have reached the age that we no longer do airplane travel. I have been to Disney enough over the last few years and I am done. We will road trip it to travel and to do day trips.

Now I will let you decide if we are now the millionaire next door and or how many millions we have. I am not telling! We do have a small pension and now get Social Security but we have known that both of these things could go away at any time. So we have never relied on them. Nor should you especially if you are younger because I do not believe SS will be there for you. Over the past few generations, people are having less and less children or no children so it isn’t sustainable.

The reason I tell you all this is so that you will know that if you save all your life or even part of your life that your dreams can come true too. It is never too late to pay off credit card debt, mortgage debt, student loan debt, car loan debt, or to start saving for your retirement or any other goal.

I realize that these are tough times right now. But we have had many tough times especially during the Carter administration and many recessions all during our life. There seems to be something every decade. Don’t worry about what is going on around you. Do what is right for you and your family! Take care of your money and it will take care of you!

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Every Day

Back To The 1960’s And 1970’s

When I was growing up, I had a very happy life. My mother left my father when I was 3 just before my sister was born. We had no money and my grandparents took us in. My mother got a good job, her college B.A. in accounting, and I lived with my grandparents until I married.

My grandfather didn’t make much money as a shirt cutter. But he owned his home( his father was a builder), a 2 story home with two flats. Relatives always lived downstairs. Most of the money my mom made was handed over to my grandmother for rent, food, and daycare. My mom was allowed to keep enough for transportation(2 buses each way) to get to her job, food for her lunches, money so that we could all go to the lake for the summer, high school tuition( everyone in the family had graduated from this private school because it was tradition), and just a bit of spending money. My sister and I wore hand me downs from my older cousin. I got my first bike when I was 12. It was a hand me down from that same cousin. I never felt poor but I knew money was tight for the things they wanted for themselves and us. My grandmother could make a penny stretch on food like no one else that I have ever known. Every meal was portion controlled. Rarely were there snacks or soda.

This way of life got me very interested in financial things in junior high and high school. I used to take library books out of the library that today would be considered frugality books. I learned about finances in college while I studied for my accounting degree. It was the first time I ever heard about a checking account. I just soaked up everything I could learn. The two biggest things I learned was to never spend more money than you earn and to use credit the proper way. It was okay to get a mortgage for your first home but to furnish it with credit cards was a bad idea.

When I married my Hubby, he came from a different background. He lived in a very nice suburban neighborhood that was considered one of the best places to live. But as I found out over the first years of our marriage, they weren’t rich either. They did pay their home off quickly so they owned it. That was a lessen that Hubby and I loved. We paid ours off early and the last two, we paid cash.

So when we married, it was the 1960’s. Hubby owned a car with a car payment and was paying off a small student loan. I did not work the first 6-8 months of our marriage. We found an attic apartment for $ 80. a month including heat and electric. We had a cheap phone bill because Hubby worked for the telephone company. I brought not $1.00 to our marriage because I worked long hours to go to college and every penny paid my way through those 2 years. Those years before I worked, I read every thing I could find in newspapers and books on finance and frugality.. My mother in law gave me a few cookbooks from the WWII era and I made almost every recipe from them. I had exactly $25. a month grocery money. We had no more in the budget because we had to pay all the bills and we were saving for two things that were very important to us: For Hubby to get his B.A. degree in Engineering and to save for a house. Living in that hot apartment made us want to get out of it quickly. So we squeezed every penny we could and made that grocery budget work. We saved money religiously every month for our two goals. I got a job at the telephone company too but not where Hubby worked. I bussed it. I had no driver’s license. Hubby went to school nights and we saved my income and what was what left in his for a down payment for a new home.

We purchased our newly constructed home in the suburbs 1 year and 10 months after we married. We had saved enough money so that we could purchase with cash a bed, a refrigerator, a sofa, and 6 unfinished chairs to use with the used table that Hubby’s mother gave us. I had used green stamps( does anyone remember them?) to get a card table and 4 chairs so we would have a place to sit in the kitchen and eat. His mother also gave us an old dresser. Hubby purchased a door that had been damaged and made and stained 2 end tables out of it to go on either end of the sofa. They were so sturdy that we used them for 32 years. We sold them when we moved to Arizona. I wish I still had them.

