Happy New Year to all my readers. I hope that 2018 will be filled with love and laughter, many blessings, good health, and good finances for you. Thank you for your friendship over the last year. It has been a blessing to me to keep in touch with so many of you while also getting to know some new friends too. I wish you all the best in 2018!
Tonight marks the beginning of a brand new year, and is often the time when people reflect back on the previous year and make a list of goals they would like to work on in the new year.
Most of my goals are usually ongoing, such as living within my means, increasing my income and savings, avoiding consumerism, and living debt free. My goal for the new year is to continue these and do them even better in 2018. I hope you'll join me. :)
Belinda
~ Living within our Means ~
We went to my BIL's home for our Christmas celebration on Tuesday. He served Ham, Dressing, Mashed Potatoes, Green Beans, Macaroni and Cheese, Deviled Eggs, and Rolls for dinner along with Sweet Iced Tea to drink. We had a great time visiting with them.
On Wednesday we had been to town and ended up picking up a Roast Chicken from Sam's Club. $4.98 out the door. We came home and I fixed some green beans with onions and a salad to go with it.
On Thursday I made another batch of Broccoli and Cheese soup for lunch and to use up the last of those ingredients I had on hand.
And for dinner I served hamburgers using some of the on sale ground chuck I bought the day before.
On Friday I was going to take my car to town for an oil change, but ended up giving someone a ride somewhere and they paid me $5.00 for taking them.
I had to run to Food City to pick up an RX and took a look at their marked down meat and found a roasting chicken for $2.99. I came home and put it right into the crockpot.
I'm going to make White Bean Chicken Chili with it for dinner when the times comes.
What's been for dinner at your house this week?
Belinda
~ Living within our Means ~
When I listed my BoxTops for Education on Ebay the other day they sold within the first hour that I listed them. I've never had anything sell so quickly before. I earned $7.50 on those after fees. I also listed two more items for sale on Ebay this week.
Something else we did to save money this week was to go to Target to get in on a cat food deal.
Target had Purina brand Cat Chow on sale for buy three bags and get a free $10 Target gift card. They had the 13 pound bags, which are normally $13 on sale for $12. We also had multiple $3 off one coupons.
We bought nine bags and were also able to get in on a 25¢ rebate on Ibotta for any cat food. Each bag ended up costing us $5.67, which is a great savings over the $12 sale price. With four cats, hopefully this will last until summertime.
Of course, we will save the codes off the bags and apply them to the My Perks rewards program to earn more free cat food.
For fun and free entertainment around here, we've been watching Christmas movies and playing some of our favorite board games. One of the games we've played is Ticket to Ride. This was the game we found at a yard sale this summer for $3.00 that sells for over $30 on Amazon. We really enjoy this new to us game and it was money well spent.
As usual I perused the grocery store ads on Wednesday to see if there were any good deals we wanted to pick up this week.
Fresh & Low has 8 ounce bags of cheese on sale for $1.18, while Cooke's had the same cheese for $1.25 and ground chuck for $1.99 a pound.
We decided to go to town to stock up on these two deals and to check out Walmart's Christmas clearance.
At Cooke's, I bought ten bags of cheese and ten pounds of the ground chuck. Those were the only two grocery items we bought this week.
At Walmart we bought thirteen rolls of wrapping paper, which they had on clearance for 50% off. We paid 61¢ per roll for eight of them while the others cost $1.50 each. We also bought some smaller bows in a container, so they won't get crushed during the year, for 50¢ each .
We are all in different places financially and you may or may not need these frugal living tips. Hopefully there is something here that you'll find useful that will help motivate or inspire you on your frugal journey.
Belinda
~ Living within our Means ~
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas to all my readers. I hope you have a wonderful holiday and spend it with the ones you love.
This year, as well as other years, I earned free money to buy some gifts. For example, I earned $50 both through MyPoints and Swagbucks. I had this money sent to my Paypal account, so I could spend it anywhere.
I also received a free $50 Walmart Card from my Insurance company for having a mammogram in October. I also earned a $25 Bath & Body Works gift card from Swagbucks.
Here is our menu that I have planned for the next two days. Most everything was cooked from scratch, except for the crackers.
