Another Publix Deal

Here is another video (37 seconds) on a coupon deal my daughter Bailey did at Publix this week. 
She was able to pick up two Palermo's frozen pizzas, one bottle of Ken's Steak House dressing, four Country Crock spreads, and eight boxes of Lipton tea for $2.81, which made each item 19¢ each after sales, coupons, and rebates. 

She explains how she did the deal in her video and I hope you enjoy and learn from it, if you are interested. She is a whiz at couponing and saves our household a great deal of money. 
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Making Do

I've been wanting a rolling utility cart for one of my projects for about two months now. I've researched many options, but didn't settle on anything that suited my needs. Something changed this week and I knew I needed to make a decision. 
This is what I came up with:

We found this one day at the Dollar General store, where they were giving them away because they had new ones, and it came home with us that day. This week I needed to make a decision and I thought of this basket. My project fit perfectly in the basket and it even has handles on it. In fact, I think it will work better and be less bulky than a rolling utility cart. 
One aspect of frugal living is adjusting our spending to fit in with our goals, and part of being frugal is being able to pare back what you need.  I made do with something I already had and in the end didn't need to spend any money. I wanted a rolling utility cart because I thought it would make my life easier, but in reality I did not need one. The money I would have spent on the cart can now be ear-marked for one of our financial goals making us one step closer to our goal.
Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without are words we live by here and lies at the core of frugal living. How we choose to do that is entirely up to us. We need to question every expense and ask ourselves if it is really necessary. Oftentimes we can come up with a solution without spending any money.  
How many times do we buy things simply because we want them and not because we need them? What is something that you've made do with instead of spending money for?
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Tuesday's Frugal Finds

Good morning! 
I wanted to mention two frugal things we've done this week so far. 
The first one is my daughter went to Aldi for me and picked up carrots (2 lb. bag) for 49¢ and potatoes (5 lb. bag) for $1.49. 
She also picked up a deal at CVS for paper towels and toilet paper. Scott paper towels were on sale for $5.49 for a 6 pack and Scott toilet paper was on sale for $6.99. 
When you spend $20 you earn a $5 extra bucks reward. She also rolled $8.00 worth of extra bucks she had from last week. 
We also printed off coupons from the ScottBrand.com website for both. There was also a $2 rebate at Checkout51, which makes each item only $1.53 each in the end.  
Here is a 45 second video that my daughter made about this deal:

Hope you are having a frugal week so far.  Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

Weekend Update

Hello to all my frugal friends.  :)
Last weekend I ended up hurting my back while lifting a garbage bag into our county dumpster, so much so that I went to the doctor who prescribed me pain medicine and a muscle relaxer. The pain was rough and while not 100% yet, is better than it was. I ended up working every day this past week even with the pain.
My long term sub job ended on Friday and since Monday is a federal holiday there will be no school. But, I do have a job lined up for Tuesday already. 
My daughter stepped up to the plate for me this week as making dinner was causing the pain to be even worse. We made it through though and did not succumb to any take out food. 
My daughter received her scholarship funds within the last week and created a very detailed budget for every dollar. She moved some of the money into her savings account and will use those funds to pay her monthly car insurance until September when her next scholarship funds come through.  She is very good at managing her money, has no debt, makes sure all her bills are paid on time, and is a whiz with couponing, which saves the whole household money. I'm very grateful for this. 
Friday was payday for me, so I've been going over my budget the last week with a fine tooth comb. I transferred money into both our emergency funds savings account and our "new home" savings account. I have five paydays left until the end of the school year, and I want to make sure that my budget will work based on my income and our expenses during the summer will be as small as possible. 
Our electric bill was down this month to $133 instead of the $200 bill from last month. We've had a mild winter here this year, hardly using any heat, and our bill reflects that. 
Some deals that we were able to get in on this week include:
24 boxes of Barilla pasta for 4¢ each. Here is a video my daughter made about the deal. 

Since we have all this pasta, I'm going to be making a pasta salad for lunches this coming week. I like to combine ranch dressing with Italian dressing for the sauce in my pasta salads, but I am out of ingredients to make my homemade version. 
I do have some Greek dill yogurt dressing that my daughter bought but did not care for, but I think I can substitute it in the pasta salad and disguise it. That will save money over buying ingredients for homemade ranch and I'll be using this dip instead of tossing it, a win-win situation. 
For dinner on Saturday I made soup using up the remainder of a pork roast that I had stored in the freezer, along with carrots, potatoes, onions, and corn. I seasoned it with a bay leaf, Hungarian paprika, Worcestershire sauce, and salt and pepper. 
Then on Sunday for lunch I thickened the soup with some cornstarch and turned it into a stew for lunch ad served it with bread and butter slices. 

Other frugal things this past week...
- I received a $25 Amazon gift card this week for renewing my Norton antivirus protection last December.  - Picked up a free newspaper at school with the sale ads inside instead of paying 50¢ for one.  - The last three days I've stayed home to rest my back as much as possible, so it has been a no spend weekend. Did not use any of the gas in my car either, so a win-win situation there as well. 
How was your weekend? Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