We furnished the house as we saved cash to do so. We never ran out and used credit. I worked and got a ride with the man next door who actually was my boss back and forth to work.

I quit my job due to a miscarriage just before Hubby was hit by a car while walking from the parking lot near his work. He had serious damage done to his knee and was in the hospital for weeks and home recovering for weeks. He had switched jobs and hadn’t worked long enough to get full pay for long so we lived on 1/2 pay for a long time. We made it through without borrowing a dime from anyone. But it was a big wake up call. We had some money saved besides money for furniture. But we used almost all of it up while Hubby was out of work.

That wake up call was our journey towards financial independence. We set up an annual budget that paid us first every paycheck. That has been a line item in our budget to this day. We never wanted to wonder again how we were going to make ends meet! We had always been frugal but we turned it way up after that. We still had money set aside for entertainment and things to make life enjoyable every month. We have never felt like we were giving anything up.

Fast forward one year and my first son was born. Fast forward 2 more years and my 2nd son was born. Now we had 4 people in our family so we had to up the grocery budget. It went up to $80. per month. But it included all food, OTC meds, cleaning products, all soap products, cat food, and and personal care products. I only purchased Pampers to use when we went out somewhere. I washed diapers and hung them to dry for years. That saved us a fortune. Up until just before my first son was born, I went to the laundromat every week. But we had saved and set aside money for a washer and dryer. It was our first scratch and dent appliances and with babies I was so grateful for them.

As our money grew, we found places to invest it so that we could make more money. We continued to save every month and it just kept growing. The best part was all of the passive income we made every month.

Yes, we had emergencies come up but we always had the money to pay for them and we still do.

This is getting long and I need to prep our chicken parmesan that we are having for dinner, so I will continue to write more tomorrow. This is a blog post that I decided I was going to do way back when I started blogging in 2007. Now is the time!

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Every Day

Starting My Day With a Bonus Post

As I sit here enjoying my first coffee of the day, I am going through my e-mails. I have a number of ones that are going to save me money. Really?

Arby’s wants to give me $5.00 off a $20.00 purchase if I use it by tomorrow. 

I have a number of e-mails about % off from Kohl’s.

Twenty % off everything at Vera Bradley through tomorrow. 


Up to 80% off at Ann Taylor.

Forty % off one item at CVS.

QVC has reminded me that I have a $10. credit on my account. I might use that eventually if I need something from them because it does not expire. However, I am finding that most of the time what you see that you need from them, you can find cheaper elsewhere. So if I use it, I will have to determine if it is cheaper elsewhere or with the $10. off at QVC.  

Applebee’s will give me $10. off a $30. order if I use it by the 16th. I am pondering using that next week if Hubby wants Applebee’s. Hubby is picky and may not want something from them on our take out night. There is also a possibility if we do get take out from them, that we might split an appetizer or something that costs less than $20.

The list goes on and on. This is a daily occurrence. So many e-mails that try to pick our pockets.


They have one big thing in common! If you don’t really need something, you are spending money needlessly. 


Sure I could save $5.00 at Arby’s but I have to spend $15.00 of our money to do it. If I haven’t planned to go to Arby’s, why would I throw $15. away. 


If I truly need something from Kohls, Vera Bradley, Ann Taylor, and CVS, then I could save some money. But I don’t, so they all got deleted. Sure I could buy something from them to save those percentages because I want to. But then you are not saving money, you are needlessly spending money. 

Every time you get an e-mail like this, you should ask yourself, can I use it for a need that we have? Will it really save me money or can I get it cheaper somewhere else? Am I using it because I want to? If that is the case, if you have the cash and can afford it, go for it. If you have to charge it and can’t pay the bill in full, then you should not be buying your wants.


Just a little coffee time chat to remind myself and all of you that we don’t have to part with our money just because there is a deal out there. That most of the time you are needlessly spending money instead of saving money.


I will be back with a post after dinner tonight for the Low Spend Grocery Challenge.

