Tag: saving money

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.

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.

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?

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?