Lucky Robin's Personal Finance Blog

I went to the grocery store today and spent $36.50. They had prepared chicken on sale, ten pieces for $4.99, less than the cost of a raw whole chicken by a dollar. I don't usually buy their prepared chicken but it seemed silly to buy the raw one when I really didn't feel like cooking at all as I'm coming down with something and the cooked one was so much cheaper. We had leftover potatoes and gravy in the fridge from earlier in the week and we opened the ever faithful can of green beans. All in all a pretty frugal meal, and there are still five pieces of chicken left so we will get another dinner, plus a lunch for somebody out of it.

I gave my mother the white meat since she likes it and we don't. I also bought one of their prepared 1.5 pound meatloaves for $5. Hamburger here is $2.50 a pound and if you add in the cost of the ingredients, it is pretty close to breaking even. Maybe 50 cents cheaper to make it myself, but again I really feel yucky. I just got the kids well, so I don't need to infect them with whatever I'm getting.

I went and looked up the amount still owed on the car finally. It's about $3000 less than I thought at $17,022. That was a nice surprise. I really should keep better track of these things.

Tomorrow is payday and I'm looking forward to paying off MC #1. This month has been really exciting so far as paying things off go. I like making progress. It makes me giddy.

I want a new laptop computer. I sort of think I need a new computer, but the truth is really that I want one. And I know it. The one I am using is still perfectly serviceable...for a while. Yes, I've worn all the lettering off most of the keys, but I've got the keyboard memorized. It's not like I need them.

Yes, the screen does have some colored, verticle lines running down it, but it usually doesn't interfere with anything I'm doing. It's on the side of the screen where all the ads usually go on websties so it doesn't really interfere with my reading blogs or articles or whatever I'm doing. It doesn't even really affect my word processing (which I do a lot of) because the closest line to the document is right at the right hand margin. I've been putting up with that for almost a year, but they are gradually creeping further to the left. It's annoying, mostly when I watch DVD's on it.

And yes, I had to superglue parts of it together when it was only six months old, because the frame was falling apart on me. It's actually held up really well since I did that. And yes, I've had to replace the power cord twice, but the battery still holds almost a full charge (which lasts 3.5 hours on powersaving mode).

It's also very heavy. Which is hard on my hands when I carry it anywhere with me. I really want a lightweight one. Something I can easily transport when DH isn't around to be my beast of burden. The one I want is about two to three pounds. It feels like a feather in comparison. And it comes in hot pink, purple, green and red. *sighs*

It'll be two years old in February and really...I just don't need a new one. Not yet. However, I think I am going to start putting money aside for one, because obviously this one is falling apart and there is going to come a time when it moves firmly into the need (as much as a computer can be a need) column.

I've got this little savings account that I call my WANTS account. It's got a grand total of $47.37 in it at the moment. So I think I'm going to find ways to add to that. I think that since I am regularly contributing to the EF with regular deposits, I am going to take any found money, all of my coin jar savings, and any little thing I do to save myself money that I normally would have spent it on, into that account. So today I cut my bangs myself. Even at the cheapest place in town that would cost me $7. So I will $7 to my WANTS account for that.

It rained really hard this afternoon and all of the snow melted. It's 47 degrees at current. Hard to believe it was a snow day! We ended up going to the library because some of our requests came in. I spent a quarter today for the parking meter. The stupid, newfangled metering system no longer has fifteen free minutes on it. It no longer has the option of using a nickle or a dime, either, and the quarter only buys you 20 minutes. And the five minute drop off slots were all full. I miss having a library with free parking. We only needed five minutes tops to pick up our holds. Holds are self serve and so is checkout. It takes hardly any time at all.

Anyway one of the cookbooks I put on hold last night was in. It's called The Healthy Family by Sandi Richard and has a lot of easy to prepare, quick to make recipes in it. It was rec'ced over at Get Rich Slowly so I thought I'd check it out. The kids were reading it over my shoulder and it looks like they will actually like at least half the recipes. That's a first. Mostly they looked pretty good to me.

I was a little disappointed in some of the recipes ingredients though because they called for things like "cream of" soups. I've never found a healthy "cream of" soup. They are all loaded with sodium, MSG, and other chemicals that I don't really think should be anywhere near a "healthy" cookbook. Those tended to be the ones the kids turned their noses up at though.

And there was almost an abuse of white rice. I mean, I know if you are going for time saving then brown rice isn't your first option, but white rice probably shouldn't be either if you're going for healthy. And with brown rice you could do up a big batch on the weekend for use throughout the week and still save time. But lot of the other recipes seem okay. Especially the Asian style ones. We'll see how they taste and I'll try to follow up if I remember. They do call for a lot of sauces and again that generally means a lot of sodium.

Well, there's no school today as we got a bunch more snow dumped on us. It's not anything like in other parts of the country, I think there's only about eight inches total, but there's a lot of black ice under it and the plows are having a hard time. Plus it's very cold and they are using a little common sense this time about closing schools that the majority of kids in the district walk up to a mile to get to. I am glad I bought milk last night.

I think I will bake today. I usually bake on Thursdays but with the kids home it will give them something to do. I've got the ingredients for pumpkin bread and can have my daughter make cookies since the stock in the freezer is almost gone. Then of course the dinner rolls and buns. I won't need to make any more bisquits as I did that on Sunday and there are enough for the week.

Today will be an enforced no spend day, though I had no plans to spend any money anyway. There's plenty of time for pancakes and eggs and fruit for breakfast and the kids have been bugging me about fast food type food so I'll probably make cheeseburgers with fresh buns and fries for lunch. I got a great deal on ten pounds of frozen organic french fries a while back and we are slowly working our way through them.

Dinner will be leftovers as we have two pieces of chicken, a couple of salmon patties, and two servings of pot roast left still to eat. I just need to add veg and starch. I'm watching letovers very closely this week to prevent food waste. We have a tendency to throw out so much food because it gets shoved to the back of the fridge and forgotten about. In an effort to cut back on the grocery budget, we will do best at managing waste first so we don't have to go buy more of something right away.

I spent a lot of time yesterday reading on ways to save money on food. Most of it was the same old/same old but I found some interesting articles that were actually helpful. I was at Kitchen Parade and found this series of articles:

http://www.kitchenparade.com/2008/07/how-to-save-money-on-gr... It's a five part series, but only the first three have been written so far. Still well worth reading though in my opinion.

I also spent some time at Get Rich Slowly which did have some nice tips, though a lot of them were things I had heard before. I did come away with some new information though, so it was worth the read.

My food budget is the easiest to cut as it has the most fat in it. I just really have to be on the ball about it and not be lazy. Laziness is the number one killer of the food budget in this house. If we are not lazy this month, I think I can squeeze out $200 for savings or extra debt payoff.

I put some books on hold at the library. Mostly cookbooks on healthy eating or making restaurant style (Chinese, Japanese, Mexican) food at home from scratch. Hopefully they won't take too long, though one of them had 2 requests before mine, the rest I was the first requester for.

...but since I'm trying to make daily blogging a habit again, here I am.

I paid out $46.27 for perscriptions today. Two generics and one pricey brand name that is unfortunately the only med that works for me. At least the insurance with DH's new job is good. The pricey one is $40. The other two were cheaper than our insurance so bought those outright.

I also paid $5.99 for milk while I was there because we are supposed to get socked with a snowstorm overnight and if we do I didn't want to run out of the one thing I can't make from scratch in a pinch. (No, I won't drink dried milk, I've tried it every way they've suggested to make it taste better, but just ew). Part of me hopes it snows so bad the schools shut down. The other part of me doesn't want to be stuck in the house with the kids all day and really wants what is currently on the ground to melt instead and for winter to be a distant memory.

Well, I did it. I went down and paid off the Gold Star loan in full at Bank of America. They were kind of impressed. The teller was like, "Wish I could do that," grumble, grumble, sigh. I messed up my numbers the other day and had to go back and correct them.

$182,783.95 total starting debt (minus car)
- 38,323.87 payoff amount
-----------
$144,460.08 total ending debt (minus car)

Take that Evil Empire of Creditors! It feels marvelous to see such a huge drop like that!
That leaves just $29,133.45 of interest bearing unsecured debt left and I really do think we can pay that off this year if we are careful with the budget. 18 months tops if we leave a little more wiggle room. On Friday I get to pay off Master Card #1 in full. Yay! Then the money that has been going to pay that will go to the next credit card we will pay off.

