Lucky Robin's Personal Finance Blog

Some more photos of the house remodel.

Master Bedroom windows:

]

Master Bedroom Closet and Door looking out towards living room:



We chose not to put new doors on the closet as they were originally those atrocious double door sliding ones that constantly jump the tracks. That spot on the back wall isn't actually there. It was on the camera lens.

Master Bathroom Sinks:



Cabinets were refinished, new countertops went on top of vanity to match the new ones in the kitchen, the frames around the mirrors were refinished, the lighting fixtures are new, and the bathroom was texturized and painted yellow (not my first choice of color, but it was free paint as the contractor had it left over from another job).

Master Bathroom 2:



New tub and surround, new fixtures, new ceiling light, new bathroom fan, new high pressure/low water use toilet with options for flushing solids or liquids.

There is a bank of cabinets in the bathroom, similar to ones in the kitchen but in sorting through the photos no one got a shot of it. They were refinished as well.

Backyard:



Play structure was removed due to rot and grass has been reseeded, but has not finished growing back in.

Backyard Shed:



Removed rotting wooden carport that was attached to shed. Put on new roof. New paint. The white board at the bottom and the skirting was added. The white doorframe around the outer doorway is new.

Garden Space:



Removed the fifteen-year-old raised beds due to rotting wood, removed the picket fence surrounding the garden for same reason. Space is 20' x 45', rototilled and ready to be planted come spring.

Some more photos for you from the house remodel.

Living Room looking towards Master Bedroom:



Living Room looking towards Entryway:



Dining Room/Bonus Room looking toward Kitchen:



Dining Room/Bonus Room looking toward Woodstove



Wood Stove:

After all the annoyance and grief of the last year over getting the house in shape to sell, it is really beautiful now that it is finished. The listing went up today and I am now beginning that long game of waiting for the next uncertainty to become a certainty. To distract myself from going completely crazy, I thought I'd share some photos, but so as not to tank anyone's ability for a page to load, thought I'd do a few photos a day until they are done.

I chose the kitchen to start with. I do not have before photos. Before was boring anyway.

Looking towards dining room/bonus room:



New sink and new countertops:



Refinished cabinets, stove, dishwasher, sink:



Additional Cabinet Storage and Fridge Alcove:



Flooring is new as is the crown molding, texturized walls, and paint.

This kitchen was a dream to work in, but not anywhere near as nice as it is now. I am slightly jealous I will never get to use it.

Monday--
Chicken Noodle Soup
Toasted turkey and provolone sandwiches on rosemary bread
Apples

Tuesday--
Chicken and veggie stir-fry
Apples

Wednesday--
Home canned rabbit
Microwave baked potatoes
Green beans
Canned peaches

Thursday--
Baked potato soup
Cole slaw
Bananas

Friday--
Tacos
Oranges

Saturday--
Homemade pizza with ham, onion, bell pepper strips and pepperoni
Cole slaw

Sunday--
Beef pot roast
Roasted potatoes and carrots
Green beans
Apples

Wow, I can't believe we have finally gotten to this point. It has been so long. The meeting with the realtor went well. It is actually a husband/wife team who will be selling the house. There was a lot more paperwork involved than I thought there would be, but they were very thorough and explained everything well. They showed us the research they had gone through and what had led them to the price they had arrived at.

It is interesting to note that our house is somewhat of a rarity out there, since it is a four bedroom/2 bath home. There were no comparable four bedroom homes. Almost every house out there that has sold in the last several years has been a three bedroom/2 bath home. I remember that when we were looking to buy four bedrooms out there how hard it was to find one, actually. If it was a four bedroom it was on 5 acres, instead of something close to the .39 acres we own.

But they more or less figured out things based on lot size, square footage, condition of the home, comparable valuation of a house on the wrong sized lot, or a right sized lot with a different valued home, added the correct sized home to the correct sized lot, etc. They showed us all the calculations that went into it. I was impressed with how much work they had done. They will be scheduling an open house soon. Possibly as soon as next weekend.

There have been a couple of houses out there that sold really fast. One in 4 days and one in 10 days so I am crossing my fingers that ours will go quickly. I know we could be in for the long haul, but it would be so nice if we were not. Realtor said it was all about being priced appropriately and showed us a house that was 3 bed with similar footage and yard size, but not nearly as nice on the inside. It was overpriced, he thought, by $35,000. It has been on the market for 425 days. So...yeah. The right price is important.