The Weekend Wrapup

The weather has been mild here this week and we've not had to have the air or heat on, which will save on the electric bill. Usual frugal things we did included packing our own lunches, bring our own drinks (water), combining errands, keeping the lights off, etc.
We also...
Listened to free music on Pandora Radio.
Researched new tires for my car and will include that in another post at a later date. 
Closed my savings account. The bank that I have been with since 1999 began charging me $9 per month for my savings account. So, I moved that money into a free online savings account and closed my old account.
I will also be closing my checking account with them this month as they are charging me $8 a month for that service. So, I will also be closing my checking account and opening one at the credit union that offers free checking. That move will save me $96 over the course of one year. 
We recently watched two movies on two separate Family Movie Nights. We watched Middle School: The Worst Years on My Life that we borrowed from the library and we rented The Great Gilly Hopkins from Redbox using a coupon, so we paid 55¢ to watch it. The Middle School film was OK while I really like The Great Gilly movie. I would recommend it.  
My daughter and I were talking about pot pie the other day and how much she enjoyed it. Then she made a comment that gave me an "aha" moment. She said that she didn't even need meat in a pot pie, it was all the other stuff she liked. I knew then that I had to add a vegetable pot pie to our menu for the month and that would be cheaper than making a pot pie with meat and just as good tasting. 
I placed the leftover vegetable chili and Cajun soup beans from the refrigerator into individual bowls and froze them for lunches at a later date.

Breakfast today was homemade waffles since I usually have extra time to make a more involved breakfast on Sunday. 

We turn our bottles upside down to get the last little bit out of the bottle.

For dinner I will be using one of the packages of ground beef I put in the freezer last weekend. I have some Campbell's beefy mushroom soup that I will use for gravy to serve over the Salisbury Steak.

I'll serve it with rice, since we are out of potatoes, corn, and a slice of bread with butter. The bread was on mark down at Walmart for 50¢. 

I did an inventory of my spices this weekend to see what I had on hand and what I need. I know I need Lawry's seasoned salt and some vanilla extract. It will definitely be imitation this year as the cost of vanilla extract has skyrocketed according to the news. 
These are the spices that I have on hand:

Spices

Accent

Allspice, ground

Alum

Basil

Bay Leaves

Black Pepper

Celery Seed

Celery Salt

Chili powder

Cloves, ground

Cloves, whole

Coriander

Cream of Tarter

Cumin

Curry

Fennel

Garlic powder

Garlic salt

Italian Seasoning

Lawry's Chicken/Poultry Rub

Mustard Seed, ground

Mustard Seed, whole

Old Bay Seasoning

Onions, dried, chopped

Onions, powder

Oregano

Paprika

Paprika, Hungarian

Paprika, Smoked

Parsley

Red Pepper Flakes

Sage

Salt

Taco Seasoning Mix

Thyme

Turmeric

That's all the news from here. 
I hope you have had a great weekend.  :)
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

This Week...

Since school was out on Tuesday due to illness I took advantage of the day off and was able to get a doctor appointment for my Mom and take her and went to Food City afterwards to snag a few deals. 
They had 1 pound rolls of breakfast sausage on mark down for $1.49, so I picked up two of those.

For breakfast I cooked the sausage and toasted an English muffin (bought on markdown at Kroger for 25¢/pack).   

A sausage muffin at McDonald's  cost $1.00 each while my homemade version came out to just under 30¢, which makes it a money saver. 

Food City also had a package of ground chuck marked down to $8.67 for just over three pounds. I brought it home and divided it up into three separate freezer bags and stuck those in the freezer. 

Food City also had corn on sale for 50¢ per can, so I bought 10 cans for my pantry. 

They also had cream cheese on sale for buy one get one free, which made them $1.15. I paired this with some Hormel Chili, which was on sale for 99¢ and I had a 55¢ off coupon for two cans. I'll use this to make my daughter's favorite dip. 

On Wednesday I received a call from Central Office informing me that school was closed for the rest of the week due to illness. I was so disappointed as that will be four days of work I have missed this week.  I do have three days already scheduled for next week, so that is good. 
Wednesday afternoon we went to the library, so my daughter could work on some school work. Did I tell you that she made the Dean's List last semester? She did. :)
I like going to the library because we can use their Internet at no cost.  We are on a data plan at home, which is not unlimited and tends to run out before the month is over. 
Since I was off school this week and had plenty of time on my hands, I've been reading the forums over at Money Saving Expert and on the Frugal Living Reddit sites. 
I did make a trip to Chattanooga on Thursday to have the oil changed in my car at the dealership. This did not cost me anything out of pocket today as I prepaid for this service when I bought the car.

I did run to Sam's Club for cheese since I was going right by there anyway. So I made pepperoni pizzas for dinner. 

How has your week been?
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~

This Week at the Frugal Workshop

On Saturday morning I headed out early to avoid the crowds and ended up finding some markdowns on meat. 

I found Chorizo marked down to $2.45 and some Spicy Pork Meatballs marked down to $2.06, which were both on yellow sticker mark down. 

For dinner on Saturday I made Chorizo tacos and I also made four chorizo pockets using one lone pie crust I had left from the holidays. 

My daughter has found someone who delivers papers for a living and she has been giving her the coupon inserts that are left over at the end of the day, which has been such a blessing to us. 
Here is one such deal: 
She had 16 coupons for 75¢ off any Bush beans and Target has them on sale this week for 75¢, so all of these were free. 

This was a money maker on this canister of bread crumbs after rebate. 

She bought eight bottles of Heinz ketchup for 25¢ each and these are the 32 ounce bottles. 

Here are photos of the lunches I made for this week. I make a large batch of vegetable soup or chili and we have that for dinner on Saturday night and then I divide the remaining chili into individual bowls for the week. I've been doing this for about six weeks now and it has streamlined my mornings. 

I also made broccoli cups and a salad for each day. 

Here is my Christmas Cactus when it was fully bloomed. 

And the mending I need to do today. One of my daughter's pads needs to be repaired today. 

I was supposed to be at work today, but school has been cancelled due to sickness for the next two days, but I will be back at work on Thursday. 
I hope you are having a great week.  :)
Belinda ~ Living within our Means ~