On my quest to not eat out I had leftover potroast/sweet potato hash in a tortilla and for dinner tonight I am making salmon patties from canned salmon in the pantry (just egg, green onions, garlic, salmon and a bit of salt and pepper). Easy peasy. I'll probably open a can of green beans and a can of corn as well.

I found 2 more pennies in the snow in the parking lot at the physical therapist's office. That makes $5.05 this month.

Wrote a check to the physical therapist for $90 as well. That is the only money I will spend today.

Edited to add: I forgot about the fact that I paid the mortgage today as well, so $375.86 was also spent for that.

Ugh...snow. You know I really don't get why today had to be a late start day for the school district. It's 32 degrees outside and the roads are completely clear. In November when it was 17 degrees outside and had a windchill factor well below zero, and 8 inches of snow instead of the current two and the roads were lousy, they did not cancel school or have late starts even though they should have.

My son doesn't go in until eleven so it's pretty much blown my whole morning. Although he did fold a load of towels without being asked. He's starting to pay some attention now to what needs to be done around the house. Now if my older daughter would do the same thing...

So today after I go to the physical therapist for my knee I will go to the bank and make a mortgage payment and then go to the other bank and pay off our personal loan in full. Yeah, that is going to feel pretty good. Like a giant weight being lifted off our shoulders. I can't wait to do it and see our debt total drop so substantially.

Found 3 pennies in the school parking lot. That is $5.03 so far this month. I threw them in the coin jar when I got home.

I am very glad I went grocery shopping yesterday as we woke up to snow this morning. Hard to believe there is so much of the white stuff still out there when the sun is shining so brilliantly, not to mention blindingly. I'll have to go out and clean off the car before the sun goes down so that I don't have to do it in the morning when I drive the kids to school.

I found $5 in a wad of ones in the middle of the Trader Joe's parking lot yesterday. There was no one else around who could have dropped it so I took it and put it in the coin jar when I got home. I don't understand people who don't put bills in their wallets. It is so easy for money to fall out of your pockets, especially when it is so cold that you have your hands in them a lot.

Today has been the kind of day where I am very glad I put a pot roast in the crock pot this morning and pizza dough ingredients in the bread machine this afternoon, because otherwise I would have been extremely tempted to order a pizza delivered. A $27 x-large all meat pizza, plus tip. I really do not need to do that when I have all the makings for a great pizza (ham, bacon, ground beef, homemade sausage, salami, pepperoni, proscuitto, onions, peppers, tomatoes, sauce, herbs and cheese) in the freezer, fridge or pantry. I won't use all those toppings on one pizza, I just have the choice to do so. Well, two pizzas as the crust recipe makes two large (or three smaller) crusts, but I usually just freeze the second one for later.

The pot roast had enough meat for two meals and I made microwaved sweet potatoes and a can of green beans to go with it. I think I will make a sort of beef and sweet potato hash with the leftovers. I like to do that and eat it in whole wheat tortillas with a salad added for a later meal. It is surprisingly good and I never would have thought of it except my ten-year-old has been going through a phase of wanting to eat everything in tortillas this year. There will be plenty of leftover pizza for the kids to take in their lunches for school. I am so glad they will eat cold pizza. They didn't use to eat any leftovers cold, so they have come a long way.

The ducks are mad because their little pond froze over and have no trouble expressing their displeasure with the situation. We had to put some hay down for the chickens. They are so funny to watch walking through the snow, but they really do need a hay path to have a break. They need to eat more feed in this weather to produce well. Most days this winter have been around 40 degrees, which is still warm enough for them to forage for most of their food, but during these cold snaps they need grain. We are getting seven eggs a day which is still more than we can use, especially with DH in Alaska. I should probably make up some meatloaves for the freezer to use up some of the excess.

I should probably go ahead and make buns and biscuits for the week, too. I've gotten lazy about making bread and just tend to make rolls and buns instead. Well, it is part laziness and part making the right portion sizes so someone doesn't hack off a huge chunk of bread to eat and suddenly it is all gone. The kids don't care what their sandwiches come on so long as it's homemade (or tortillas). They really don't like store bought bread of any kind anymore. I usually do that on Mondays and Thursdays, but I have an appointment tomorrow with the physical therapist and may be too exhausted afterwards.

My goal for the week to save money is to not grab anythng out to eat. No drive-thru meals and definitely no sit down restaurant meals. Our biggest wasted spenditures are from eating out too much. So today is day one of that.

We have set a goal to have all of our unsecured interest bearing debt paid off by the end of the year. As such, I am determined to start blogging again for real to help us in accomplishing this. The last year has been really unfocused and I need to find that focus again. I know we can do it, but it's going to take dedication and the determination not to be lazy about things.

So where we stand at the moment as far as total debt is concerned (minus the car):

$ 93,000.00 medical debt
22,326.63 mortgage
38,323.87 personal loan
+ 29,133.45 credit card debt
-----------
$182,783.95 total

So we have paid off quite a bit this year. And considering when I started this blog we owed around $250,000 I think we are doing pretty well.

The credit card debt is spread over 4 cards. We will be paying one of them off this month and we will also be paying off the entirety of the personal loan this month, which will bring that debt total down to around $123,000. We should be able to pay off a second card by the end of March.

The $93,000 is a non-interest bearing loan from my mother. We are paying her back at a rate of $1000 a month. At that rate it will be 7 years and 9 months to be paid off. She doesn't want us paying it back any faster than that, because she wants a steady influx of cash to live on each month. I'd prefer to add more to it, but I suppose once all other debt is paid I can always just put any extra in a savings account dedicated to paying her back.

My husband is working for a new company and it came with a substantial raise in income of about $2000 more net each month. He started there in November. He's guaranteed work (on contract) for the next three years so we are going to make hay while the sun shines.

We need to finish fixing up the house by mid-Spring so we can put it on the market. At this point I don't care if we get the true value of it, I just want to be rid of it. I'm tired of maintaining two households. As long as it pays off the mortgage and gives us $50,000 in the bank towards our next downpayment on a house, I will be happy. I think if we price it right and as a fixer upper we could probably unload it faster than the other people selling houses in our area. They have so overpriced their houses for the location and the depression.

We've got somewhere around $20,000 left to pay on the car. It's about three and a half years left. I'm not sure of the exact amount because it is on autopay and so I kind of don't pay attention to it or count it in the overall total. I should, but I don't. I know we are three months ahead on it, though. It will be the next focus after the unsecured debt is paid off. I think we can finish paying it off by the end of 2012.

I'm not sure when we'll start looking for a new house but it's not going to be this year. It's not something I'm prepared to even try to do until the unsecured debt is gone.

We've got $8000 in the emergency fund and I will add to it a little bit at a time, but not aggressively, this year. Just mostly saving change, throwing in whatever I cut from the grocery budget, and adding $100 or so a month consistently. Eventually I'd like to have $50,000 in there as a long term goal.

Okay, I think that about sums up where everything stands. Now if I can get myself back into the habit of doing this again on a regular basis I'll be a happy camper.

Well, it seems like I rather suck at blogging anymore. I just tend to pop up from time to time now with an update and that's about it. So much has changed in the past year it's ridiculous. Things are slowly coming down debtwise. I am seeing real progress being made in some areas. There's still a lot of debt left though. And we had to pay for more surgery which added to our debt.

$ 94,400.00 left on medical debt
$ 23,139.75 left on the mortgage
$ 42,100.00 left on personal loan
$ 30,000.00 left on unsecured debt over 3 cards
------------
$189,639.75

Considering we started out at around $250,000 when I started this blog we've done well. We do also have around $23,000 left on our car loan.

All of our debt should be paid off in 6.5 years if we continue at this rate. If we sell our house, which may or may not happen any time soon, we could take a large chunk out of it. With the market the way it is I am not counting on it.

We are still living with my mother. She's taken a couple more falls so I really do not regret my decision to move into town and take care of her. She's still mostly self-sufficient, still has her mind, but she really needs someone to just be here for the bad times. I'm not sure we'll buy another house after the one we own right now sells until she's ready to go into assisted living or a nursing home and that's probably several years away. This house is huge and it just makes no sense to move away from her right now.

It's a good school district here. After two years of homeschooling I've got the kids enrolled in the public school system again. They are both thriving and getting good marks. My daughter is a freshman and well on her way to honor roll. Probably five A's and a B. They do weekly updates online and also every three weeks, so I can check it obsessively and make sure they aren't screwing her up.

