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Every Day

October Savings

I am always honest with you. We only saved $ 471.70 in October. The biggest reason is all the expenses we had to get our property ready for winter. We had Aqua Systems come and blow the lines out on our sprinkler system which was over $100 . The bill came for $ 648. for the trees that were taken down the end of September. We put a $ 500. deposit down on the railing that is being made for our back steps. We will owe another $1100. when the job is done.

We paid $ 200. in doctor bills and $70 in prescriptions for me.

We spent much more than we had been spending on groceries in order to stock up on food, household items, and OTC medicines for the winter. That was an extra $1000. I did not show any of this on this blog.

We needed many things for Eloise and I wanted to stock up on some food and litter for her for the winter. Chewy is very happy with my spending on her. Those bills came to $438. Pets are expensive as I am finding out.

I paid my domain charge for the blog for a year. Spectrum bills went up by around $10. a month. Our electric and natural gas bill went up.

We went out to eat twice. Those bills added up to $180.

We paid our Texas property taxes.

We sent a housewarming gift to friends of ours for $100. Hubby also sent $ 150. to Tunnels to Towers. He gives them money twice a year.

I spent $200. on clothes for me which is very unusual. However some of my things were getting threadbare. I also purchased a fit bit type watch to monitor my heart.

Hubby purchased a really good cover for our grill for the winter. We plan on using the grill weather permitting most of the winter. He also bought a large thick rubber mat to park the snowblower in the garage when we bring it up from the shed. We have a plow guy for the winter but not until December 1st. We may need to snow blow if we get snow in November. Fingers crossed we don’t have to.

We plan for all of these extras by saving money every month. However, once we put money into savings and investments, we do not like taking it back out. So these things we spent on this month came out of our checking account. That is what we try to do every month.

I expect some large expenses this month also. I have to get all of the monetary Christmas gifts ready for December. The same goes for both of my son’s birthdays.

We will have another large expense but I won’t talk about that until December.

With the exceptions of those expenses, we will be saving as much as possible in both November and December.

Did you save any money in your investments and savings in October? Ours was small but every little bit helps us get to our goal.

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Every Day

Saving Money The Past Few Days

I have been deleting and unsubscribing to e-mails that are trying to sell me something. If I don’t know about a deal, I am less tempted to buy it.

We installed cameras around the outside of our home. Hubby thought he needed something extra to install the doorbell camera. We didn’t so I returned it to get a refund of $ 8.63. It was a refund from Amazon so I didn’t even have to take the item anywhere to return it. No gasoline used. Every little bit helps.

Hubby has been enjoying watching Thursday night football on Amazon Prime. This Thursday night will be his fourth and last game on there. This free trial has been very useful not only for football but for the Amazon Prime days earlier in the month.

We have been eating homemade meals at home. We have had filet mignon and tossed salad, grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, chicken breasts, and corned beef reubens. I found another on sale corned beef that I purchased after last St. Patrick’s Day so I cooked it in the crockpot on Sunday. After we watched the Buffalo Bills game, Hubby made the reubens. We ate them again last night. They were delicious. Hubby will use the rest of the meat to make corned beef hash for breakfast this morning.

Brunches have been bacon or SteakUms and eggs, cranberry orange muffins, French toast and sausage.

I prepped two pounds of strawberries into mason jars that I put in the fridge. I diced up 10 Hass avocados that I got for $1.00 each and got 100 free gasoline points too for buying them. I froze them in portions.

I stocked on canned Fancy Feast Tuscany Chicken for kittens for Eloise. I took advantage of a $20. off coupon and got free shipping at Chewy.

I did two loads of laundry using cold water. I did a load of clothes and a load of new sheet sets for our beds. I bought 2 sets of sheets at Amazon on the Prime Days for a total of $ 20.17 after a great sale and using Amazon points. We now have enough sheets for our beds so that we don’t have to launder them but once a month since we have weekly sets. I hung the clothes to dry and dried the sheets on low in the dryer using the dryer balls.

I am back on the treadmill walking to see if it helps my back.

I scanned my recent receipts into Fetch to use for Walmart gift cards.

We have closed off some rooms in our home to see if it lowers our heating bill. I am not sure it will. We’ll see. This also keeps Eloise from getting into those rooms.

Speaking of electric, we got our monthly natural gas and electric bill 2 days ago. We used 400 KWH of electricity and 15.5 therms of natural gas for 27 days. We have only had the heat on for about a week of that period. The bill was $ 128.78. I figured it would be lower than last year because we have had a warm fall and this had been the latest that I ever turned on the heat.