Christmas Eve
Italian Beef
Cheese Ball & Crackers
Sausage Balls
Spiced Cider
Punch
Eggnog
Christmas Dinner
Ham
Mashed Potatoes
Dressing
Carrot Raisin Salad
Green Peas
Crescent Rolls
Spiced Cider
Punch
Eggnog
Desserts
Spice Cake
Banana Pudding
I hope you have a wonderful holiday!
Belinda
~ Living within our Means ~
Last Saturday we ran a few errands stopping first at Publix for their buy one get one free deals. We bought Ritz crackers, Velveeta mac and cheese, smoked sausage, and Pillsbury pie crusts, which were all B1G1Free.
I'll combine the pie crusts with the sausage, also bought last week, to make Sausage Quiche for dinner one night soon. I can also make Chicken pot pie, which is one of my daughter's favorite dinners.
We also bought a sirloin tip roast, which was on sale for $3.99 a pound. I'll use it to make our traditional Italian Beef for Christmas Eve. I already have the Italian seasoning, beef broth, and rolls needed for this dish.
On Monday I made BLTs for dinner, which were so refreshing and a nice change of pace.
Tuesday I worked half a day, and now school is on Christmas break until after the new year.
I filled up my gas tank on Thursday and plan to stay home more than usual the next two weeks, which will save me money on gas.
Now I can spend my days getting things ready for Christmas. I sure am enjoying being at home all day.
We ran errands again on Wednesday and I picked up the last few items I needed for Christmas dinner. I also found two packages of ground beef on yellow sticker.
We went to Target and found half gallons of half and half for $2.26.
Thursday I made Broccoli & Cheese soup in the crockpot. It's been raining off and on here for a few days, so it was good and filling. We also had this for lunch on Friday.
I used my immersion blender and blended it together when it was done.
On Thursday I also pulled out my GE Roaster and made Taco Meat in it for multiple meals this week leading up to Christmas.
This will save time to not have to cook a new meal each evening, so that I can concentrate on Christmas things. As usual I cut up a potato to
s-t-r-e-t-c-h the taco meat.
On Friday I made a cheese ball, banana pudding, a spice cake, and carrot raisin salad.
My Christmas cactus has so many more buds this year versus last year.
I listed three things for sale on Ebay today. One of the items was BoxTops for Education. If you sell these, don't do what I did. I let mine go too long before I checked them and had some expire on me.
I hope you all have had a good week so far. :)
Belinda
~ Living within our Means ~
It's been a busy two weeks here and I ended up working nine of the last ten school days. Payday came early this month and I've already paid the monthly bills, which always gives me peace of mind.
Last week I sold three things on Ebay that netted $36.83 after fees for the items that cost me $1.24 at a thrift store and rummage sale.
We've been in use it up mode here using several items out of the pantry that are good to get off the shelf. It's so important to use up what you have stored in your pantry because it saves you money because then you don't have to buy more food. That will free up money for other things like an unexpected expense.
With that in mind, I would like to share a link with you.
Better Times Almanac
I've shared this link before, but it's been a while. There is a lot of good, useful, and frugal information there. Bob advises people to keep two months worth of food in their pantries.
He says...
If hard times come your way -- if you get fired, get sick, there's a blizzard, your utility bills are too high, whatever the crisis, with food in the pantry, hard times are less hard.
One way we do this is our home is to get the Wednesday grocery store sale ads and find out what is on sale that week. Food City has begun to have Friday only sales or three day only sales, so we went yesterday and picked up four packages of sausage, bacon, and cream cheese.
These were good prices for our area and I've already put the bacon and sausage in the freezer. Bacon is a rare treat in our home, due to the expense, so I was tickled to find it at this price. BLT's will be on the menu sometime soon.
It's cold here this weekend, so I'll be making soup today. I have plenty of ingredients on hand from shopping the sales and stocking up on them.
Many people are talking about the Frugal Queen blog disappearing. You can always use the Internet Wayback machine to access her older blog pages.
Frugal Queen on The Internet Wayback Machine
You can even access her recipes using this link.
Hope all of my readers are doing well and have a great weekend!
Belinda
~ Living within our Means ~