Things are a little up in the air at DH's work. Contracts are up in December and they aren't being very forthcoming on whether his company is even going to get the subcontract from the main company this next year or not. We've had job security for 14.5 years and not having it anymore is a little unnerving. DH isn't as worried about it as I am. He's got feelers into several companies just in case and says he's gotten positive responses so hopefully if his company doesn't get the contract he'll simply be able to switch to the one that has it. It'll mean no medical insurance for a few months, but it'd be work and that's important with a debtload like ours.

I'd feel better if I could work. I'm pretty much disabled these days because of my knee and the pain I'm in all the time. I am working to strengthen it with swimming, but it's a slow road. The rest of me is getting fitter, but it's still very difficult to walk. Standing still is even harder. I can cook sitting down, but I don't think they'd let me do that in a restaurant.

I am doing what I can to cut back again. We were getting really lazy there for a while with eating out because it was hard for me to cook when I was in so much pain, but I've been teaching my daughter and between the two of us we are managing a lot more home-cooked meals.

Last night I made my special spaghetti sauce from 3 fresh roma tomatoes, 1 chopped onion, 2 tbsp minced garlic, 2 14.5 ounce cans tomato sauce, 2 6 ounce cans tomato paste, basil, oregano, thyme, salt and pepper to taste. Tomatoes and herbs came from the garden. The kids and I made parmesan breadsticks from scratch (dough made in the bread machine), and homemade spaghetti noodles in the pasta maker (had it for years, but have rarely used it). It was really good, better than a meal at The Olive Garden and cost about $8 altogether, as we all drank a glass of milk as well. It would have been about $50 for 3 of us if we'd gone out for that same meal.

Today I'll be making a beef potroast in the crockpot and microwave baked potatoes and green beans and tomorrow I'll be doing up a big pot of Texas style chili. There will be enough of that to freeze for several meals. I've got all the ingredients on hand and am focusing on cooking from the freezer and the pantry this month as much as possible. Chris comes home on Thursday and hopefully he'll be on board with this whole not eating out thing. He claims he likes my cooking best anyway, but we shall see.

Well, today I paid Mom $1000, bringing the amount owed to her to an even $100,000. That means so far we've paid her back $58,000 in six years or so. So much progress has been made on this debt. I know that $100,000 still sounds overwhelming, but it brings us down to having exactly 100 payments left. In eight years and four months that debt will be gone. Sooner if we find a way to add another $100 per month to it.

It's been a really long road, but I'd rather be in debt to her at 0% than the hospital and its 18% interest. I really do want to find a way to dig up another $100 a month though. If I could add just that much more to each payment it would knock down the time left to seven years and seven months. I know that Chris will probably get raises between now and then, he gets them every 18 months to 2 years, so we'll definitely be adding more money to debt then. At least his job is secure and thriving.

I also sent off $500 to credit card debt today and wrote out the check for property taxes which I'll drop by the courthouse tommorrow when I'm down town.

I cleaned out my purse today and found $7.22 in ones and coins so added that to my coin jar.

$87.94 starting amount
+ 7.22 amount added
------
$95.16 ending amount

Tomorrow when I go to the courthouse I am going to deposit at least the ones I've been saving, which is $49, and pick up some coin wrappers and ask them if they have a counter that I can just bring a jar of coins in and put through or if they need to be rolled. Normally I'd just roll them, but there is just so much change that if I don't have to, I'd just as soon not.

Not too much going on around here this week. I sent off $2600 to credit card debt, paid off my surgery debt of $863, and paid the phone bill for the old house (have to keep the line for the security system).

The most excitement I had was chasing three ducklings and one chick who refused to go back into the chicken coop after their airing. It took three of us to catch them all. It's a far sight harder catching those ducks now they weigh two pounds then it was when they could fit in the palm of your hand and only had a bathtub to race around instead of a yard.

I've finally gotten a medication that seems to be killing this sinus infection I've had forever and am feeling a little better. At least I'm able to breathe through my nose again which does wonders for my ability to sleep through the night. I have been eating out too much though this last week when I was feeling miserable. I was getting the cheapy fast food meals which was better for my wallet, but not great for my health. I did eat up the pre-cooked frozen meals first though at least.

Because of the eating out I had $8.46 in change to add to my change jar. No, I still haven't gotten around to taking it into the bank.

$79.84 starting amount
+ 8.46 amount added
-------
$87.94 ending amount

I think tomorrow I will feel good enough to start cooking again so my goal is no more meals out for the rest of the week. One of the nice things about being so sick was that I did manage to get off Pepsi. My soda habit was getting expensive again and even if I was drinking the Throwback instead of the stuff with high fructose corn syrup, pop is just never healthy. I can already see improvements in my sleep pattern and in my skin tone, both of which always suffer from the combination of caffeine and that much sugar. I think I will start adding the $15 a week I was spending on soda to my EF. And that's about it.

I know I've been AWOL for the last two weeks but our house was broken into twice and we've been dealing with a lot of stuff because of it. The first time they jimmied a window open it happened to be the one that was wired to the alarm system. It was originally the nursery and the only bedroom that the door wasn't covered by the motion sensor. The alarm went off and it was enough to scare them away. The police found the window raised two inches.

We came out and saw that nothing that was still in the house had been touched so we figured that was that. We made triple sure all the windows were locked and the deadbolts were drawn and came back home. That was a Friday afternoon. That Sunday morning at six a.m. we got another call that our alarm was going off so we let my mother know what was going on so we could leave the kids and we went out there.

Another window was open two inches, but the weird thing was that the screen was in place. So somehow they were jimmying the lock again and it was for sure that we hadn't accidentally left one unlocked. This time, though nothing was stolen, they ripped both the alarm box and the alarm code panel off the wall. The back door deadbolt was not in place. So we figure they came in, ripped the alarm off with the hope of coming back later and it no longer working, and stealing. Then they ran through the house and out the back door leaving the dead bolt open. Then they came back and put the screen in place.

Well, this time Chris and I put screws in all the window frames to prevent the windows from being raised at all. Chris, being an electrical engineer was able to rewire both the alarm box and the alarm code panel and put them back into place and we tested them to be sure they were working again and they were. We spent the next week packing boxes and moving them to storage. It's ridiculous how much still needs to be done there, but at least there have been no more alarms going off and no more breaking in, though they may have attemtped it. The sheriff's deputy was able to get one really nice fingerprint off the window, but nothing has come of it so far and nothing probably will.

I don't actually feel violated, probably because nothing was stolen and we weren't living there at the time and all of the stuff that's really worth anything except the piano was moved before any of this happened. And the piano we never paid any money for, it was a family hand me down and really, who's going to try to walk off with a piano? Yeah, it would be sad if it were vandalized, but in the end we can get a good used piano for $500 out of the want ads. No one is playing right now anyway. We are going to have it moved the next time Chris comes home though.

Mostly I feel like all of the money we've paid to the security company over the years hasn't been wasted, because even if there was nothing to steal, there still could have been an opportunity for vandalism and I do not want to have to clean up after that. It's no fun. I've seen what some of the homeowners out there have gone through when they've gone on vacation and had no security system and come back to shaving gel and silly string and spray paint on the walls inside their homes.

In other news, my emergency fund made a whopping forty-eight cents in interest last month. We got $800 more than we were expecting back on our tax return. Something about not making over $150,000 so we got a stimulus thingy or something. I had no idea they were doing that this year. Before when it's happened it hasn't been part of the return it was a seperate check sent at a different time.

I decided to put $1000.00 of the return into the EF and $1000.00 of it away for summer camp. Both kids want to go for at least a week this summer and with the extra money we can actually swing two weeks for both of them, plus some day camp for my son. That brings the EF to $1,520.64.

$1000.00 has been set aside for moving expenses and house repairs and the last $1000.00 I haven't done anything with yet, but half of it will go to pay for half year property taxes and the other half will go into the safety net short term savings.

I hate having such big returns, we could really use that money throughout the year, but because of how Chris works we can't. He works two weeks on, two weeks off, but they tax his paychecks as if he were bringing one home of equal amount each week, instead of two weeks pay covering four weeks. Or now that he's switching to 3 on, 3 off for the spring/summer, it'll be 3 weeks pay covering 6 weeks. It sucks and it's stupid, but there is nothing we can do about it. Every year we check the tax law to see if anything has changed so that won't happen, but the answer is always no.

I haven't been using much cash for the past three weeks so I haven't bothered to empty out my purse in that amount of time. I did tonight and was pleasantly surprised to find $6.16 in coins. No wonder it was feeling heavy.