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Every Day

Frugal Things July 2 & 3

Wanting to do something different with our granddaughter yesterday, we went for a ride to Lake Ontario to the Towns of Wilson, Youngstown, and Lewiston. It was a beautiful day and she really enjoyed it.

When we came home, I raided the stockpile and this is what I came up with for a quick and easy dinner. 

Of course later last night, my granddaughter had a Hershey’s Cotton Candy ice cream cone. She absolutely loved it. We will see what West thinks of the ice cream later today.


The money saving things we did yesterday was that Hubby put the new clips that arrived to hold all 4 glass doors in my cupboards in the kitchen. He even replaced the clips that hadn’t broken with the new ones because they are much better than the old ones. He also put them in areas that didn’t have clips prior. Now when you close the cupboard doors they don’t make any noise. You could hear the glass rattle before. He did such a better job than the installers did when they put them in. DIY is the way to go on certain projects.


I put our homemade BBQ sauce on the 5 chicken breasts last night so that they could marinate overnight. I used the extra quart jar up that I had put in the fridge a couple of weeks ago. Hubby will be grilling them for dinner tonight using the extra sauce to baste them while they cook. I will cook rice and broccoli to go with it. Ice cream will be dessert later in the evening.


Today, much to my delight, I opened an e-mail from Skinny Syrups that had a 20% off code. We love and use these syrups in our coffee and on ice cream. I was getting low on Hubby’s Irish Cream and my Keto syrups so I placed an order for 2 Keto and 8 Irish Cream. They also now have shelf stable milk so I ordered 3(that is the limit) for my stockpile. The code saved me $ 17.57 and I qualified for free shipping. I stockpile a few times a year with a code or when they have a 50% off sale.

I have decided not to take these syrups out of my stockpile money. Instead it will come out of this month’s grocery budget. The cost was $ 70.30 which leaves me $ 414.25 in my grocery budget for July. 


I wish all of you a wonderful July 4th! For those of you who are traveling, I hope you have a safe trip.

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Every Day

How Is Everyone Doing?

We have been doing the same old things here. I won’t bore you with them. I have to admit that I am growing a little antsy with our section of our state still being shut down. I often wonder if our governor ever intends to let our county open up along with the rest of the counties here that are bundled into what he calls a region. 

Is everyone’s hair as bad as mine is? It is half gray/white and the other half is dyed. It is getting very long and very unruly. I can’t wait until I can go to the salon. But we have at least another 6-8 weeks before that phase will open up. Ugh!

Well, enough whining already. Let’s get down to talking about what we have done to stay frugal during the past 10 days or so.

I have only gone out for a grocery pickup. We needed some dairy, produce, breakfast meats, snacks, etc. Is anyone eating a lot of snacks during all of this? I stayed away from snacks for well over a year and then I found myself reaching for them. I got on the scale and had gained a few pounds so I immediately worked to get those pounds gone. I am now back to where I was before all of this and have a lost a couple more pounds. But the temptation always seems to be there to reach for them. I am trying my hardest not to touch them again. 

We are still working off the tank of gasoline that I purchased in February. Gas is so much cheaper than it was then but I can’t take advantage of that because of an almost full tank. 

I continue to make all of our meals at home. No take out at all. Recently, we have had chicken Caesar salads, lamb chops, pizza, hamburgers, a chicken dinner with Green Giant mashed herbed cauliflower, Italian sausage sandwiches, omelettes, and homemade tomato soup, etc. 

The mashed cauliflower price has been going up. So I have decided to make my own. I got 4 steamable bags of cauliflower on my last pickup for $ 1.00 each. That was the max that they would allow. I plan on steaming one each time I use one for dinner. Then I will mash up the cauliflower  and add butter and my own herbs. For just a little over $1.00, I will have about 4-6 dinners from one bag. Hubby doesn’t like it so it is all for me! Yum. Around here I can’t get a head of cauliflower for the price of one or two bags.

I have also found myself reusing things. I have never been a saver of plastic bags that come inside boxes. However, Hubby loves those white cheddar Grooves. He had emptied the bag that was inside the box so I picked it up to dispose of it. I couldn’t believe how thick it was. So I washed it out and dried it and I will use it the next time I pound chicken breasts flatter to make them cook faster. 