This kind of feels like a crazy time to put a house on the market. Federal employees certainly won't be looking for homes any time soon. Anyone who needs a federal loan won't be either. But hopefully there are folks out there that are in a good place financially and can get a normal loan and will fall in love with our place and it will move. I will keep my fingers crossed. Well, not the broken one, but the other nine.

We're meeting with the realtor today to set the final price on the house and officially sign the 3 month contract to have him as our realtor. Then we can get the sign up and the photos on the web. I am really looking forward to that. It feels like we're finally taking another step forward towards getting our freedom back.

I just hope that someone will want to buy it and will have the financing in place for it, and won't need a government loan or VA loan. So far the government shut down hasn't affected me on a personal level, but I can see it doing so if this continues.

I can also see it being a problem later on if we need to get a USDA farm loan. I think we can buy a farm without one, but having that as an option would be nice.

At this stage of the game, I'm rather proud of myself for having voted neither republican or democrat. At this point independents are probably the only ones who can save this country from the bickering and pettiness going on.

The $10 auto deposit went to savings today. I transferred it as always to the EF.

$7315.51 Beginning EF
+__10.00 Amount Added
----------
$7525.51 New EF Amonunt

$184.49 to go to meet my October goal of $7510.

This week has been ridiculous with expenses coming out of the school. DD came home with an order form for cap and gown for graduation on Monday, saying something about an $80 deposit that had to be in the next day and that the total would be $226. I kind of went through the roof (not at her or anything), but $226 for a flimsy robe and cardboard hat? Umm, yeah, no.

Fortunately on further investigation, the $226 packet included a whole bunch of crap that had nothing whatsoever to do with what was required. Things like graduation t-shirt, graduation hoody, graduation key chain, 50 announcements with two sets of envelopes, tissues, name cards, and class ring. They were selling it as a package. Um, yeah, no.

In the very back of the order packet, was a different order sheet and on it, you could buy the actual necessities for graduation, which were the cap/gown/tassel/stole for $53.50. And you could order just 25 announcements with just one set of envelopes. No need for inner and outer envelopes, special inner and outer seals, tissues, return address labels, etc. 25 announcements and envelopes was $30. Still way too much, and we don't need 25 announcements, we only need 15, but that was the least I could go.

So a total of $83.50 plus $8.95 handling fee and 7.8% sales tax, ended up with us paying $99.66, although I'm not sure if it was actually legal for them to tax the handling fee. Still $99.66 beats $226 by a mile and we saved $126.34 just because I thoroughly read through the packet. I wonder how many parents don't? I charged it to the AMEX and will pay it off on payday.

School needs to give more than 1 day's notice though. And then yesterday DD comes home with a class t-shirt order form that was due, guess when, today. I have gotten her a class t-shirt every year of high school, so I managed to eek out the $14.50 for that, as well, from the $48 left in checking until Friday. I don't mind buying these things, I just want a week's notice so I can put it in the budget, you know?

I've also come to the conclusion that the ASB needs to change its name to BYD for bleed you dry as that is what they seem to try to do in the beginning of the school year.

Most of the time I only manage to get $25 in gift cards to Amazon from my Swagbucks stuff, but I had a little more time to waste in September since DS is actually doing most of his homeschooling without my input. So I managed to get $50 in gift cards this month.

And I hit the daily goal every day, so will get a bonus for that on top of the daily goal bonus here in a day or two. Probably my biggest change is doing their surveys. I didn't even start trying to do surveys until August. I tend to qualify for 3 to 4 of the big ones each week and at least one of the smaller ones.

I had originally planned on using my Amazon gift cards for Christmas, but I have been saving cash for that as well and have a good balance. So I am thinking of using my gift cards to buy quail supplies instead. I can get a good book on raising them and an incubator with quail egg inserts from Amazon.

I can make the brooder out of a cattle watering tub and a plywood board we already have with a spot cut out for the heat lamp to go through. They would live in the garage. We have the feeders from raising chicks and all I'd need is to get some marbles to put in the chick waterers we have. The marbles prevent the baby quail from climbing in and drowning.