$73.32 starting balance
+ 6.16 amount added
-------
$79.48 ending balance

I really need to take that in soon. I keep procrastinating it.

We got an "extra" paycheck this month. We get two a year, where it just happens to fall in such a way that no bills have to paid out of it. That money will go into short term savings for the adjustment period into the 3 on, 3 off changeover, just in case. If the adjustment goes smoothly and we don't use it, after a couple of months I'll move that money into the EF. If it doesn't, and it usually doesn't, we'll end up using it. I'm better prepared for it this year though, so I'm hoping we won't need it. And that about wraps things up.

Because we don't have an oven or stove top where we are currently living and I don't want to have to constantly be running up to the kitchen in the main house every time I want to cook, I've been trying to make do as much as possible with the microwave and the slow cooker.

One of the benefits of crock pot cooking is of course that you can buy cheaper, tougher cuts of meat and cook them into succulent tenderness. Because our food budget is our biggest expense after our credit card payment, it is the place we are trying to cut back on the most to save money. We are limited in this by my son's food, food dye, additive, and preservative allergies and have to buy a lot of pure, unprocessed foods. This means no casual dumping of cream of something soup or most spice packets in the pot with the meat to make it all easier. Everything has to be from scratch or carefully perused for ingredients that could harm him.

So the last couple of days I have been doing some research into foil packet cooking and/or cooking in layers in the crock pot. There are a ton of foil packet recipes out there, most geared towards either cooking in the coals of a camp fire or on a barbecue grill, some towards cooking in the oven, and a very, very few towards cooking in the slow cooker.

I'm going to attempt to adapt these to use in the slow cooker. I can't imagine anything that could be easier than wrapping up packets of vegetables with some butter or olive oil and seasonings and dumping them in on top of the meat in the crockpot to slowly steam. My only problem is knowing how long to cook the veggies for. I know that root veggies will cook just as long as the meat but I'm more concerned with how things like zucchini, bell peppers, asparagus, green beans, and yellow summer squash would come out, if they'd end up complete piles of mush if I let them cook for the same amount of time as the meat. After all, I want to save money here, not waste it by making veggies inedible.

So I'm going to be doing a bit of experimenting over the next few weeks to see if I can't come up with something successful, where I maybe put the meat in for ten hours, but three hours from the end of the cooking time I add in the packet of veg. Or maybe just try cooking some different veg in the crock pot and checking it every so often.

Last night at midnight I put a beef chuck roast in the bottom of the crock pot, seasoned it with herbs and then put in enough pierced and foil wrapped potatoes to fill the rest of the pot. I set it for ten hours on low and at ten in the morning it switched over to the warming feature it has, and at noon they were all perfectly cooked. So in practice I can definitely cook meat and potatoes together without ending up with mushy juice covered potatoes. Now, I just need to figure out where I'm going from here. I'll be making my baked potato soup in the slow cooker with the leftover baked potatoes tomorrow. I think I'll attempt fajitas later this week. Sliced and seasoned meat in the bottom and one packet of sliced bell peppers and one packet of sliced onions and see how it works.

Well, I had written a big long entry and clicked when I shouldn't have and it disappeared into cyberspace so for tonight I'll just enter in my coin jar update and try to recreate it tomorrow. I have $6.02 in ones and coins plus a penny I found at the grocery store check out.

$67.29 starting balance
+ 6.03 amount added
------
$73.32 ending balance

I really ought to be making a deposit soon. Not much room left in the jar.

Yesterday was payday so I sent off $1200.00 to the credit card and the autopay for the car payment came out of 490.75 and we are down to having three years left until the car is paid for.

I did a bit of grocery shopping, not a lot, just for things like milk, tortillas, bananas, sour cream and scallions. They also had a special going where if you bought one beef roast you got the second one free along with a five pound bag of potatoes. Now, it wasn't really a great sale. You paid about as much for them as you would have if you'd bought two roasts on a regular sale, because they jacked up the price of the first roast you had to buy to get the rest of it free. It was still a good deal, but definitely not truly "free." But accepting that, the potatoes truly were free. Since I want to make baked potato soup tomorrow and we always are making pot roasts in the crockpot it felt like an acceptable sale for our needs.

When I got up this morning I assembled all the ingredients I would need to make dinner and put them in the crock pot. I've been devouring a blog on slow cooker cooking that Monkey Mama linked to a few days ago, and she had a recipe on there for orange chicken. Orange chicken or pineapple chicken is pretty much my all time favorite "fast" food from the polynesian takeaway place we have here in town. But we don't eat there anymore because of T's allergies. It's full of all kinds of chemical goodness so it's off the list of places we can go to and with us cutting back on going out anyway, we just haven't been there in ages.

I made a lot of changes to her original recipe for orange chicken: http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2009/09/slow-cooker-orange-chicken-recipe.html

And basically ended making my own version with what I had on hand. It turned out perfectly and I was completely thrilled, because it tasted better than the takeaway place and cost about half as much to make from scratch.

I didn't have any frozen OJ in the house so I substituted frozen pineapple juice.

Here's my version of Pineapple Chicken. I doubled her recipe because I wanted to make some for the freezer as TV dinners.

3 pounds chicken wings
1 cup of flour for dredging
2 tsp kosher salt (her 1 T was too much for me to even think of putting in, especially considering I'd have had to double it)
1 12 ounce can pineapple juice concentrate, thawed
6 T brown sugar
6 T ketchup
2 tsp apple cider vinegar (I didn't have balsamic)
olive oil

Dredge chicken in flour and brown in a bit of olive oil, just long enough to make sure the flour sticks to the chicken. Dump the chicken in the crock pot. Mix all remaining ingredients in a bowl and then pour over chicken. Cook on low for 6 to 8 hours. I pulled mine out at about 7 hours. I had a couple little containers of sesame seeds so I dumped some on my portion because I like them.

I had some frozen, cooked brown rice in the freezer so thawed that out and warmed it up and ate it mixed with the sauce and chicken. Added canned green beans for a veg. A good meal all around and there was enough left to package up 8 TV dinner meals for the freezer.

I really like cooking in the crock pot. It's nice to make something in the morning when you have energy and have it ready for you in the evening when you don't. Or even to do it before you go to bed and have it ready for you to deal with in the morning. I like cooking once and having enough leftovers for several meals down the road. It saves energy, it saves time, and it seems to save money as well.

Currently residing in one of the four bathtubs in this house are four newborn baby ducks. They are the cutest things ever. After three weeks they will be moved outside to the new chicken coop. They will be used for eggs and for free slug control in the garden. And fertilizer. The chicks should be hatching tomorrow. I hope I did the html coding right to post this photo.



The one in front and to the left is Sir Pecks-a-lot. The others don't have much personality yet so we're waiting on names for them.

On my quest to save money by eating more at home, using up what I have in the cupboard and freezer, and making as much as I can from scratch I tried a new recipe this week and an old favorite.

I made English Muffins from scratch on Wednesday and they were so easy. Ridiculously easy. I don't know why I never attempted this before. And I think it works out to about half the cost of buying them and I can be sure of the ingredients. I had to tweak the recipe I made to make it Feingold safe, but this is what I ended up with.

1 cup skim milk
2 tablespoons honey
2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast (1 pkt)
1 cup warm water
1/4 cup melted butter
6 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon sea salt

1. Warm the milk in a small pan until it bubbles, then remove from heat. Mix in the honey, stirring until combined. Let cool until lukewarm. In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Let stand about 10 minutes. It should be bubbly.

2. In your bread machine add the milk, yeast mixture, butter, flour and salt. (I use this order because my machine says liquids go in the bottom). Start dough cycle.

3. When dough is done rising remove from bread pan and punch down. Roll out on a floured surface to about 1/2 inch thick. Cut rounds with a biscuit cutter. I used an empty, clean tomato sauce can since I don't have a biscuit cutter. Sprinkle waxed paper with cornmeal and set the rounds on this to rise. Dust tops of muffins with cornmeal. Cover and let rise 1/2 hour.

4. Heat griddle. Brush a bit of butter on to season the griddle. Cook muffins on griddle about 10 minutes on each side over medium heat.

5. It said to keep the baked muffins in a warm oven until all had been cooked but I didn't see the point in this since we weren't eating all of them right then. Then it said to allow them to cool and place in plastic bags for storage. To use, split and toast.

It was pretty straight-forward. In the original recipe I changed the shortening out for butter and the sugar out for honey. I used equivalent amounts. They taste great, way better than anything I've ever purchased.