So I compared it to the same bill period in 2023. We used 393 KWH of electric which was only 7 KWH less than this years. We used 23 therms of natural gas which was 5 and 1/2 therms more than our current bill. The 2023 bill was $ 114.27.

So this years bill was $ 14.51 more for less usage. The bill would have been much higher if we hadn’t saved therms. Moral of the story is you can conserve all you want but the bill just keeps rising month after month. According to our news, we can look forward to more increases over the next 5 months of winter.

Our news last night spoke with one of the utility companies out here yesterday. They gave a forecast for heating months of an 11% increase each and every month for the next 5 months which equates to a natural gas average increase of $ 560 over those 5 months. The average increase for electric they said will be 1%. Time will tell.

We can’t wait to get our smart meter installed so that we can monitor this much easier. However, we are the last area in NY for that to be completed. We won’t get ours until somewhere between July 2025 and December 2025.

But I refuse to be defeated and will do what I have to to lower it this coming month. But it is an uphill battle! Today I will be buying some more snakes to put in front of outside doors to keep any drafts out.

Hubby has been doing the fall cleanup in our yard, trimming bushes, weeding, and mowing the lawn really short. If we had hired the landscapers, it would have cost us about $2500.- $3000. But they are hired for the spring cleanup which is always a huge job.

That’s about it for now. I have two more blog posts ready for this week. So see you tomorrow.

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Every Day

Saving Money So That We Can Spend On The Important Things

First I want to thank you for all your good wishes about Eloise. She is a joy but very active so she is keeping us busy. This morning she did allow us to sleep until 6AM though which I am grateful for. Also Hubby’s shoulder is just about back to normal which we are thankful for. I finally saw all your comments this morning and I have responded to you all.

It took me forever to write this post this morning. Eloise is enamored with chasing the cursor. As you can see, she is learning to type. Hence the last line you can see on the page. I keep putting her down and gently telling her no. But she comes back and back. Eventually she will get it.

Besides saving for our children and grandchildren, we save so that we can spend on other things that are important to us. Eloise was one of those choices. In just one day, we spent $583. on her. The adoption fee from the rescue was $ 195. I gave them $ 200. and said keep the change. The night before we got her, we spent about $25. at Walmart for some food and litter. Then the day we got her, we spent $ 292. in two trips to Petsmart. Then we placed a chewy.com order for ordering things that Petsmart didn’t have for $ 66. We now have everything we need for her except her climbing stand which is on it’s way. We have a couple of months of kitten food, treats, and litter. I will be looking into making her cat food when she is a little older. We decided not to buy her a bed. We made one from a small box and a very soft velour throw blanket. She seems to like it but prefers to sleep on our beds.

Hubby trimmed her nails last night. We thought that would be a nightmare but it wasn’t. I just wrapped her in a towel and petted her head. She didn’t even wince when Hubby cut them. We are grateful that we didn’t have to pay to have them done.

We purchased the Breeze system for a litter box. It take pellets. She wouldn’t use it. So we got a regular litter box with clay litter which she is using. We were hoping she would use the pellet system. But it was a no go. We couldn’t return it because we had opened the pellets that came with it. However in the literature that came with it, I noticed that I can send info plus UPC and receipt and get my money back from the manufacturer if she doesn’t like it which she doesn’t. So I will be doing that. That will be a refund of $ 43.99. It pays to read the literature.

We have had a ban on plastic grocery bags in this state since well before the pandemic. We have to use reusable or buy paper from the store. I don’t know why but I saved every one of them from the store for almost a year before the ban went into effect. I just used empty tissue boxes that I stuffed with them and put them all in a huge cardboard box. They have been sitting in a corner of the basement. I knew someday they would come in handy. Now they are to scoop dirty litter into. I have no idea what I will use when they are gone. Any ideas? But for now I have a stash for a year or two.

My son and West came on Sunday and we all went out to breakfast at our favorite Greek restaurant. That was an expense we chose because I need a treat everyone once in a while rather than cook breakfast for us all the time. We were a little leery of leaving Eloise alone. We figured we might come back to a destroyed house but we didn’t. She slept while we were gone.

HSN sent me an e-mail a couple of weeks ago about a Joy Mangano Little Steamer that I purchased from them years ago. They have been ordered by the courts to pay a class action settlement to each of us who purchased it because they hid the fact that it spews hot water that could scald you. I will be looking into my options on that and submitting an application for that money.

Yesterday in the mail we got two different checks for about $ 400. dollars as a result of a class action settlement for Philips C-Pap machines that were faulty. We had two machines that were recalled so that Hubby would always have a backup in case one broke. Philips replaced those machines a while ago with brand new ones that were not defective. This money was paid to us yesterday for the damages the defective machines may have caused. We knew that the money would be coming. However we were surprised at how fast it came and how much it was. Most class action settlements pay out $1.- $20. after the lawyers get paid.

