Tag: saving money

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Every Day

How We Are Saving Dollars

I am using the cash station to fill up our SUV because the price is $ 2.83 per gallon vs. $ 2.99 at the Top’s station. With no gas points to use because of the lack of much shopping, we save $ .16 per gallon and it is much closer to my home.

I had to go to the Urgent Care on Monday. I was diagnosed with a sinus infection and 2 ear infections. The Urgent Care is only 3 miles from my home. My doctor is 17 miles and couldn’t get me in for a few days. The Urgent Care had me in and out in 15 minutes. Fortunately the 2 drugs they prescribed were cheap. So I picked those up along with another one that had been refilled for me and only had to pay $13.75 for all 3.

I got a $ 5.00 liquor rebate in the mail. I have more coming. Every little bit helps.

We earned a $100. cashback rebate by using my credit card. We never pay interest so this is a win-win.

We had a meal of the free potstickers last night. Hubby steamed them and they were so good. We finally finished up all the chicken I had cooked.

For dinner tonight, we will have Chef’s salads to use up some of the produce and meat in the refrigerator. I will hard boil some eggs in the Instant Pot.

Breakfasts this week have been eggs, French toast, and bacon and grilled cheese and meat sandwiches. I think today, I will have soup that is leftover in the freezer. Soup is my comfort food and I don’t have much of an appetite with these drugs that I am on.

We have decided to go to Applebee’s one night this week for dinner again. We have discounted gift cards that will pay for it to use up. I am worried that with all the restaurants going out of business, we will lose that money.

Hubby has been trimming our bushes little by little. He is doing it so that when the landscape crew comes they won’t have as much to do. Plus we won’t have to pay for trimming when they do the spring cleanup and mulching.

I am now using a larger box that I already had for Eloise’s cat litter. She was using a much smaller box and when she would go in there and kick to cover everything up, half of it would go on the litter rug that is underneath the box and on the tile floor. She is almost full grown now and she is a very long cat so this is working much better. The past two nights since I put it in there, she has not gotten any litter outside this box. Less for me to clean every night. When I made the change, I spring cleaned the entire laundry room that the box is in. It felt good to get that done. Besides working on the freezers and pantries, I am trying to spring clean a room every couple of days too. Today I will be cleaning our master bathroom.

I was going to go run some errands today because it is Senior Discount Day at Top’s. But I don’t feel that good today so I will have to do it another day this week. I lose that 6% off but I only have 4 items that we need and my health is much more important to me.

We are trying to be very careful with how much electricity and natural gas we are using. It is still cold here. Overnight it was 27. I think about it every time I go to cook, do laundry, take showers, use the computers, and the TV’s. I am very conscious of lighting. No lighting during the daytime unless it is stormy and dreary. It is sunny today so that will help the heating bill. I have the window coverings open when the sun is on them.

As I go through each room that I am spring cleaning, I am getting rid of clutter. I do this every year. Since it is garbage day on Thursday, it will go or be donated to Goodwill.

We had some big expenses in March. Our homeowner’s and auto insurance we pay yearly was due. It reminded me that we have been in our home here for 15 years. Time flies! But because of that we were only able to save $4500. towards our goal.

I hope you guys are saving what you can. I know it is hard because everything is so expensive. But if there was ever a time to be frugal, it is now. President Trump and Elon and Doge keep reminding us how fragile our economy is and the mess that they inherited from Biden. It is not an easy fix and the accountant in me is really worried that we could all lose everything if our economy collapses. Biden and his administration brought us right to the edge of the cliff. They are trying to fix it but only time will tell if they can. Personally I think these people who robbed us to enrich themselves should all go to prison.

What have you been doing lately to be frugal and save some money? It doesn’t have to be big. The little things add up faster than you think.

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Every Day

My Project That I Am Working On

I am trying to get more organized in my freezers again. It seems that I have been so busy over the past few months that things have just gotten thrown in them wherever they fit instead of being really organized with a good plan.