I have Canadian bacon and cheese and eggs on hand, so I think I'm going to make up some egg muffins like McDonald's has and wrap them in plastic wrap, put them in a freezer bag and store them in the freezer for fast breakfasts on mornings we just can't seem to get started properly. T is going to love this. He likes anything he can do independently foodwise.

Tonight before I came to bed (not to sleep, obviously), I put the ingredients for burritos in the crockpot. I don't follow a particular recipe for these, though it's basically the same every time.

In a blender whirl (umm...I think the technical term is puree) 1 15 ounce can diced tomatoes, 1 4 ounce can green chile peppers, 1 TBSP chili powder, 3 heaping spoonfuls of chopped garlic, and 1/2 of the smallest size can of tomato paste until mostly smooth. In the crock pot place a 2 to 3 pound pork roast. Pour the sauce on top. Cook on low for 10 hours.

When it is done take two forks and shred the meat in the crockpot mixing with the sauce that has accumulated on the bottom.

We eat it on tortillas with shredded cheese, but you can add sour cream and guacamole if you want. My son puts plain vanilla yogurt on his. Another variation is to eat it on leftover hamburger or hotdog buns sloppy joe style.

I'll end up packaging up about 2/3 of the meat and freezing for future meals. A 2.5 to 3 pound pork roast usually produces enough for 3 full meals for a family of four around here. I spent about $10 on the ingredients originally (they were all on hand in the freezer or cupboard). So for $10 we get approximately 12 meals. And they are as good as the burritos from our favorite Mexican place where one burrito platter with the same amount of food would cost $8.

I was cleaning out the pockets of all the winter coats today so that I could wash them and put them away until next autumn and I found some money in two of mine, a grand total of $3.43, so it is going into the coin jar.

$63.86 beginning balance
+ 3.43 amount added
------
$67.29 ending balance

I haven't gone anywhere since...I'm not sure when. It's been a couple of days so no money has been spent. I'm still not feeling good, but I needed to bake today so I did. Today I made a loaf of bread and hamburger and hot dog buns, brownies, a batch of blueberry muffins and a batch of corn bread muffins. Muffins have been individually wrapped and frozen, bread has been cooled and sliced and buns have been split and put into air tight containers.

I think later in the week I am going to try my hand at making English muffins. The recipe I found doesn't look too hard and I have been sort of craving egg McMuffins lately, but not wanting to pay for them. It's easy enough to poach an egg in the micro, toast a muffin, add some ham and cheese and nuke again to warm them, and there you go. But English Muffins are something of a favorite of T's and most brands have ingredients he can't have.

The white ones have preservatives he's chemically sensitive to and the "healthy" brown ones have raisin juice and he's allergic to grapes and raisins. Bringing those into the house is hard on him. He's so good about avoiding foods he can't have anymore, but waving an old favorite in front of him is just mean. If I can make them myself with pure ingredients, we may have solved that problem altogether and he can have his beloved English muffins again. That would be nice.

My youngest turned ten today. I think that's way harder for me to grasp than the fact that I turned 40 in February. In less time than he's been alive so far, he'll be heading off to college or trade school. Wow. I hope he earns lots of scholarships.

My sister's kids descended en masse on us, presumably to celebrate my son's birthday and not to eat us out of house and home. I hadn't really planned on doing anything other than making T pizza for dinner because it was what he wanted. We already celebrated his birthday and gave him his presents last weekend when his dad was home. Today was just supposed to be a mellow day. T didn't want any more than that.

I wasn't feeling good. I'm still not, been fighting a sinus infection that's not responding to meds, and I just really wanted a quiet day. R made the from scratch chocolate cake batter while I sat curled up in a chair in a blanket in the kitchen and read out the ingredients to her from my laptop. Then we discovered that mom's one cake pan was flaking.

I haven't brought in my glass cake pans or my metal rounds yet and I really did not want to have to drive with my head this full of congestion and buy a cake pan when I had good ones at home. Didn't want to drive back to the house either. Fortunately I had bought baking cups for making muffins and had my muffin tin here so instead of a birthday cake he got birthday cupcakes. I did put together the from scratch butter cream frosting but R stayed with it in the kitchen while it blended for the ten minutes. I love having a child who is old enough to bake with minimal supervision.

I had started the dough in the bread machine as soon as the cupcakes went in to the oven. They were cooled and frosted by the time the dough was done rising and I had assembled the pizzas and they were ready to go into the oven. I had only intended on using part of the dough to make one pizza but with extra mouths I suddenly had to feed I ended up using it all. Fortunately Mom has one of those ovens that has two parts so you can cook two things at once. I was able to cook them evenly and not one after another and they came out perfectly.

T loved his birthday dinner. He said it was better than Round Table Pizza and a bakery cake. Which made me feel pretty good, considering that from making it all from scratch, I spent around $12 where all that pizza and cake bought elsewhere would have rounded out around $60. The boys loved the food too and wished that their mother would cook like that. They said it was the best pizza they'd ever had. That made me feel good even if I was kind of annoyed with the whole day's change of plans.

I think I probably would have taken it better if I wasn't so grumpy from being ill and tired and if it had been planned and not suddenly thrust upon me. *sighs*

I had to go buy a few gallons of organic milk yesterday so I ended up with $3.58 in ones and change out of a $20 to add to the coin jar.

$60.28 beginning balance
+ 3.58 amount added
------
$63.86 ending balance

Yesterday I also paid $1079 on the credit cards and $375.14 on the mortgage.

Today I was trying to think about all the things that I do to save money that require little to no effort on my part. Of course the things I do to actively save all quickly spring to mind, but what about the little things? What about the things that have become so automatic in me that I do them most of the time without thinking at all.

Well, since I was in the shower at the time, I started there. With hair as long and as thick as mine I can't exactly skimp on the shampoo or conditioner, but I know how much I need and I am very careful to not let it come pouring out at a fast rate of speed. Accidentally ending up with a huge handful of shampoo doesn't do my hair or my budget any good.

All of my bottles are kept upside down. Shampoo. Conditioner. Shower gel. Gravity is always right there, helping me get as much as possible out of the bottles. And when gravity is done doing it's part, of course I fill the bottles a quarter of the way full with water, swish them around, and use them once or twice more if the stuff clings to get out the final drops.

I go further with the shower gel, starting from the beginning of the bottle. For the price of a 50 cent shower pouf, I can make a dime size drop of gel lather into enough for a full body wash. Try doing that while putting the soap directly into your hand. Doesn't work, does it? A 16 ounce bottle of gel that could easily be gone through in a few weeks in a nondiscriminate manner, lasts me and my family of four (we all have our own poufs) a couple of months.

Gravity again does it's job in the kitchen. At any one time you can open up the fridge and find upside down bottles of mustard, ketchup, barbecue sauce, and chocolate sauce. Things that can't be put upside down without getting stuck in the lid get the spatula treatment. This generally falls into the category of round bottled condiments like mayo, salad dressings, jelly and peanut butter. The spatula also works well on scraping out the last bits of tomato sauce or paste, chili, stew, anything that sticks to the side of a tin can.

Probably the only thing that a spatula doesn't work well on is that poorly shaped mega bottle of Kraft Miracle Whip my husband insists on eating. Square containers with indentations? Really, Kraft? Who ever thought that was a good idea? I prefer to buy the larger product because at cost value it is cheaper, but at actual value when so much of it stuck in those stupid indentations? I'm not so sure. Really, Kraft, go back to the cylindrical containers. Your customers will appreciate it in this economy. (End mini-rant).

I'll let the last drops of olive oil in the bottle drip out onto a salad for ten minutes. I've contrived a contraption for holding the bottles up out of one of those aluminum can crushers mounted sideways. Just tie the thing shut and the bottle stays in place. Then you don't have to hold it, but you can be sure of getting it all out.

My thoughts moved on to wash cloths. I haven't bought wash cloths in years. We use towels to the point of making threadbare spots, so when the time comes that a good 1/4 of it is no longer effective, I simply cut them up, hem them quickly, and I've got a new supply ready to replace the ones that I've worn down.

I had to think about whether or not I consider composting to be a passive activity. On the one hand it involves the effort of taking the fruit and veggie scraps and egg shells out to the compost pile, but on the other hand my other two choices would be running the water and the electric to put them in a disposal or taking them out to the trash. And since I don't bother to turn my compost pile and just let time and the worms do all the work and maybe once a year fork off the top layer to start a new pile and get to the good stuff, I think I can pretty much consider the making of compost passive savings, especially when it is passed along to the garden later in the year.

