Last week I was able to work two days while I will be working every day this next week.
Days we stayed home this week include Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday. We didn't spend any money on those days. I love having days where we spend no money.
We didn't use any heat or air this week to keep warm or cool as the weather has been mild this week. That will help us save money on our electric bill next month.
Payday was this week. Turns out my check was missing two days pay due to spring break. They'll be on my next check, but I was planning on putting new brake pads on my car this week.
With the two day shortage I'll have to stretch my budget with less money than I originally budgeted for, so we will be on a bare bones budget until next month. I do not want to dip into my savings unless absolutely necessary.
My brother-in-law, who is a mechanic, put new brake pads on my car front and back and didn't charge me any labor fees. The back brake pads weren't ready to be replaced, but he figured he would save us both time and money and go ahead replace them now rather than later.
He also changed the oil for me and I'm so grateful as it was due for an oil change. That will be one thing I won't have to pay out of my budget next month. All I had to pay him was for the parts he used to do all of this, which turned out to be $100.
I'll be having a front end alignment on the car next month. After that my car maintenance will be up to date and I won't have to incur any of those expenses while school is out and my income is lower for the summer months.
Since we are on a bare bones budget this month I made a list of meals we could make here with what we have on hand. I also went to Food City to pick up a few things we needed.
I picked up butter, mozzarella cheese, sour cream, popcorn, marked down Italian bread, chicken bouillon, and found some little smokies on markdown for $2.10 and picked up five on those. I spent $38.22 in total.
Popcorn made the list because my supply is low. It's cheaper to make popcorn as a snack or for lunch with a sandwich verses buying potato chips to go with a sandwich.
I went by Food Lion on Friday morning before I dropped my car off and picked up some lettuce, which was on sale for 89¢. I also picked up cheddar cheese, corn for 48¢ each, and two cans of cream of chicken soup for 48¢ each. I spent $9.32 in total.
After picking up my car on Saturday I needed to go to Food City to pick up a prescription. They accidently filled it for three months instead of one, so it cost me $23.85 for the 3 month supply. She asked me if I wanted to have her refill it for one month only, but I told her it was fine, and I've already absorbed it into my budget.
I checked the marked down sections and picked up two mangos for 99¢ and the last marked down package of Little Smokies for $2.29. Total spent on food was $3.50.
One of the things I made this week was egg salad using those eggs from Kroger that we picked up last week for 88¢. Several egg salad sandwiches went into lunch boxes this week.
Instead of saving the ends of bread I made sandwiches with them this week. Normally I save them in the freezer to make bread crumbs, but there's no waste either way.
My daughter was wanting something sweet to eat this week, which is unusual for her. We are not dessert eaters here and I only make them during special occasions or holidays.
Therefore it's rare for me to have any sweets around or even have something on the shelf to make. What I normally do when the sweet tooth gets me is make a piece of toast with jelly on it.
I did have the peanut butter I bought on sale for 99¢ at Kroger a few months ago, so I decided on the three ingredients peanut butter (1 egg, 1 cup peanut butter, 1 cup sugar) cookies.
Doing the math the ingredients cost me 83¢ and I made nine cookies, so each one was around 10¢, which is much cheaper than a cookie from the mall.
I also had a couple of cake mixes on hand that we bought on mark down, so I made one of those as well.
Other things we did to save money this week include:
Last week I started using a new app on my phone called Hiya. It's free and it blocks some of those annoying robocalls.
Bailey went to see her first concert this week, The Black Jacket Symphony with Marc Martel performing Queen's, "A Night at the Opera" at the Tivoli theater in downtown Chattanooga.
Her uncle (the same one who fixed my car) sprang for the tickets and took her to Red Lobster for dinner before the show. She had a great time and made many memories that night.
Microsoft Rewards rewarded me with another $5 Amazon gift card this week.
This week I had one ten dollar sale on eBay, which will definitely help the budget this month.
We went to several yard sales on Saturday. One of them had a free section where we picked up this free Suntrust cup and two free umbrellas.
One deal my daughter found was a large container of essential oils. Some of them had price tags of $24.99 on them, some were new and not opened and some were almost empty. There were two Ball canning jars inside along with several glass bottles with pump sprayers.
There were some varieties that she'd been wanting for a while now, but didn't want to spend the money for, so this was a great deal for her, which she picked up for $25. We've already been diffusing rose in the house, which smells so good.
So that's our week in a nutshell, financial issues cropped up, but were met because of good planning and budgeting. It's so important to be proactive and plan where your money is going before you get it and then the financial losses of life are easier to absorb.
As I mentioned last week, I was scheduled to sub five days this week. I brought my lunch to school every day and didn't succumb to any take out. On Friday one of the teachers gave me some chicken salad & bread from a local deli, which fed me and my daughter for breakfast Saturday morning.
I came home Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and my daughter had dinner already warmed up, which was so great after working all day. On Thursday we went to Chattanooga to pet sit for a friend, making $40 in the process.
Friday was payday already and since I worked 1.5 days prior to the tenth of the month, I received a paycheck as well. That doesn't happen every year, but it's great when it does. My renter's insurance will come out of the 25th of the month, so now I won't have to pull money from my savings to cover the amount.
On Friday night we decided to have a pizza delivered since we were in the city, which is something we don't have where we live since it is rural. Having a pizza delivered is a real treat to us.
And guess what?
Pizza Hut sent us a text on Saturday that they were sorry our pizza took too long to be delivered and offered us a free one topping pizza as compensation. I didn't even think it took that long to be delivered, but what a sweet offer.
Monday we will be going to a free event for the eclipse and schools are closed here, so this will be a four day work week and I am already scheduled to work two of those days.
You may have read in the comments from my last blog post that the principal gave me two free pairs of eclipse glasses for Monday, one for me and one for my daughter.
We picked up red grapes at Aldi this week since they were on sale for 79¢ a pound.
Several free magazines arrived in the mail this week. Women's Health, Weight Watchers, Money, Time, Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, Parents and This Old House. I mostly use Recycle Bank credits to earn free magazines. Some of them even have free coupons in them, which is another plus.
On Sunday we went to the mall as we both had a coupon for $10 off $10 at Yankee Candle and wanted to use it since it expired that day. We both bought a car air freshener and a candle melt and paid 52¢ each. We also picked up our free pizza at Pizza Hut and had that for dinner.
I picked up one of my prescriptions at CVS on Sunday and we were given two free bottles of water.
We watched a couple of episodes of Parenthood on the Internet for free while we were in Chattanooga. It is one of my favorite tv shows and I love so much of the music they chose for it.
That's it for our frugal week here. How was your week?
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.