The quail stay in the brooder until they are five weeks old. We'd have to build a pen for them to finish growing out in. We will be raising coturnix and they start laying eggs at 7 weeks old and are fully mature at 8 weeks old. We will then choose three males and 9 females. We will set them up in the outdoor rabbit hutches as breeding quartets for eggs. The rest we will butcher for meat. Incubation of eggs only takes 17 days. I'd like to eventually have 6 males with 18 females for breeding and eggs, but space constraints make that impossible before we move.

I canned my first batch of rabbit meat. I've never canned meat before. I ended up with six quart jars of meat. I didn't can the ribcage sections. Instead I used them to make stock and canned it, too. You can read about that on the farm blog if you like:

My monthly interest for my C1-360 savings account showed up today. $5.51. I added it to the Emergency Fund.

$7310.00 Old EF Amount
+___5.51 Interest Added
------------
$7315.51 New EF Amount

$194.49 to go to hit my October goal.

Monday--
Belgian Waffles with strawberries
Bacon and eggs
Salad

Tuesday--
Fried rabbit
Baked potatoes
Broccoli/cauliflower

Wednesday--
Baked potato soup (bacon is the protein)
Fresh baked bread
Red cabbage and spinach salad

Thursday--
Pulled pork in choice of buns or tortillas
Applesauce
Coleslaw

Friday--
Homemade pizza with pepperoni, homemade sausage, onions, and bell pepper strips
Broccoli/cauliflower

Saturday--
Spaghetti and Meatballs
Coleslaw
Canned pears

Sunday--
Beef chuck roast
Mashed potatoes and gravy
Green beans
Drop biscuits with choice of jams

Today was payday. I am mostly paying ahead on October bills, since we had so many paydays in September and because of the way the October paydays will fall. I had also set aside most of the money to pay the big doctor bill you'll see listed below. I am not actually making the car payment yet as the statement hasn't arrived, but I did set the money aside for it for our usual payment.

For some reason today while I was paying the bills and recording things into the budget I had the song "Pop Goes the Weasel," going through my head. Particularly the line that goes, "That's the way the money goes, pop goes the weasel." Which admittedly is better than the song that has been in my head all week. Which is this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SJvKDAF8Xk, but I'm warning you that you probably should not watch it because it is weird and kind of addictive and it will run through your head over and over again and that way madness lies. Then again, why should I be the only one with it stuck in my head?

Anyway, here is the list of what went out today:

$1000.00 Loan Payback to Mom
__400.00 Utilities to Mom
___90.00 Physical Therapy
__300.00 Beef/Pork/Chicken from the ranch Money
__100.00 Cash for Week
___40.00 Allowances
___45.30 Life Insurance DH
___41.88 Life Insurance Me
___69.86 Car Insurance
___47.17 Old House Insurance
___41.16 Old House Security System
__168.00 Storage
__923.54 Medical
__322.75 AMEX
___72.00 Water/sewer Old House (Holding Tank)
___35.20 Emergency Fund
__800.00 Car Payment Money (Holding Tank)
------------
$4496.86 Total Money Out (or set aside)

I still have $250 out of this paycheck in checking. I am waiting for the power bill for the old house to come, but that will only be around $30 to $35. I will have to get a few prescriptions renewed tomorrow. I also need to do a little bit of grocery shopping, mostly for produce. Other than that and a field trip fee on Monday for DS's homeschool program, I don't see any other money going out.

Yesterday as the weekly deposit of $10 to savings, which always goes to the EF. I forgot about it, though, and so I transferred $35.20 to the EF to meet my Septembers goal of $7300, when all I really needed to do was transfer $25.20. Oh, well, so I passed the goal a bit.

The new balance of the EF is $7310.

The goal for October was going to be $7500, but now is $7510.

We dispatched four of our meat rabbits today. From a live weight of 22 pounds, 11.7 ounces, we got 11 pounds, 6.3 ounces of rabbit meat and 12.3 ounces of livers, for a total of 12 pounds, 2.6 oz of food. They ate about $7 worth of feed, $1 worth of hay, and $4 worth of vegetables over their life, so it comes out to about $1 per pound. We could get a smidge more if we saved the hearts and kidneys, too, but we don't. They go to the wildlife center along with the heads and other offal.