I keep things unplugged that do not get active use, and if it's easy to get to the outlet, things that do get heavy use, like the toaster and the microwave. Most of our clocks are small battery operated wall clocks. The digital electric alarm clock only gets plugged in and set on the nights we have to wake up at a certain time the next morning. Computers, monitors, printers, and laptops are kept off when not in use and their power strips are turned off. Same with the TV. Since we no longer have a VCR we don't have to worry about resetting it every time it gets turned off.

I'm sure there are more things that I do passively that save me money but for the moment that's all I can think of. So I'm curious. What does everyone else do automatically and with minimal effort to save on the little things?

It's been a busy last few days. My husband and I spent a lot of time out at the house over the weekend packing, cleaning, and sorting. At least it's now starting to look like we're making a dent. I solemnly swear that I will never have so much stuff again in my life.

Downsizing is a very good thing. Stuff I cared about 10 to 20 years ago when I bought it, I pretty much don't give a hoot for now. Since a lot of it was bought on credit, that really makes me stop and think when I get it into my head that I want something new now. I ask myself will I care about this in a year, five years, ten years?

Really, the only things I want to keep anymore of my own stuff are books, DVDs and VHS tapes of movies, photographs, two boxes of old notebooks filled with fiction and poetry I wrote as a kid and young adult (and only until I can type it up and store it on a flash drive or two), my geology notes from college, my wedding dress, jewelry, my laptop, my DW action figures (yes, I'm a dork) and clothes (about half my current wardrobe). Which boils down to about a tenth of my stuff.

We've certainly downsized the kids' stuff. And just plain thrown out probably a full rubbish bin of happy meal toys. Geesh, that makes me sick thinking of how much we've spent on happy meals since our oldest daughter was old enough to start eating them. They've outgrown them now, and we rarely go there anymore, but when you look at all the evidence left over of going there from the past, yikes.

We also celebrated my son's tenth birthday with a meal out at Olive Garden. It's one of the few places he can eat and not have a bad reaction to what's put in the food. His real birthday isn't until the 13th, but since his dad left for Alaska yesterday we celebarted early. We spent $61.23 including the tip.

I found all kinds of coins when we were cleaning at the house. They were everywhere. On the bookcase outside the spare room, on the piano, on an old TV stand. I still can't believe there is that much change just laying around out there, and I still haven't remembered to nab the actual coin jar with change in it and bring it home. Between what I found and the six ones and change in my wallet I came up with $9.71. I did actually find a Canadian dime as well, but that's going in with the rest of the Canadian money kicking around for when we go back to Victoria again.

$50.57 beginning balance
+ 9.71 added amount
-------
$60.28 ending balance

Once I remember to grab the coin jar from home which also has the coin wrappers in it, I'm going to roll up the change and make my first coin jar deposit of the year to the safety net account. Slowly but surely that is growing.

The new chicken coop is coming along nicely. The base and floor have been built and they are starting on the walls today. I still can't believe Mom actually is going to do this, but she is. It's not exactly something I would take on at 70. Heck, it's not even sometihng I would take on now at 40.

I think we did fairly well this week. We went to Trader Joe's and to the local grocery store that has the cheapest price on organic milk and potatoes. We spent $45.82 at TJ's and $15.95 at the other store.

I ended up with one loaf of bread, 2 heads of cabbage (one purple, one green), 3 pounds of broccoli, one pound of asparagus, one head of cauliflower, a head of lettuce, 2.17 pounds of roast beef, a 15 pound bag of potatoes, 1 bunch of radishes, 1 large family bag of plain potato chips, 2 gallons of milk, 2 pounds of carrots, 4 large onions, and a head of garlic for roasting.

We also went to Costco for the big monthly stock up. It came in at $140.92. There we got 3 18 packs of organic eggs, large tub of pre-minced garlic, a 3 pack of English cucumbers, 5 pounds of pork chops, 6 pounds of boneless skinless chicken thighs, a case of oranges, a case of green beans, a case of pineapple, 4 pounds of butter, 4 pounds of unsalted butter for baking, 25 pound bag of flour (yay! I can make bread again), 10 pound bag of sugar, big package of all beef hot dogs, and a case of toilet paper.

We didn't buy any beef because I still have 8 pounds of hamburger and 2 large pot roasts in the freezer. Ditto canned salmon or tuna because we have a little over half a case of both. And I still have plenty of frozen salmon from that big fish I bought last month.

For the rest of the month I should only need to buy milk, fresh veggies, and possibly bananas if they start looking fit for human consumption again. I still have about 4 or 5 apples left from last month. They aren't really a favorite around here and Tobias is allergic to them so we don't go through a lot unless it's honeycrisp season.

Between the three stores we went to I ended up with some ones and some change to add to the coin jar.

$43.73 beginning balance
+ 6.84 amount added
-------
$50.57 ending balance

Tasks for tonight are to sit down and balance the checkbook for the week and to make up the menu plan for the next week. Our menu planning runs Saturday through Friday, usually

I also need to bake tomorrow, hamburger and hot dog buns and cloverleaf rolls (recipe was posted earlier this week) and bread, and Rose wants to do a batch of her famous sugar cookies.

I might make brownies, too, since I have been craving chocolate this week, but none of us can have store bought because of the vanillin or yellow #5. Doesn't take all that long to make them from scratch and they always taste much better. Now I just need to decide if I want to use cocoa or baker's chocolate since I have both on hand for a change. And I need to make a cake and frosting from scratch for T's birthday. He turns 10 on the 13th (my baby is ten!), but his dad goes back to Alaska on the 9th so we are celebrating early.

Which reminds me we still have to go up to the used video game store and do his birthday present shopping. He prefers used games because he can get more games that way than if he got new. He's really starting to get it about value for money. It started with his own allowance that he would do it, but it's carried over now since he knows he only gets a limited dollar amount for his birthday, too. Now that his reading has started to take off we might just take him down to the used bookstore and let him get a few books from the children's room there.

We also paid the chiropractor today. $215. They've raised their rates from $195 for the one month plan. It's still a good deal (up to 3 visits a week per family member for the four of us), and he hasn't raised the rates in five years. The difference is, as he put it, one less meal out at McDonalds per month, which no one really needs to eat at anyway. Of course, we're not really going there that much anymore and when we do we order off the dollar menu so it's closer to two visits cost for us, but still, I like his thinking.

Okay, I think that about catches us up on the last few days.

Well, today I gave haircuts to the males in the family. I don't think my son has had one since the end of August and he was starting to really look like a ragamuffin. A cute ragamuffin, but a raggamuffin nonetheless. I think enough hair ended up on the floor to give an entire colony of birds nesting material. We'll put it out by the bird feeders tomorrow morning when it's light and then peek through the window to see what the birds are doing. It's always fun to watch them during nesting season. I also gave a touch up trim to my husband.

I invested in a good barber's razor kit a couple of years ago for $39.00 and I made the money back within three haircuts. It doesn't take long to get the hang of it at all. The first time I did it I practiced on my husband because he had no qualms about shaving his head bald if I happened to mess up. I didn't, though, and he ended up with a nice, professional looking cut. He gets the number 3 attachment because he prefers something close to but not as short as a buzz cut. And I use the number 4 for my son, which comes out short, but doesn't leave him feeling like he's been scalped. At this level he can go three months between haircuts before he starts looking like he needs one.

Included in the kit we bought was a cape that I use for both haircuts and when I color my hair or my daughter's hair. It came with a very sharp pair of hairdresser's scissors as well, which I use to cut my bangs. I used to do my daughter's bangs, too, but she's growing her hair long and doesn't want to have bangs anymore. My daughter and I do go get a professional cut twice a year and then I will occassionally trim her ends between visits.

In the past I have given my daughter both a bob and a pixie cut. They are both simple cuts for beginners, but you really must use sharp hairdressers scissors. I can't stress that enough. Dull scissors from the sewing basket or craft kit are not going to do the job right. Your bangs will look split-ended and the cut will definitely be jagged. I'd also recommend getting a book out from the library that tells how to cut hair.

We save a lot of money doing this ourselves because at the cheapest salon around here, it's $12.99 for a kids cut and $14.99 for an adult cut (no shampoo, no styling, no blow dry). The barber is $13. A bang trim is $6. It takes a bit of practice to trim bangs yourself but it really isn't all that hard after the first time or two. It helps to have a forgiving style and keep a longer bang until you get used to doing it yourself.