I have also been saving all kinds of containers that cold cuts come in because Hubby has been reusing them to corral things on his workbenches. 

On one of our pick up orders, I had purchased a multi – pack of sugar free ready made jello. It seems like I was always making SF jello or pudding so I needed a little break. I was washing out the little cups to put in the recycle bin and I realized that I could reuse them. So I have saved them to put my homemade mashed avocados in to freeze it. The secret is to make sure that you get all the air out before freezing so that it doesn’t turn brown. So the next time I see a great price on them, I will be stocking up. I refuse to pay the regular price of $2.00 and more for each one here.

When I cleaned the basement, I found a huge bag of baby food jars that I had forgotten that I had saved. They were from the two months after my hiatal hernia repair when they had me on a “mush diet.” So I will be using them in the same way as the jello ones.  

Our propane tank is empty. I didn’t realize it until I wanted to use the grill and Hubby said we needed propane. So I called two different places where I can get it to find out if they are doing it and how to go about getting it with minimum contact. They are doing curbside if you don’t want to go in the store. So most likely I will do that this weekend. Hubby hasn’t left the house since all of this “disease” started. I put myself in charge of doing any errands that need to be done. I remember so well how sick he was a few years ago so we are not taking any chances with this.

We have a bottle deposit in this state on sodas and sparkling waters. We have accumulated almost 6 bags of returns because there is no place to take them. I am wondering about just putting them in my recycle bin the next time they pick it up. I am getting tired of them being in my way in the garage. Since we have no idea when we will open up here in our county, I hate hanging onto them. A bag is usually worth $1.00 to about $1.50 when I bring them back. I think I will just chalk that up to convenience and let the state keep that money. When Fast Cash reopens for returns everyone will be crowding into this tiny little store to return bags and bags of them. I think I will avoid that. 

I continue to do wash once a day to keep everything well sanitized. So I have been using warm water. Most of my clothing gets hung to dry. Sheets and towels I have been using the dryer for along with my wool balls so they dry faster.

I made some homemade shower cleaner yesterday and sprayed the shower before I went to bed. When I took my shower today, I washed down and scrubbed all of the walls which was really easy because the spray had done it’s job. 


Some nights I have trouble sleeping so besides taking melatonin, I have been lightly spraying our sheets with lavender essential oil spray. It helps me sleep like a baby.  


That is about it for the frugal things. What have you guys been doing frugally?

Before I end today’s post, I have to tell you that it looks like we will see our son, my daughter- in- law and grandson tomorrow. We have not seen them since February. They live about an hour and half from us. They are coming to visit and since it is supposed to finally be nice warm weather, we will socially distance on our patio in the backyard. My son has made Hubby and I each two cotton masks. He learned how to use my daughter in law’s sewing machine and has made all of their masks. Then he had trouble finding elastic. But since he got some this week, he is making us the masks. I am very grateful because I don’t have a sewing machine and they have both been working from home and taking care of West.  He told me that because they don’t wash laundry every day, they boil their masks in water. That is a great idea! 


Now if they would just open up the rest of the state, perhaps we can see our granddaughter, son and daughter in law in the next couple of months. I so love and miss all of them! 

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Every Day

How We Stay Frugal Even When There Isn’t An Emergency

Do you remember back to the 2007 – 2008 mortgage crisis? All of a sudden, everyone turned to frugality because they couldn’t pay their mortgages, were in debt up to their eyeballs, lost their jobs, and had no savings. People were doing things frugally that they never did before. I remember thinking to myself perhaps people will learn from this situation and keep their frugality going and save for emergencies. I am sure some did but I would bet that most didn’t. The people I saw who were caught up in it returned to their unfrugal ways. 

I realize that this crisis was not of anyone’s making but it is another emergency situation. No one could have foretold that this virus would happen. However, if people had saved money for an emergency, they would be in a  much better situation than they are right now. 

So let’s learn from this and be much more careful how we use and spend our money.

So today and in the future, I will share more ways on how we are frugal all of the time so that in times like this, we are easily able to survive.