My son has a laser pointer that he is going to give us for Eloise. We were going to look into buying one. But he commented that he had one for her. Free is good! He will be back to visit in 2 weeks and will bring it for her. I think Eloise will enjoy it.

I will be reading our electric and gas meter this week and will be interested in how much that bill is. We have had our A/C off for a while now. We have only had to put it back on the past couple of days because it has gotten so hot here.

I cooked a small boneless Butterball turkey last night in the countertop oven. We had a turkey dinner last night. Hubby will cut the rest of the meat on the new slicer today. We will have turkey BLT’s tonight for dinner. The rest will be frozen for future cold cuts.

It may seem to you that we don’t spend a lot of money but we do on the things we all have to pay every day like home maintenance, taxes, gasoline, utilities, water, food, insurances, etc. However we always save so that we can pay cash for all of our purchases that are necessary and unnecessary. We do splurge on the wants that we truly want without worrying about them. Eloise is just one example. But to be honest our wants are far and few between. Hence, we save a lot of money each month so that there will be generational wealth. We started from $ 0.00 all those years ago so the generational wealth is very important to us.

Have you saved any money in the past week or so? Feel free to share those savings with us.

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Every Day

Saving Money and Time in the Long Run

I few weeks ago I started hearing rumbles about another paper shortage. People online were reporting shortages of toilet paper and paper towels in their grocery stores. So I started researching and found there was the beginnings of a shortage. I thought here we go again.

So I told Hubby that I was considering purchasing a bidet for our master bathroom toilet. He laughed and said that he had been thinking about the same thing. So I asked him to research exactly which one he wanted to buy and let me know. Then I would look for a better price. He sent me a link for the one he wanted and it was $299.+ tax. I found it on Overstock.com for $234.98 including tax and free shipping. I also earned $ 11.00 in reward points and got 2% back from Rakuten.

Yesterday, Hubby and my son installed it. This will save us money in the long run on toilet paper.

It features a heated seat, heated warm water with 5 temperature settings, and a dryer. It has many different spray settings and an ECO one to save on power. So far we are loving it. It has an on and off button so that we don’t have to waste power when we are not using it.

Now I don’t have to worry about trying to find toilet paper ever again which will save me time and I won’t have to lug those big packages home.

The one other paper thing that we do use is printer paper. We are down to our last 2 packages. I ordered a 10 ream carton of the Hammermill paper that we use on sale with free delivery.

Today is my errand day so I will be going grocery shopping, making a return at Home Depot, and picking up some prescriptions at the drug store.

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Every Day

Saving Money Recently

We did a few things last week to save some money. Instead of putting our deposit bottles in our recyclable can like most of my friends and neighbors do, I returned them to Fast Cash to get my $.05 per bottle or can back. Hubby had not taken them back since early autumn. I needed them out of the garage, so I took them. This trip I redeemed them for $ 7.70. I have been saving up this money in a separate envelope for a purpose. It got used today to pay for our tire change over from our snows to our regular tires. The cost was $ 80.00. Needless to say I had over 4 years worth of return money. I could have used any of our money to pay for this but it just felt good to reach the goal that I had for the bottle return money I kept in a labeled jar.

On Friday morning we had our scheduled appointment with the town assessor. Hubby, I think did a great job of stating our case for a lower assessment. The assessor now gets to decide. She said that we will get notification the beginning of May. If we are not happy with her decision, then we can go to grievance day. Our fingers are crossed.

Breakfast, on Friday morning, was a grilled ham and cheese sandwich which I made when we got home from our appointment. The ham was from my leftover Christmas ham. It had been thin sliced with my meat slicer and frozen.

Dinner was a sheet pan meal of chicken legs( sale price $ .89 lb.) and vegetables from produce that I got on sale that needed to be used up: Onions, multi colored peppers, and one Yukon gold potato. Everything was roasted in the toaster oven.

Every morning, the minute it turns light out the one light that I was using in my kitchen is turned off. I do my best to not waste electricity or natural gas.

On Saturday, I spent some time making a plan to reorganize my freezers. Then I did a load of wash. When that had been folded, we took the rest of the day off.

Sunday, we watched the golf tournament on TV. I puttered around here and made taco salads for dinner. The rest of the day I spent reading The Complete Tightwad Gazette. I do this every year to refresh my memory.

This morning I made my grocery lists for the week. There again is nothing that I need at Aldi. I will got to Niagara Produce and possibly Top’s.