I'd say the rabbits are paying for themselves and we are ending up with lots of good, low-fat, lean white meat in the freezer at a price that just can't be beat by anything but the cheapest chicken hindquarters and you can bet those chickens never saw daylight.

Phoebe gave birth this morning, another large litter with 8 healthy kits. We'll have a break from kindling for a while, as the next two rabbits to give birth are only one week pregnant, so have three weeks and four days to go. In another couple of months we should be able to have rabbit twice a week if we so desire.

I am going to can some rabbit meat this week and some rabbit broth for making soup later this winter, or possibly canning carrot, potato, celery, bits of meat, and onion right in the broth and can it as soup. I would also like to make up some rabbit nuggets for the freezer. And maybe some rabbit stir-fry kits, too.

That means I'll need to dig up some potatoes and get some organic carrots from the farmer's market or the no spray garden in town. I doubt anyone has grown celery here, it is kind of hit or miss in our zone, but I can get it from the store if needs must be. Organic though. It sucks up pesticides just like carrots.

It would be great to have enough soups done up to get through winter and spring, but that may not be possible yet.

-------

The repair around the skylights and the final application of stuff to make the floors look like shiny wood instead of dull wood, will get put on this weekend. We just need to find out how long it takes for the shiny stuff to dry. Then we'll go in with the realtor and see where things stand.

I feel like I've been such a major drama llama lately, but finally something really great happened. The rain stopped early this a.m. so the roofer was able to go out and look at the roof at the old house. And it turns out that it was a very small thing with the flashing that likely got knocked loose when the roof was pressure washed, so instead of just an estimate he said he could do the fix right then. It would take like a half an hour. Total cost to repair roof? $151!

So now the little bit of damage that was done to the inside ceiling can be repaired and we should be able to put the house on the market next weekend! Please cross your fingers for us (or pray) that nothing else goes wrong. This whole house ordeal may finally be over.

I had guesstimated on Friday when I paid the mortgage that the balance would be around $8937.89, but it was actually $8931.90. That's $5.99 less, not the $1 or $2 I thought I'd be off by. Nice. Just that much less left to pay the thing off.

The roofer is most likely going out on Thursday at that is the only day it is not supposed to rain this week. If it doesn't rain tomorrow though he will give a call and have Mom meet him out there. I've got too much going on this week between homeschooling, DH coming home, running R around, and having to do a meat rabbit slaughter on the one sunny day we have.

On top of that I start Piper's litter weaning on Thursday as they will be 8 weeks old, so I'll have to figure out who are the two biggest and take them away to start the process. AND Phoebe is due to kindle her second litter on Thursday and with all the going in and out of the rabbit shed I'll be doing, she may not get the privacy she will want. I am anxious if the big first litter will be the norm. Since all the other rabbits seem stuck on six kits, it would be nice if she'd kindle 9 again.

And I found a 13 acre spread that I desperately want to go see because it is absolutely perfect for our farming wants. We would easily be able to expand the rabbitry. We could have our flock of chickens, our ducks, our geese, our quail, pigs, goats, and a guard alpaca or two to free range with the chickens. Not all of once of course, but over time.

I should not even be looking at farms until our house sells and we can't put it on the market until the roof is repaired. That ranch will probably be long gone by the time we are ready to buy. But I fell in love with it just from the photos. And it is in our price range.

I went over 3,000,000 hits this week. Thanks to everyone who has spent so much time reading this blog over the years.

I went down and talked to the people who issue my homeowner's policy about the roof and it would be covered if we decide to make a claim. We have a $500 deductible, which I knew. I was a little worried about it, because since the house is vacant, we had to have a different policy than if we were living in it. One that didn't insure contents since there weren't any, etc., but still insured the building/structures. And there are always exclusions. But we did, in fact, take out the right policy when we moved, so it will cover this water/wind damage. So it is a big relief to know that is an option.

After that an appointment was made for later this week to have a roofer/repairer come and give an estimate. He will be able to track down where the actual damage is and follow the line of the leak. He's been in business 20 years and comes highly recommended. He is one of the few that will make repairs. A lot of roofers won't do that anymore, they will just roof.