One of the things we have been doing for a while that saves us a bit of money over time is how we use plastic bags for repackaging meat. As you know, I buy our meat in bulk. If chicken is on a good sale price, I will sometimes buy 20-40 lbs. of it so that I never have to pay full price for it. The same goes for any kind of meat.

These pictured food saver bags are expensive to use. I do use them but only if I plan on keeping the meat in my freezer longer than 3 months.

If I plan on us eating the meat within three months, I use these but they are also very expensive.

And I use these or the ones with the flap that you tuck in. Usually the flap bags are much cheaper than the resealable but they weren’t the day I purchased these.

I will package the meat up into meal size portions and put it in any cheap sandwich bag that I can find. Walmart has a great price on these but so does Dollar Tree and Aldi’s. But in my area, Walmart has the best price. Then I stack them flat in a one gallon freezer bag which I buy when they are on sale. I can get many meals worth in one of those bags. When I need that meat, I just open the gallon bag, take a sandwich bag out and reseal the bag. 

The reason I do it this way is so that I can reuse the expensive freezer bags over and over again by washing them out. Anytime you put meat in a plastic bag you can’t reuse them. So I throw out the small cheap bags or reuse them to organize non food items in our household(after washing them really well)  and can still use the freezer bag over and over again. I have used some of them for years.

I only pay about a penny for the sandwich bags so we save a lot of money in the long run over buying freezer bags and using those. 

Sometimes, in order to get the freezer bags at a great price, I have to buy them at a warehouse store packaged with quart freezer bags. But I am also now using the quart bags the same way. 

Another way we save is on coffee. Hubby loves his Keurig and his K Cups. So I buy his brand of decaf on subscribe and save on Amazon to get the best price. However, I am trying to get him to let me buy the same coffee in a bagso he can use the reusable cup. But I am not that fussy, so I use a reusable K cup and any kind of coffee that is on sale.

We like flavored coffee but we use SF Skinny Syrups or Keto Syrups to get that flavor. We only use one squirt and that is perfect for us. I buy our syrups in bulk directly from Jordan’s when they have a 40-50% off sale and sometimes they send me a coupon to use too. We will buy cases when it goes on sale. It keeps for a long time unopened. We never pay full price for it.

Do you guys remember when I purchased the 4 gallons of hand soap from Amazon for a great price? Well, when this emergency happened we had plenty of cheap hand soap. We have just been refilling our pump containers at the sinks with this. It is the most economical way to buy it. 


We also had a box full of bar soap which we will use when the liquid is gone. After I took this picture, we donated more than half of the soap to a food bank. Most of it was purchased cheaply back when coupons were worth something.  


Another way we save is to cook from scratch at home every meal. We rarely did take out or went out to eat in a restaurant before this crisis. Thinking back, we haven’t been to a restaurant here since last August. If you don’t know how to cook, learn while you have so much time at home. It is healthier and cheaper. Here was my breakfast: scrambled eggs with onion and chive cream cheese mixed in and bacon.


Well that is it for today. If you like this kind of post, let me know in the comments and we will do a lot more of them. Also if you have a great tip on how to save money, please share it. We all learn from each other.
  

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Every Day

Tuesday & Wednesday – April 7 & 8, Our Frugality

I didn’t write yesterday because I was busy trying to get the rest of the windows washed and all of the window tracks and sills cleaned. Just look at those dirty tracks from this past winter. UGH. We have well over 20 windows in our home and it is quite a chore to clean all of them every year.

They are a lot cleaner now. The best part, they are all done.

Not only that but I didn’t have much else to say besides meals and exercise.

Yesterday, we ate sausage and eggs again for breakfast, no lunch, and chicken fajitas for dinner. I had mine in a bowl with a little sour cream and Hubby had his in a wrap. We were all out of peppers both fresh and frozen so we just cooked up onions with the chicken.

I did the treadmill and the bike yesterday and today. I need to stay fit. Sitting around all day is not good for me or anyone else.

We also spent a bit of time in the yard both days. Hubby trimmed back some rosebushes and raked some thatch in a few areas of the yard. We planned on having a fire in our outdoor fireplace but, alas, it rained. It just feels so good to get outside in the fresh air.