So this past week in between appointments and other things, I have been tackling my two freezer drawers in my refrigerator. First thing I did was make a plan. I decided that all frozen vegetables and fruits, potato items like French Fries, quick prepared meal items(any purchased from the market or homemade leftovers), breakfast meats, ( bacon, sausage, ham, Steakums), ice cream, homemade preserves, and the meat I would be using in the next two weeks for dinner would go in these drawers. That will save me from running downstairs so often and opening the chest freezer.

The jars are the preserves and leftover homemade soups. Things that we can grab quickly for brunch.

We always keep a bag of frozen potpies because they are my guilty pleasure, some tortellini which I use in soup, avocados to go with my bacon and eggs once in a while.

I just went to B’J’s on Thursday. Hubby had his physical therapy that day. So I dropped him off and went to the warehouse club to pick up one item. B’J’s was only 2 and 1/2 blocks away. I had a free coupon for a 56 oz. Ling Lings Potstickers that was expiring this coming Tuesday. It was free because we have no tax on food here. By going with him I didn’t have to spend any more for gasoline doing a second trip.

You will see in these drawers that I have two plastic bags with white things in them. Sorry about the pictures but I am still having trouble with my phone. The white things are the potstickers. I repackaged them so that we could get 4 meals out of them and be able to fit them in these freezer drawers. I have a bulletin board on my refrigerator where I put directions from packages so I have them when needed.

I think this plan is going to work well for us. Time will tell. If it doesn’t, I will tweak it.

It took me a long time to do this with the short period of time I had because I had to go through my chest freezer to pull out the things that I wanted upstairs. Then I had to bring things from upstairs downstairs to make room for all of the things. Now my downstairs freezer needs major attention so I will work on that this week in between two medical appointments for me. That is going to take a lot of the rest of my time.

My son and West came for breakfast this morning. Afterwards I planned on going to our town’s electronics recycling with the frame that died the other day. My son said he would take it to his college’s recycling. That saved me a trip. I made eggs, bacon, and French toast for breakfast today. Everyone was happy!

We have been eating chicken for the past few days. We should finish it tonight.

I think I have a sinus infection and possible ear infection. I doubt that I will be able to get an appointment quickly with my doctor. So I may make a trip to urgent care in the morning.

That’s it for now.

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Every Day

Things That We Have Been Doing to Cut Our Grocery Bill

I don’t have to tell you how expensive groceries have gotten over the past 4 years. As I track the price of things that we buy over and over again, it is really obvious. There are many things that we will not buy because the prices have gone up.

At the top of our list is junk food. We no longer buy candy, chips or any other snack like these. Instead we are buying fresh mandarins when we can find them on sale. Lately they have been on sale for $ 2.99 for a 3 lb. bag. If we need a snack in the afternoon, we just grab one of these. They satisfy our sweet tooth and are a good source of fiber. We also buy apples on sale for snacks and to make pies. Both of these last a very long time in the refrigerator.

If we need muffins, brownies, a cake, cupcakes, or cookies, we now make them at home. No more sweet treats from the bakery at exorbitant prices.

We want zero waste of food in our home. We did well this week. We used up all of our leftovers. Yesterday, I had one hamburger and some potato salad left from two other meals. That was it. So Hubby wanted to finish those. I thawed a bowl of turkey soup that I froze when we had roasted our turkey not too long ago. This week we will eat a lot of produce and leftover ham and turkey in salads. Last night, I made a homemade pizza. Today, I will make corned beef and cabbage since it is St. Patrick’s Day. I ended up buying another corned beef for $ 4.89 a lb. this past week at Aldi’s. It was about $ .80 cheaper per lb. than the one I purchased at B.J.’s. These will give us many reuben sandwiches over the next year.

We still buy eggs even though they are so expensive. We just don’t have them every day like we used to. They are a part of our diet that we do not want to give up. I am happy to hear that the price of eggs will be coming down in the next couple of months.

We are trying to stick to proper portions of beef, chicken, lamb and pork when we have them. The same goes for fish and shrimp. I have not purchased scallops in over a year because the price is too high.

We eat salads a lot for dinner. Sometimes for brunch instead of eggs.