And once we have the estimate I can decide whether it is enough to bother with a claim or to just eat it. I really don't want to trash the emergency fund. But I don't want sky high insurance rates in the future either. Right now we get a huge discount for never having submitted a claim on house or car insurance in 15 years/20 years.

I think my break point will be $2000. If it is much more than that we will submit a claim and deal with the insurance consequences. I can handle losing that much from the EF and still feel secure. And if we do a claim, it will be much easier to come up with the $500 deductible.

I forgot to ask if we pay first and then get reimbursed by insurance or if we have the roofer send the bill to the insurance and they pay it. I guess I'll have to do that once we get the estimate.

Right now I am just going to hope and pray this is a repair job and not a full roof job. I'd much prefer it to be a fast and easy fix. We really wanted to get the house on the market when DH comes home this time. Who knows now if that will happen? Depends on how fast it can be done, I guess.

The house is done. Yeah, really. Only...you knew there had to be an only, right? Well, as the workers were removing everything from the house and going through and doing the final checklist a storm moved in. And it moved in hard.

And the wind and the rain damaged the roof and water started leaking in around the skylights, but it is not the actual skylights that are leaking. So up went the head dude to see if he could patch the leak. Yes, in the storm. To no avail. The roof was fine last week when he was up there, but now it's not.

They took photos of the damage and covered the entire roof with two huge tarps. They also put stuff down to protect the flooring. And tomorrow I get to go see the insurance agent and see where to go from there. We may not file a claim at all, but we want to see if we need to have one of their people come out or just get a roofer to go out and figure stuff out and give us an estimate to take to them if we decide to file a claim.

We do have enough money in the EF to put on a new roof and certainly to just repair it if that is what needs to be done. I am not sure I want to file a claim and have our insurance be screwed for the next 10 years. I feel like insurance claims should be for catastrophic damage. Yet at the same time if there is coverage for this it might be worth doing. Ugh.

I really did not need this to happen. Though better it happened while the workers were still there, than after they were done and us not going out there until next weekend. We could have had damage to the new floors and not just to a small part of the ceiling in the skylight openings.

I was so looking forward to finally getting this thing on the market and without further expense, but it is not to be just yet.

Monday--
Pork Chops
Fried Potatoes
Green Beans

Tuesday--
Spaghetti and Meatballs
Garlic Bread
Salad

Wednesday--
Chicken Stir-fry
Pears

Thursday--
Fried Rabbit
Baked Potatoes
Green Beans

Friday--
Baked Potato Soup
Coleslaw

Saturday--
Leftovers

Sunday--
Beef Chuck Pot Roast
Mashed Potatoes and Gravy
Green Beans
Drop biscuits with choice of homemade jams

After making a larger than usual mortgage payment today, we are now under $9K! Estimated balance is $8937.89. It will likely be $1 or $2 less than that when it actually posts. I used last month's interest to calculate it and I paid it 3 days earlier this month so it will definitely be a bit less. Wasn't due until the 1st. I forgot to reorder checks while I was there making the payment, darn it. Got to remember to do that Monday.

I added $4.85 to the coin jar today.

Today is payday. Not a lot of bills went out today, but large amounts of money did.

$1500.00 BoA VISA
_1075.86 Mortgage payment
__100.00 Cash for the Week
___40.00 Allowances
__202.00 Medical
__100.00 Emergency Fund
-------------
$3017.86 Total Money Out

I am also setting aside $600 of this paycheck to go towards a medical bill that I won't be able to pay in full until next Friday. It is $923.54 and is the result of my medical insurance (worst) company (in the US) Premera "we suck eggs" Blue Cross trying to get out of paying for, oh, just about anything EVER. Not that I'm ticked off or anything.

And we haven't even got the hospital bill for DD's emergency middle of the night visit at the start of the month yet. I don't even want to think about what that will be. I never thought I'd see the day where I'd actually miss Aetna. Mind you, I only miss them a little bit, but still.

I went to the local CU we have a portion of our EF in to deposit the Allstate refund check, the school refund check, and the $11 in ones I had in the coin jar today. It was a total of $39.48. I also transferred $100 to my main EF at C1-360. So a total of $139.48 to the EF.