Last night I started a list of all of the items that we use on a regular basis for food, household products, and health and beauty aids. Since I know how much we use at a meal and how many HBA and household goods we use in a month, it was easy to figure out how much we would need for a year’s supply of items. I am still working on this list and will do more tonight. I want a complete list to shop from and watch for sales on those items after our country gets back to normal. 

As soon as all of my stockpile is moved back into the pantry, I will know how many items I need to buy to have a year’s worth. I had a few Mormon friends back in Arizona and I learned well from them. Because of them, I had more than enough food to get through this crisis even if I didn’t get a pickup and a delivery for fresh items. It will take a few months to replenish things.

Let me update you on the basement pantry. The contractor I called was out of town and then the coronavirus happened. So since Hubby was waiting to have the contractor put up walls, I decided that we don’t need them anymore. I already have two large walls and the stairwell cuts off one side. It is all framed in but I really don’t need the sheet rock. So that will be many $$$$.’s saved. Hubby decided to prepare the floor for the carpet tiles. I had vacuumed the concrete really well and he had filled a crack in there. But he said he wanted to wash the concrete floor really well before he did the carpet. 

So this morning, after I finished the last few windows, Hubby and I washed the floor in the pantry. We just have to wait a couple of days for the floor to dry and then Hubby can lay the carpet tiles everywhere except under the freezer. We have to wait until our son is able to visit us again to move the freezer so that Hubby can do that. But that is only a few squares. I only have a 7 cu. ft. freezer. It will be much easier to move when it is emptier too. 

In between all of these things, I have put new sheets on our bed and washed the sheets I took off of it. I also did my normal daily load of towels.

You all know that we hire a landscape company to take care of our property for us. We paid them for all of 2020 already because we get a discount if we do that. Well they called yesterday and they are coming on Tuesday to do the spring cleanup. They told us that because of only essential businesses(they are considered essential) being able to work, they could not get mulch. So they would not be able to top dress our gardens. Hubby told them that was fine. 

Fortunately, Hubby bought 9 bags of mulch last year when Home Depot had it on sale. So the day after the landscape company does their work, we will top dress the gardens. The landscape company doesn’t charge us for mulch till they see how much we need so that is more $$$’s saved.

Today, I had scrambled eggs and an avocado for breakfast. 

Tonight for dinner we had something that I haven’t had in a very long time. Diet Coke and pizza! Yes, we have worked so hard this week that I went off my diet for this meal. I think I have had pizza once in the last 13 months and one Diet Coke in 3 years. So this was a special treat. The pizza was homemade. I made a tossed salad to go with it. It was all delicious.

Hubby and I watched “Gorky Park” for entertainment. We had seen it before many years ago in the theater. I also have been watching a new You Tube Channel. I am always trying to learn new things. So I have been watching “Different Russia”. It is very interesting to see how average people live there. 

Tonight is my usual Wednesday evening telephone call with my sister which I am looking forward to.

I hope you are all still healthy and safe. I hope you have a terrific evening.    

Categories
Every Day

Frugal Doings – April 6

These are the things we have done today:

– Even though I was terrified to go out today, I did. We had 4 prescriptions sitting at the Pharmacy that needed to be picked up. I went to the drive thru and used vinyl gloves to put the payment in the tray and take the package from the cashier. Then I put the gloves in a ziploc to throw away when I got home. Next I sanitized my hands.

– Next I put on my mask, goggles and a new pair of gloves because I needed to go to the gas station to fill up the car and a gas can for the lawn mower. I keep hearing about these low gasoline prices. Ours was at $2.35 a gallon. I had no gas points because I have not been shopping. I was happy to see that everyone was social distancing their cars(this was at 8:30am).

– When I was done I put all of those items(except the goggles) in a large ziploc to dispose of when I got home. I put the goggles in a separate bag so that I could clean them at home.

– When I got home, I disposed of the garbage and took the drugs in the house to sit for a few days before we touch them again. I took the gasoline can out of the car and wiped the handle with a Clorox wipe and anything else I had touched on it. I wiped down every door handle inside and outside that I had touched, the gear shift, the remote for the garage door, the window lock that lets you put the window up and down, and the visor.