Then I rearranged my chest freezer and I now have only meat and fish in it. Each kind of meat and fish are in their own separate reusable grocery bag. The oldest meats and fish are on the top of each bag with the newest on the bottom. The bags easily pull out to get to the ones on the bottom of the freezer. All of my frozen vegetables and fruits are in an upstairs freezer drawer. I have a small amount of breakfast sausage and bacon in there too so that it is easy to pull out to defrost for all of our breakfasts, especially the Sunday ones with family. The rest of the freezer space holds shredded cheeses. While I was doing this, I pulled out that turkey casserole that I made and froze after Easter. We will bake that in the toaster oven for tomorrow night’s dinner.

Tonight’s dinner will be hotdogs with our choice of toppings. I want homemade chili and cheese melted on top of mine. Hubby has his choice of many things. We have not had hot dogs in a long time. I will slice up some tomatoes on a plate. They need to be used up.

We got our electric and gas natural bill this past Friday. We were pleasantly surprised. Our bill was $ 50.86 less than last year’s. This year’s was $181.55. Last year’s was $232.41. It has been a little warmer during this period. The average temp this year was 46 degrees vs. 43 last year. We only used 454 KWH and 84 ccf’s. Last Year’s usage was 513 KWH and 113 ccf’s. The current bill was for 30 days and last year’s was for 34 days. We are hoping to be able to turn the heat off soon. It has been really cold the past week or so.

What have you been doing to save a little money?

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Every Day

Trying To Save Every Way We Can

We both love shrimp. But the prices have been so high that I have stopped buying colossal($12.99) or large shrimp($9.99). When I found this 12 ounce package of raw medium on clearance for $ 5.72 a couple of weeks ago, I got one. We decided tonight to enjoy shrimp cocktails with a small side salad. We made our own cocktail sauce using ketchup and horseradish that we always have in the fridge.

First thing this morning, I thawed it in some cold water. It was raw so it needed to be deveined, cleaned, and had tails that needed to be removed. That was a pain but it was well worth doing the work myself. It only took me 1-2 minutes to cook it in the microwave so the energy cost was negligible. If the price goes up on the medium shrimp, we will just not buy it anymore.

There are so many things that I have stopped buying because the prices have risen too high. I haven’t bought coffee, soda, mayonnaise, any kind of plastic bags, aluminum foil, personal care products in weeks. I am making our coffee stretch by only having 2 cups a day. I was drinking 5. We have quit buying soda. We drink iced tea, hot tea, homemade cocoa, or lemon water. Sometimes, we just drink ice water with our meals. We are making our mayonnaise stretch by using less. We have some plastic bags and aluminum foil that I purchased before the prices went up. We have plenty of soap, lotion, body wash, shampoo, makeup, deodorant, floss and toothpaste. We are making them all last by using the minimum we can to do the job. We have quit using throw away razors or blades. We each have electric razors.

I am not buying any more paper towels. We are using rags for anything messy. I really appreciate my son, when he visited recently giving me a shirt that had a hole in it. I cut it up for rags. I am using cheap paper napkins to drain bacon which is basically what I used the paper towels for. The napkins are much cheaper than the paper towels.

We will be asking the dentist for two toothpastes and two flosses when we have cleanings.

We are making all of our own breading for meats, poultry, and fish from coconut and almond flour and one egg with a little cream mixed in. Then we either cook them in the air fryer or in a little avocado oil in the electric fry pan.

Tomorrow’s family breakfast will be scrambled eggs, bacon, and some sausage. My grandson does not like eggs but will eat pancakes. So I will be making him a stack from scratch. Since his 13th birthday was a couple of days ago, I will put a candle or two on the stack. We talked to him on his birthday and he was excited that my son had driven him to school instead of him going on the bus as usual. The reason he was excited is because he could ride in the front seat. He is almost 6 ft. tall and he couldn’t ride in the front seat until he was 13 years old. Yes, that is our nanny state. No height or weight requirement just age. Doesn’t make any sense to me!

We are cutting back on having bacon with our morning breakfasts. We have a lot of ham leftover in the freezer from when I cooked it after Christmas. We will be eating a slice of that fried up instead of bacon. Bacon is expensive so we will save what we have in the freezer for our family breakfasts.

Hubby and my son are going to be installing in the wall tomorrow the parts that Hubby purchased to hide the cords behind the TV on the wall. The only exception is that my son is giving us the HDMI 10 ft. cable that we need. I am so glad that this is getting done. I could not stand looking at the messy cords.

I am only doing one load of wash every 10 days or so now that all the bedding I am giving to my son and our other sheets are all done. It will be dried on racks and the shower rod.

What have you given up because it has gotten too expensive?