We want the prices of food to come down. To make sure they do we are only buying foods made in the U.S. No foreign food for us to avoid the tariffs. It is harder than it sounds. I have been researching the products we buy and a lot of it comes from Brazil, Mexico, China, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany and Vietnam. You even have to watch your fresh meats and fresh produce. Many are coming in from outside our country.

We no longer buy fresh milk. Hubby and I do not drink milk so many times after making puddings and other recipes, we ended up throwing it out because it had spoiled. We use evaporated milk, powdered milk, and shelf stable milk when we need some.

I have started to replace Eloise’s food with homemade. The store bought prices are outrageous. I have made a recipe with ground cooked chicken, rice, and gravy that she loves. She hates liver and I won’t give her tuna because of the mercury. But we are working on some other recipes for her.

Hubby and I thought about buying a second freezer because there have been so many sales lately on them. However, we decided against it. We have a full freezer right now that we need to use up. If we had a second one, we would fill that up and things would not get eaten in a proper amount of time and spoil. We have decided to use what we have and then replace those items with steaks, hamburgers, chicken, pork ribeyes, etc. These will be things that we will grill outside over the summer instead of using electricity and natural gas to cook in our kitchen. The money that I have been saving on our grocery bill each month will help us buy those meats when they go on sale.

I had planned on doing this post last Friday but life got in the way. We had company, nice weather to enjoy, and many appointments to deal with. Getting old is a pain in the butt. Too many doctors to deal with. UGH!

I am going to try to post as frequently as I can. We will see how this week goes.

What are you doing to cut some of your grocery costs?

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Every Day

A Little Of This And A Little Of That

It has been a very busy week of appointments and errands. Our week started off with my son and West coming for breakfast on Sunday. I cooked a lb. of bacon, a lb. of sausage, and scrambled eggs(about a dozen and a half), and made French toast which took 4 more eggs. These eggs are getting expensive. I think I will start thawing the eggs in my freezer for our next big breakfast. It is still cheaper for me to cook than take everyone out to our Greek restaurant for breakfast. Then we spent a few hours playing rummy which this Grandma loves!

We ate all of our meals from our stockpile. We finished the turkey making a big pot of soup. We had a filet mignon, baked potato, and broccoli for dinner last night. Tonight we are splurging and getting take out fish fries from Chiavetta’s. We have not had them since last Lent( they started selling them again in November) so this will be a real treat. This weekend I will put a chuck roast in the crockpot and make a stew with plenty of carrots, onions, and potatoes. That will last us 3-4 days.

Two days ago I ran a lot of errands. I had to go to the Post Office with mail, to Home Depot to dispose of three Ion Recyclable batteries that were no longer charging, fill the car up with gasoline using my $.30 off a gallon, to Top’s for on sale cat litter and a half gallon of Half and Half, and to the liquor store. After that I was beat.

Yesterday, I went to Niagara Produce and purchased a chuck roast to put in the freezer. It was only $4.99 a lb. They also had a huge package of chicken tenders on sale for $2.49. That is the cheapest price I have seen in a long time. I am very low on chicken. Today after I run some more errands, I will pressure can all of it to put on my shelf.

I went back to Top’s yesterday on a 3 day sale to get an almost 9 lb. turkey breast for $ 1.29 a lb. Since I haven’t been able to find much chicken, I will substitute the turkey instead.

That was all I purchased this week so I did not spend a lot of money. After I call my eye doctor for an appointment when their office opens this morning, I will finish the errands that I didn’t finish the other day. I couldn’t get the car washed because it was raining. I will try again today. It is so dirty that it needs a good bath. I tried to bring some bottles back to Fast Cash but they weren’t open yet so I will try again today.

Other than all of these things, we have been cleaning, doing laundry, and watching our shows that we DVR so that we can watch them without commercials. Hubby also installed a new kitchen sink caddy to hold my brush, sponges, and dishcloth. My other one broke. He was having a very difficult time getting the sticky off the adhesive part that held the old one to the sink so that he could install the new one. So I gave him Goo Gone and that took care of it. I remembered that I used to use that many years ago.

Also I finally got the Federal and State taxes done and filed. I am glad to have that out of the way.