– Then I disinfected the door knob inside and outside of the house that I had used ans sanitized my googles and washed my hands really well. Next it was time to take a shower and put on new clothes. The clothes I had been wearing including my coat went immediately into the washer. Since I had three loads to do, I used the dryer today except for 5 things that I never put in the dryer. I sanitized each load. 

– Then I made a nice breakfast for Hubby and I. We had sausage and scrambled eggs with melted cheese. I cooked up the entire roll of sausage so we have enough for two more breakfasts. I love cooking once and eating 2 or 3 times. It saves time and energy.

– At breakfast I told Hubby I am not going out again until this virus is mostly gone. I was terrified that someone would be on top of me at the gas pump. Fortunately that was not the case. We both now have 90 days or more of drugs. If we run out of cleaners, we will substitute. If we run out of a food item, we will substitute or go without. If I can’t have it delivered, we are not getting it.

– Hubby and I did the breakfast dishes and then he went outside to move our grill and furniture out of the shed onto the patios. Then he moved the snow blower into the shed. Next he mowed the lawn. We had so much rain that it was getting very long. Our lawn doesn’t look too bad after the winter. Hopefully they will come soon to fertilize it.

– While Hubby worked outside, I worked inside washing windows and doors. I did about 1/4 of them. We have a lot.

– We have lowered our heat about 2 degrees at night and during the day, although in the daytime, it doesn’t run too often right now. Hopefully in another 6-8 weeks we can shut it off.

– Hubby got our Cable TV, Internet and Telephone bill online yesterday. They raised us $30. a month saying the discount plan we were on had expired. I am not happy that we are now paying over $200. a month so will be rethinking it. First I will try to get it lowered.  

– We are having the same dinner that we had the other night tonight. We always eat our leftovers. To throw them out is such a waste of money. So here is my plate from the other night; spinach and a lamb chop. I am hungrier today, so I will probably have 2 small lamb chops instead of 1.

– I placed an order with Amazon two weeks ago. It has been coming piece meal. Hubby had mentioned that he wanted something sweet and salty. So I got the above pictured cookies and Cheez It assortment for him. UPS just delivered it. Hubby is very happy. 

– Tonight, I will watch some You Tube and Hubby will watch some TV.

That is it for today. How is your day going?  

Categories
Every Day

The Things We Have Learned Because of This Virus

Those of you who have only kept a few days to a week of household cleaning products, water, and food in their homes have learned that you can’t do that. You always need to be prepared for an emergency. 

Our supermarkets, warehouse stores, and even Super Walmart only keep on average a 3 days supply in their stores. You saw what happened when people who had no stockpile went to the stores. They stripped everything. Many items have never really recovered. As soon as toilet paper or other necessities are put back on the shelves, they disappear again. It has caused the stores to put limits on items. It also has caused prices to go up because the demand is so high.

So those people who had a stockpile to last you for months were all set. Those people who didn’t went into panic mode. 

I know there are people who will say that they make so little that they can’t afford to stockpile. But anyone can spend $1.00 to $5.00 or more if you have it to stock up each week. Buy a few extra cans of things. Buy 2 or 3 bags of frozen veggies. After a number of months doing this, you will have a stockpile started. 


If you are paid working from home, you are not losing any money unless there is a chance that you will end up being furloughed after a while. So really think about spending the money the government is sending you to build a stockpile so that if this happens again or any emergency does, you will not be caught unprepared again. 

Even my sons have made fun of my stockpile over the years but guess who had to run out and buy food. Yup, one of them. Because they only bought a week’s worth of food, toilet paper etc. at a time. He couldn’t believe that he couldn’t find chicken or pork anywhere. Guess who was laughing then!    

This virus will eventually go away. I pray that will be sooner rather than later. However there is a good possibility that it will come back in the Fall or Winter. Get your stockpiles built so that you will be prepared!

I know some will say they are worried about doing that because they don’t want to waste food. If you spend the time to rotate(last in put in the back; pull your items from the front), you won’t waste anything. Arrange your freezers so that you are using the oldest first. I rarely find anything expired and even if I did, I realize that sell or best buy dates don’t mean much. Many things keep for a very long time.