I reckon between the two cuts, my bang trim, sales tax, and tip, we saved about $40, so I transferred that amount into my safety net today, bringing the total to $340.48. Not a bad investment at all.

A couple of you requested my hamburger and hot dog buns recipe so here you go.

2 1/4 tsp yeast
1 1/4 C. warm water
3/8 C. butter, soft or melted
1/4 C. sugar
1 egg, beaten well
4 1/4 C. flour
1 1/4 tsp salt

Add water and yeast into bread machine, let sit five minutes, add in egg and butter, then salt, sugar and flour. Set for dough feature of your bread machine.

When done remove from bread machine, punch down dough, and on a large greased cookie sheet shape into circles (for hamburger buns) half the size of what you want it to end up as, or oblongs for hotdogs (again half the size). Cover with a towel and let rise for an hour in a warm place. Bake for 25 minutes at 375 degrees F. Brush tops with butter if desired on removal.

For cloverleaf rolls use the same dough, grease a muffin tin and into each muffin cup drop three equally sized balls. Bake at 375 degrees F for 15 to 20 minutes. Brush tops with butter if desired on removal.

Dough will keep about 3 to 4 days covered tightly in the fridge if you don't have time to make it and bake it on the same day.

***

We spent a good amount of time out at the house today packing, cleaning, and shredding old paperwork. I think I shredded for a solid hour. Fortunately we have two shredders so when one started heating up too much I'd switch to the other and give the first one a rest. And you know what? As much as we did, it still looks like we've barely even scratched the surface. Ugh. Packrattery is not something I would ever recommend.

I found $9.64 in change and ones laying around the house so brought that home and added it the change jar. I'm pretty sure there are still a lot of coins somewhere as well, because I haven't located one of the old change jars yet.

$34.09 beginning balance
+ 9.64 money added
-------
$43.73 ending balance

***

Things are going well here living with Mom. Chris and Mom get along very well so there are not really any problems adapting. Hopefully that will continue. I think if Mom is going to get on anyone's nerves it will be mine and since I've got a really high tolerance for Mom nonsense it'll probably not be too bad. Mom and I are very close and yeah, she drives me a little crazy, but I think every parent does that to their kids. I don't take it personally.

Yesterday was payday, but because of how it falls we won't actually use most of this money until next week's bills except the autopays that come out the first of the month, a medical bill, and the $1000 for Mom. The rest will sit in savings for a week.

***

I had knee surgery on December 7 for a torn miniscus and a loose floating cyst thing under the same knee cap. The final bills after insurance have now come in. I owe the doctor $266.85 and the surgery center $892.80. I'll write a check for the doctor tomorrow.

The other one will have to wait for the income tax refund. It should come in about 1 to 3 more weeks. We sent it off at the end of January. It usually only takes 5 weeks or so before it is deposited in our account when we send it in so early. If it hasn't come by then, I'll just take the money back out of the emergency fund and the safety net and pay for it. But the bill is not due until the last week of March so I'm not too worried about it.

I think that about covers the last few days.

My husband flew home from Alaska this morning and as is his habit, he sort of empties his pockets as he goes through the house, trailing receipts and change. I followed the trail and ended up with $1.50 for the change jar.

$32.59 beginning balance
+ 1.50 amount added
-------
$34.09 ending balance

We also went grocery shopping this afternoon and spent $46.53 at Trader Joe's for two stuffed full bags of groceries, mostly veggies but 2 pounds of ground beef also. It always shocks me that a one pound package of organic hamburger there is cheaper than anywhere else around here for the non-organic type. I even remembered to bring my Trader Joe bags so got an entry into their grocery drawing. Now I just need to remember to put the bags back out in the car.

I made hamburger buns, hot dog buns, and rolls today. All from the same dough. It's pretty easy and they are far superior to anything I can buy for less money than it'd take to buy one bag of buns or rolls. I'll probably do up a big batch of soft pretzels over the weekend. They freeze well after baking and then can be nuked when ready to eat. I might also make up a batch of corndogs. T has been wanting them lately, but he can't have storebought and it would give us something to keep in the freezer that would be easy for him.

I think I finally found a recipe for making battered fish that I'm going to like. I hope so. We love fish and chips from restaurants and I have been trying for months to get a close approximation of it to make at home. I've had no problem making the chips but the battered fish has been more elusive. If the cod looks good at the fish market tomorrow I'll get some and try this latest recipe out. Making it at home will be so much cheaper than getting takeaway.

We're doing pretty good on not eating out and on leftover management. I had to throw out part of a bell pepper this week and one moldy tortilla. Not bad considering how much food we used to toss. Slowly but surely we are finding our frugal feet again.

My brother-in-law and my nephew stopped by today and I did not find out until dinner time that they'd eaten all of our leftovers that I was planning to use for dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow. At least they didn't drink the organic milk, probably since it was non-fat. They did down six cans of Mom's Sprite between them. They are used to coming over, going into the fridge, and eating whatever they want. Which was fine when my mom was the only one living here. My mother didn't care. But I do.

Aside from the fact that it was my grocery budget they were eating up, what really irks me is that they ate enough food in one sitting to provide two full meals to the four of us. No one needs to eat that much food at one time.

I ended up on the phone with my sister and from now on they've agreed to ask first before eating anything here. Sister was not happy because they arrived home an hour after leaving here and proceded to eat a full dinner. Since they are both very much overweight (both morbidly obese) and supposed to be watching their diets, it made her pretty mad that they were sneaking food.

I had planned to be able to just nuke up dinner in five minutes time and planned our day accordingly. Everyone was starving by the time we found out so I did what I would have done before the belt-tightening. I jumped in the car and went to McDonald's. Old habits die hard, I suppose. Still, I ordered off the dollar menu and we had drinks at home, so I wasn't completely out there. Ended up spending $6.46. Everyone got a double cheeseburger and small fries and we had oranges and canned green beans at home to round it out. Mom had decided to fend for herself and made chipped beef on toast.

I need to go back to making up our own tv dinner meals to keep in the freezer. I'll be making a big batch of burritos up later in the week, so if I freeze the extras in individual portions that'll be a start. We do have a fridge in our wing of the house, just no stove, so some things I keep up there because it's where I do the majority of the cooking, so I don't have to be schlepping stuff up there every time. I won't make that mistake again.

I think I'll put a pot roast in the crockpot before I go to bed so I'll have some meat to work with for tomorrow's meals when I get up. I think I'll also thaw and brown up a couple pounds of ground beef to have on hand. If I'd had some pre-cooked hamburger on hand tonight, I could have just quickly seasoned it and made tacos.

I added $3.54 to the coin jar, the change from the ten I used at McDonald's.

$29.05 beginning balance
+ 3.54 added
-------
$32.59 ending balance

I think I've mentioned a bit ago that we've moved into town to live with my mother who has fallen a few times in the past couple of years and really needed to have someone closer to keep an eye on her, while we repair our old house and then sell it. Mom grew up on farms and has all of the knowledge and know-how to raise chickens and she's been wanting to do it for a couple of years, but this time it looks like she's serious.

She's been looking at chicken coops at various farms the last few weeks and at DIY plans in various homesteading and country living type magazines, and getting prices from various places, like co-ops and local farms where she can buy chicks. I think she's actually going to do it this time. The place is certainly large enough, though I don't think the neighbors will care much for the crowing of a rooster at sunrise. She wants to raise them for both meat and eggs, so a rooster is necessary to produce chicks.

I'm conflicted about it. I think having home raised eggs and meat is great, but I certainly don't want to have anything to do with the care of birds, since I have very bad allergies to feathers and down. I know that if she gets laid up again for any reason, the care of those chickens is going to fall to me. I also don't want to have anything to do with the slaughter or plucking off of feathers or gutting them. I had to pluck goose feathers for my grandpa when I was a kid (before we knew of my allergies) and it just makes me feel creeped out.

We've more or less come to the conclusion that if I buy the feed, help buy the initial batch of chicks, and help build the coop she'll do everything else and we'll all share in the eggs and meat. I think that's a good compromise. I wish I wasn't so creeped out by it all. I'm a city girl at heart, much as I love the concept of being a country girl my experience has always stopped at keeping a large garden.

I hope that buying chicken feed will end up being cheaper than buying organic eggs and meat at the store. I think it's got to be or how else would organic farmer's make any sort of a profit?

I think it'll probably be good for the kids, too. We've never kept pets because of allergies, so they've never been exposed to animals on a daily basis. Of course chickens aren't pets in this case and Mom says they aren't allowed to name them, but they can participate in their care. And they'll get a close up look at where part of their food comes from. Whether or not they want to participate in the slaughter or plucking is up to them. I certainly won't make them, but if they want to be less squeamish than me, more power to them.