The CU messed up and put the $39.48 into the dormant checking account instead of the savings account. I specifically said savings and even gave the specific numbers for savings. Unfortunately they are in the middle of a remodel and name change and they had taken out the area where they keep the deposit slips so I couldn't fill one out. Since the savings and checking deposit slips are uniquely different colors it seldom happens that they put it in the wrong account, but without those slips they do. A lot. and I didn't think to double check it until I got home.

So I will have to call them on Monday and have them fix it. They are in the process of changing their internet stuff, too, or I'd just go in and transfer it myself.

Anyway:

$7125.32 Beginning EF Amount
__100.00 Deposit to Main EF
+__39.48 Deposit to Local EF
-------------
$7264.80 New EF Amount

I need to scrape up $35.20 more to hit my September EF goal. I think I can manage.

This was totally unexpected, but at the beginning of the school year my daughter rented a special calculator from the school for her math class. It was $10 for the year and since the special calculator would cost close to $100, we felt renting it was the wiser option. Well, we just got a refund check in the mail for that $10. The note enclosed said, "Do to the Districts desire to reduce/eliminate all course fees, we are refunding your students $10 calculator rental fee. If lost, the replacement fee is $100."

After I finished laughing over the school district's inability to spell or punctuate correctly, I was quite pleased. But they really should have people proofread their documents before they mail them out. Spellcheck will not notice if you use "do" or "due" incorrectly, but I certainly will. And I will also notice when you write students, but mean student's and Districts when you mean District's. Also, district's should not be capitalized. It is not listing a specific district. Honestly, four errors in a two sentence note?

Since it is signed by the principal, I am thinking about correcting the note in red felt tip pen and mailing it back to him. Okay, he probably never saw it at all, but seriously, what a bad example that sets. It's almost worth the cost of the stamp to do so. Almost. Maybe I'll email.

It does mildly irritate me that the check is made out to my husband. Since I am the one who wrote out and signed the original check it should have been refunded in my name, not his. Not that it matters in my case, I can deposit it without his signature into our account, but what if they had sent the refund to the wrong parent when the parents don't live together? Not a smart move.

The $10 will be headed to the Emergency Fund tomorrow when I deposit the Allstate refund and the coin jar money.

I balanced the checkbook today. I've been letting it go since I knew there was plenty of money in the account and I felt to cruddy to do math even with the help of a calculator. Still feeling cruddy, but I figured since tomorrow is payday I should get it taken care of. Balanced it to the penny, so go me.

I also sent $1000 off to the BoA Visa. I will be paying an additional $1500 on Friday. We went a little overboard on the spending with the Visa again, mostly on things to get the rabbitry off the ground, and airfare went up in the spring. Nothing that we can't take care of in a short amount of time, but I'm not too thrilled that we backslid. I know it happens. But now that I have gotten the EF to a level I am far more comfortable at, the focus will be again on that card for a few months. Can't let the evil empire get the upper hand again. Not to say I won't still set EF goals, as I will.

There should be about $500 a month more now that DH has hit the limit on the SSI tax being taken out. He won't make enough for them to start taking it out again this year, so we will have that money back until the end of the year.

Today was also the day of the auto deposit of $10 to savings so that went to the Emergency Fund.

$7115.32 Old EF Amount
+__10.00 Amount of Deposit
------------
$7125.32 New EF Amount

$174.68 to go to hit my September goal of $7300.

I received my safe driver check from Allstate. It's a partial refund of payments for not getting into any accidents. It's not much, just $16.48, but it's something. It will be headed for the Emergency Fund.

I also cleaned out my purse and added $3.87 to the coin jar.

Are they ever going to fix the posting problem here? You should be able to spend more than 3 minutes typing a post without it disappearing into the ether the moment you post it. It feels like it's been going on for over a year now. Frustrating. /rant

I know I am usually good at making everything from scratch, but today I was just exhausted. I think I'm on the cusp of a cold. I really, really wanted to get Round Table Pizza, but I managed to resist. I did have to go to the store to get milk and produce and while there I noticed they had some cheap cheese pizzas on sale with a sell by date of today. This is the type the store makes in-house, not the kind in the freezer section.