That said, I found gaps in my stockpile. Things that I never thought about. So take the time while you are sitting home now to make a plan of what you need to get and where your gaps are. An example for us was Distilled Water. Hubby sleeps with a C Pap machine. I had just purchased 2 gallons of it when he opened that last gallon he had. That was just before the shelves got stripped. I never even gave a thought to buying more than that.

Well what happened is people, who found that the regular water had been depleted, purchased all the distilled water knowing they could drink it. It has been hard to find ever since. My sister told me her BIL couldn’t find it anywhere. People with these machines need distilled water. You can’t put anything else in them.  

I looked online quite a few places and couldn’t find it in stock. However, when I placed my Walmart pickup order, they had it, limit 2. I got those 2 because I can’t have Hubby run out and I don’t know how long this epidemic will last. You can bet that I will buy more than two when this is over.

I had many other gaps too. I will run out of Lysol wipes, paper towels, dish liquid and dishwasher tabs soon. I need to stock up on more frozen veggies. They can take the place of having to buy fresh every week or two. Many other items come to mind. The one thing that I had plenty of was meat. 

I pretty much know how much of things I use weekly and you most likely do too. So lets say you know that you use spaghetti sauce once a week. You want to stockpile for 6 months. So you would build your stockpile by buying 26 jars when you see a great sale or if you make homemade, buy the canned tomato and paste amount that you need. You can do this for every product you use. When you stockpile on sales, you don’t have to pay the price increases when something happens like this again.

I already have my list ready and will spend the money to fill in my gaps for the next time so that I don’t ever have to leave our home. 

So did you have gaps that you know you have to fill for the next time? Share with us what you ran short of.      

Categories
Every Day

Frugal Things – April 1

So it’s April Fool’s Day and I am sure there will be a lot of jokes out so there I won’t bore you with one. I am just happy that the nice weather seems to be coming. Sunshine and warmth would be quite welcome.

I ended my blog post without putting up a picture of my dinner plate last night. So that is the picture above. The filet mignon was so tender and delicious. Thanks to having some fresh things right now, I was able to saute up some mushrooms to go with it. Have I told you how much I love brussel sprouts? I could eat them for an entire week and I just might. Hubby cooked the filets in the air fryer to perfection.

Tonight, we finished up the package of hot dogs that we opened the other night. We do not want to waste any food so I keep on top of it. We have only enough chili left for two dogs. But I will dice up some onions, put out the mustards, and pickle relish and we will have our choice. 

For breakfast this morning, we had our choice again of scrambled eggs, bacon, and coffee cake.

Right after the breakfast dishes were washed, I went down and did my walking on the treadmill. Exercise always lets me get my day off to a great start. It gives me so much energy. 

Hubby and I took a leisurely walk around our property seeing what trees are budding up and the flowering bushes coming to life again. It looks like everything weathered the winter well. Our neighbor has beautiful white and purple crocuses in full bloom. It seems like it is a few weeks early for those here.

We also designed a plan to plant some more perennial flowers this spring.

Hubby watched a movie again this afternoon. I did some reading.

I watched our governor give a Covid 19 update. We have 56 cases in our small county with quite a few in our little town. The county 1 mile south of me has 582 cases. Both places have been blowing up the last few days. But we are nowhere near as bad as NYC. Having lived through many viral epidemics in my life I have never seen anything like this. I pray for all of the people who are sick and dying everyday. 

I treated our pipes with the above to keep them free and clear. We do this on the first of every month to keep Roto Rooter away. Since we have had clogs in the pipe going to the road more than once the last couple of years, we decided this treatment was well worth the cost.

Our shampoo bottle in the shower only had a little bit left in it so I put a new one in it. I brought the other bottle out and turned it upside down near the kitchen sink. I am using the last few drops to wash our hands. 

I also cut the top off the toothpaste tube and will be scraping up the last of it to use over the next few days. Waste not want not.  

Tonight, my sister who lives in the southern part of NY will be calling for our usual Wednesday evening chat. Her family were coming to visit on April 13th for a few days and I cancelled them to protect them and us. Hopefully, in a few months, they will be able to visit. I haven’t seen her in two years. 

What did you do frugally today?