Today, well, techincally yesterday now, was a no spend day. I didn't go anywhere or do anything and didn't even have the urge to order take out. Controlling leftovers and food waste is one of the things I'm focusing on to save money, the grocery budget being one of the places where we probably waste the most money.

For lunch we made calzones out of one of the leftover pizza dough balls. We divided it into four portions and I mixed some tomato sauce and herbs with a 6 ounce can of tomato paste. Each small piece of dough was rolled into a circle and filled with leftover ground beef, diced ham, onions, bell peppers in my case, mozzarella cheese and the sauce. My mom made one with just ham and cheese in it. The dough was folded over to make a half circle and crimped with a fork to seal. I pierced each one with a fork in a few places to vent steam and laid them out on a cookie sheet, baking them for 20 minutes in a 425 degree gas oven. They were great, some leftovers got used up, and the kids were happy.

For dinner we made some of the on sale salmon, on sale broccoli, and potatoes from mom's garden (free). I did up a lot of the broccoli and extra potatoes. We have enough broccoli for two more meals and enough potatoes for three. I like making big batches because then you only use the electricity or gas once for the initial cooking and then can warm up the rest in the microwave in the future for just a short amount of time instead of going through the whole long process and the expense again of heating water and boiling food. In this case they are planned overs as opposed to leftovers. That's something I heard them called in a magazine once and it stuck.

I like having planned overs, because it gives me the incentive to use the food in the fridge instead of going out and grabbing burgers or pizza or chicken somewhere. Tomorrow all I have to do for dinner is pop some chicken legs in the oven for an hour and the rest of the meal is taken care of. Mom will probably make gravy out of the drippings because she seems to think that all meals that have meat need gravy, but that's her time and energy, not mine.

Lunch will be quesadillas made of shredded leftover pot roast, some cheese, and some tortillas that need to be used up quickly. They're additive and preservative free so I only have about five to six days from when I open the package to get them used before they go bad. Also we will have coleslaw made from the on sale cabbage I bought the other day and a carrot that needs to be used up.

Someone left the bread open this morning and it got kind of hard so breakfast tomorrow will be french toast and then I'll probably use the rest in meatloaf the day after.

I also got around to counting the money in the toy bank and scrounging up what was on the furniture to add into my coin jar counting. It's almost up to $30, so not bad at all.

$16.59 beginning balance
.38 found on dresser and nightstand
+12.08 amount in TARDIS bank
-------
$29.05 ending balance

I didn't really feel like dumping out my bank today, so I don't know how much is in there at the moment, but I did empty my purse today and gathered up all the loose change and one dollar bills.

$ 8.00 in ones
+ 8.59 in coins
--------
$16.59 in the coin jar

Tomorrow I'll take the time to shake out the bank and see what's in there and add it to the total. I know there's some loose change floating around on my dresser and night stand, too, so when I declutter those I'll add that amount in as well.

The kids have been wanting pizza really badly the last couple of days and have been begging for Round Table pizza and I almost gave in to them today because it was payday and hey, it would be easy. Plus it's one of the few restaurants my son can eat at with his food allergies.

The thing was that there was plenty of time before dinner to start mixing dough in the bread machine and we had two unopened packages of pepperoni and Canadian bacon and a 2 pound brick of mozzarella. I had herbs and tomato sauce. The pizza pan was even clean. There was absolutely no reason to go out for pizza when I could make a perfectly good one that they would like better at home. The only thing stopping me was lazinesss. I got over it. *laughs* Just one of the things I need to do in readjusting my thinking back to a better way of doing things for financial gain.

So it was 3:45 and I popped the five ingredients I needed into the bread machine, set it on the dough cycle, which takes 63 minutes, and had enough time to run to the bank drive-thru and pay the credit card bill (take that evil empire!) then stop at the grocery store for milk.

They happened to have broccoli (crowns for 69 cents a pound!) and asparagus (for 99 cents a pound) and cauliflower (79 per pound) and a head of cabbage (33 per pound) on really good sales so I picked up those and glanced at the fruit. Nothing really looked good despite the prices and we still had apples and oranges and frozen bell peppers at home, so no need to buy anything even if the green bananas were 29 cents a pound.

I made my way over to the fish counter to see if they had anything on sale. They had wild Keta salmon $4 per pound if you buy the whole fish. They filet it for you right there and since the counter was devoid of customers I didn't feel guilty about taking the time to do it. I ended up with four pounds of usable fish for $20 which works out to $5 per pound after all the discards are taken out of the original five pound fish. Not bad for what will amount to six meals worth of salmon.

Nothing else was on sale and I have plenty of meat in the freezer so that was all I bought. Between the milk, veg (I bought a lot of veg, we eat a lot) and milk (organic), I spent $48.74.

I got back home to my mother saying the bread machine had just dinged (ha, timing!) So while my son and I divided the dough and put two balls in the fridge for later this week and started stretching out the other one, my daughter preheated the oven and shredded the cheese. We added the sauce to the dough, sprinkled on basil, oregano, and thyme, added cheese and the meats and by the time we were done the oven was warm.

With everyone pitching in it didn't feel like a huge production making it, we all had fun and instead of paying $30 for a large pizza, we'll end up with three pizzas for the same price of on hand ingredients we would have paid for the other. I used to do this all the time. I used to be good at it. It's coming back slowly but surely.

Okay, so yes, I'm really still back. It's just that after the last time I posted we promptly all got a very nasty sickness that ran through all of us but managed to do it one at a time, so once I was done caring for one child and got him well, the next child went down. And then I got her well, and I went down. I'm finally on my way back up and my daughter went back down again, this time with an ear infection. She's got antibiotics now so hopefully we'll see the back door of all this soon. All this while trying to homeschool.

Anyway, one of the things that has really fallen by the wayside with me is having an emergency fund. With the last raise my husband got things got so much easier for us that I pretty much stopped worrying about having an emergency fund. I thought, hey, we can absorb it if something happens. And yeah, for the most part we can.

Only after our last vacation, which was in October, and was paid for in cash, we were pretty much running low on reserves. And that was the time that one of our car tires exploded. We're still not sure why but that puppy was shredded in ways the tire guy claimed he'd never seen before. Fortunately it happened in a very safe place and I have AAA so everything turned out fine.

Except one of the lovely, lovely things I never knew about is that if you have a car with all wheel drive and you have to replace the whole tire, not just repair it, that means you have to replace all four tires even if they're only a year and a half old. It doesn't matter how good your remaining tires are. They all have to have the same level of tread wear for all wheel drive to work right. The tire places won't even sell you just one in that case. Which, yeah, makes sense, but totally bites, because the $150 you expected to pay to replace the tire, suddenly becomes $600 and oh, great, no emergency fund because we can absorb it.

Um...yeah. Right before Christmas. Right after vacation. Well, we absorbed it all right but it wasn't much fun. So I knew it was time to get my act together and reestablish an emergency fund.

So last month I started with my safety net. My safety net is always an amount that is kept in a locally accessible credit union that I can drive to within a moment's notice and have cash in hand that day. It was a tighter month because my husband had had an extra week off over the holidays unpaid because they shut down to a skeleton crew. So I was only able to squeeze out $300 with which to fund the saftey net. It's not near what I'd like it to be, which is $1000, but still, a good start.

This month I've sent $500 to the actual emergency fund, which brings it to a whopping $520.26. This money I keep in an online bank where it's out of easy reach, but I can still get it transferred in 3 days time. The bank no longer generates much interest, but this is more about available money than earning with it so I don't mind too much. I haven't delved back into the "which online bank pays you the most stuff" yet. I've been sick and busy and just haven't got around to it.

I am hoping to contribute $500 a month directly to the emergency fund and $100 a month to the safety net. I want to eventually have about $15,000 in the emergency fund at which point I'll probably want a better interest bearing account.

I also am going to start up collecting all of my coins and one dollar bills again to add in to the EF. This amount will be above the $500. I've still got my trusty old salad dressing bottle for the dollars and I have a talking TARDIS money bank (yes, I can be a silly fangirl at times, but it was a Christmas present) for the coins. It's silly, but I like it and it works, and I love the way the little light flashes and it make the dematerialization noise. Plus, it holds as much in coins as the jar ever did.

Anyway, that is my current plan to rebuild things again. Hopefully I'll be able to stick to it.