Did any of you guys save money or find some good deals this week?

I will we back this weekend with another post. I didn’t forget to tell you about the utility bill. That is coming.

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Every Day

What We Have Been Doing To Cut Costs So That We Can Add To Our Net Worth

About once a week now, I am using my Instant Pot Max to hard boil 12 eggs to be eaten with dinner, brunch and for snacks. Meat has gotten so expensive that eggs are cheaper to get the protein that our bodies need.

My last 60 count box of eggs cost me $ 19.26 at Walmart. That is $.321per egg. Even if the price of eggs goes up, I believe they will be cheaper than beef, pork, sausage, shrimp, fish, and chicken per meal. I buy my large hams on sale at Christmas and Easter which we slice up to always have fried ham to eat with eggs when we want some. Hubby and I eat one hard boiled egg with bacon(which has come down a bit in price here) for brunches. That meal comes in at about $1.00 for each of us. I also have a lot of eggs scrambled raw in the freezer that I can thaw when I need them along with a piece or two of breakfast sausage that I always buy on sale. As a back up in case we can’t find eggs, I have freeze dried eggs and Bob’s Red Mill egg replacer to use in baking. Hubby had raisin bran for brunch. I have not eaten yet. I will probably make a steak-umm and eat a hard boiled egg to go with it.

This afternoon I will cook a lb. of bacon in the oven to have it ready for brunches. We will also use it in our homemade Cobb salads for dinner tonight along with a sliced up egg in each. I cook my bacon on a silicone baking mat instead of “throw away” parchment paper. I save my bacon grease to cook with.

We got our Rakuten Rebate for the last quarter. It was for $23.53. That will go into our savings. Every little bit helps!

Hubby took about 1/2 of our returnable bottles to Fast Cash the other day. He got $ 4.00. That also will go into savings.

I have submitted a $7.00 digital rebate for Michelob Ultra Beer. That will also go into savings.

We will get a senior rebate deducted from our school taxes this year. After 15 years of not qualifying, we have qualified because NY raised the income limit. It had been going up a little here and a little there but it went up quite a bit for this year coming up: 2025-2026. We just found out and we are elated. We don’t know the amount yet but last’s year’s deduction was $ 950. The amount is set by the state according to what county you are in. However, they will be reassessing us again so one may wash out the other. Time will tell.

Hubby and I went out to dinner on Valentine’s Day Eve to celebrate without the crowds. We went to Applebee’s and had a wonderful dinner of rib eye steaks. I paid for our meals and the 20% tip with gift cards that we got discounted at Christmas.

We are almost out of dish liquid. I have been researching how to make homemade. Does anyone here have a recipe they use and like?

I have been trying to cook up a whole bunch of meals at once to save on energy. As you all know, our electric and natural gas bill was almost $300. last month. The company just let us know that the meter reading is due by Friday. It is the month that the meter reader is supposed to read. However he doesn’t read if he can’t get the to the meter because of all of the snow. Let me assure you that we have lots of snow. It is been snowing here almost every day the past 6 weeks. Worst winter since we moved here. It snowed a bit this morning and now the winds have whipped it up. The snowplow guy has been here a lot this winter. Three times just yesterday and he just came 5 minutes ago. Our temperatures have been frigid too. We are at our high of 17 degrees but this afternoon it is supposed to go down to 8 degrees. Ugh.

To continue talking about the utility bills, the company just notified us that they will be adding a flat rate on our bills on as a separate line item for about $10.00 a month to pay for infrastructure repairs and associated costs. I assume this bill coming will have it on it. I believe they will charge this $10.00 per month for 6 months and then they will drop it to $5.00 per month forever. This will be on every NYSEG customers bills. Because of all of this and the horrid weather, I expect my next bill will be over $300. I have to find more ways to cut. This is getting ridiculous.

I am sitting here in the dark writing this. All lights are off in the house. All shades are down except for on sunny windows. We can’t turn the heat down any further. Hubby and Eloise would freeze. Eloise spends a good part of her day laying on the heat registers in the floor.

I will continue this in the next few days.

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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.

Categories
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?