So I bought a couple of cheap cheese pizzas and then once home I doctored them up with pepperoni, onions, and bell pepper strips. It's not RT and it's not homemade, but spending six bucks on the pizzas and adding toppings I already had at home gave me an easy pizza that I didn't have to put much time or effort into. With the toppings I used I probably spent a grand total of $8. And one of those pizzas I put in the freezer for another day. So $4 spent for dinner for 3 of us. Not too shabby.

Because I am feeling under the weather or like I am about to be, I am planning a mostly crockpot and soup pot week. I figure if I have easy crockpot dinners planned, I won't be tempted to do takeout.

Monday:
Crockpot Chicken stew (boneless skinless chicken thighs, cut into one inch pieces, carrots cut into one inch pieces, potatoes, cut into one inch pieces, green beans snapped into one inch pieces, a can of corn, one pint of rabbit stock, and I will mix in some leftover rabbit gravy at the end to thicken it)
Salad

Tuesday:
Crockpot Beef pot roast
Microwave Baked potatoes
Nectarines
Coleslaw

Wednesday:
Baked potato soup
Coleslaw
Italian prunes

Thursday:
Leftovers

Friday:
Crockpot chicken (whole)
Microwave baked potatoes
Green beans

Saturday:
Chicken and noodles
Salad
Nectarines

Sunday:
Tacos
Pears

I know I am usually good at making everything from scratch, but today I was just exhausted. I think I'm on the cusp of a cold. I really, really wanted to get Round Table Pizza, but I managed to resist. I did have to go to the store to get milk and produce and while there I noticed they had some cheap cheese pizzas on sale with a sell by date of today. This is the type the store makes in-house, not the kind in the freezer section.

So I bought a couple of cheap cheese pizzas and then once home I doctored them up with pepperoni, onions, and bell pepper strips. It's not RT and it's not homemade, but spending six bucks on the pizzas and adding toppings I already had at home gave me an easy pizza that I didn't have to put much time or effort into. With the toppings I used I probably spent a grand total of $8. And one of those pizzas I put in the freezer for another day. So $4 spent for dinner for 3 of us. Not too shabby.

Because I am feeling under the weather or like I am about to be, I am planning a mostly crockpot and soup pot week. I figure if I have easy crockpot dinners planned, I won't be tempted to do takeout.

Monday:
Crockpot Chicken stew (boneless skinless chicken thighs, cut into one inch pieces, carrots cut into one inch pieces, potatoes, cut into one inch pieces, green beans snapped into one inch pieces, a can of corn, one pint of rabbit stock, and I will mix in some leftover rabbit gravy at the end to thicken it)
Salad

Tuesday:
Crockpot Beef pot roast
Microwave Baked potatoes
Nectarines
Coleslaw

Wednesday:
Baked potato soup
Coleslaw
Italian prunes

Thursday:
Leftovers

Friday:
Crockpot chicken (whole)
Microwave baked potatoes
Green beans

Saturday:
Chicken and noodles
Salad
Nectarines

Sunday:
Tacos
Pears

I cleaned out my purse tonight and had a lot of ones. I added $11.25 to the coin jar.

DH's overtime pay hit the account this morning. I transferred $1000 to the Emergency Fund. Usually I nickel and dime my way along, so it was nice to be able to put a large chunk in for a change.

$6115.32 Beginning EF Balance
+1000.00 Amount Added
-------------
$7115.32 Ending EF Balance

$186.68 to go to meet my September goal. My October goal is $7500, which is a month's net earnings. I can't believe I am so close now.

The other bit of big news is that DH has hit the income point for the year when they stop taking out social security. It was actually met on August 30th. So for the last four months of the year we will have bigger paychecks. That will really help with my savings goals.

Projected earnings are $173K unless he gets more overtime this year and of course the Christmas Bonus total will be added to that. If Christmas Bonuses are 10% this year, he will get a check for $17,300 minus taxes. If it is 5%, he will get a check for $8,650 minus taxes. Either way, DD's first year of college will be paid for and we'll be able to use next year's tax refund for something other than saving for college. If something goes wrong with the bonus, the tax refund will still be enough to pay for her first year of college at the local community college.

Big long entry disappeared into outer space despite copy/save. ARGH.

Instead you now get just the EF update.

$6105.32 Beginning Balance
+--10.00 Amount Added
------------
$6115.32 Ending Balance