Using The Weather to Our Advantage

I made it thru the work week & G is back home from working up North for a few days. Still not feeling 100% but I got a good solid sleep last night, and slept in for once. I'm hoping the next few days like that will help me finally kick this cold for good. G is working nights this entire weekend, and I have no plans other than staying home - I doubt if I will even be able to stay up until midnight on New Years Eve, lol.

Not going anywhere is fine by me with the weather we have been seeing. Right now it's -45C outside. Although, that's not abnormal for Saskatchewan in the winter, it still really cold. So we are taking advantage of natures freezer and defrosting our deep freeze in the house. G and I took all the food out of the freezer and placed it into a cooler and boxes in the garage. Going thru all the food in there definitely inspired us to use up what we have. G was even the one that suggested it! So January is going to be one of those months for us. Deep freezer, regular freezer, pantry, etc: all going to get used.

We are starting off with a chilli weekend using stewing beef we found buried, cans of beans in our pantry and frozen corn. We also found a ton of frozen buns so those will get used aswell! I have $300 budgeted for food in January so I'm excited to see how this challenge will affect out grocery bill.

Stay warm!

- M

Slow Moving Saturday

Although I love my husband, I really enjoy when he is working days on Saturday because I always get so much done. I don't really sleep in anymore, but on the weekends I always take my time getting out of bed. Then when I finally do, I take my time having my morning coffee and prepare a proper breakfast (today was scrambled eggs and cheese on a bagel).

Saturday is also my grocery shopping day. This is probably a contraction to something I've said before but I hardly pay attention to flyers anymore. We only have one option in my small town so I tend to shop what we are caving and want to eat for the week - if it's on sale it's just an added bonus. Does anyone else shop this way?

$21.98 worth of groceries for the week

This week our plan is:

• Macaroni and tuna salad with fresh bread
• Penne alla vodka
• Rib meat wraps
• Salami sandwiches
• Pumpkin spiced cupcakes (not for dinner obviously lol)
• Mini pizzas!

The macaroni salad we've been craving for a while. We have ½ a homemade loaf of bread in the freezer that I had made a few weeks ago so that will clear some space. The penne is going to be a new recipe for me to try. When my parents were visiting my mom had purchased a small bottle of vodka for mix and I had no idea what to do with the left overs - pasta it is! Rib wraps is from left over ribs we had made. G removed all the meat from the bones so we could do something different; this will most likely get eaten first. The salami, well that's again just some meat we had in the fridge. We have some mozzarella too so maybe we can make mini pizzas one night (pizza sauce is in the freezer). Adding this to my meal plan now - I guess I'm planning on the fly! The pumpkin spiced cupcakes will be a bit of a treat for G and myself, plus I will bring some to work. I have a spiced cake mix, and homemade pumpkin puree in the freezer from last year (someone at work was giving away free pumpkins so I roasted the two I took and turned them into puree for later use).

I think that should be good for a week if not a little bit more. I always bring left overs for lunch or I've been eating a lot of hummus and veggies recently. G is working days next week and will be gone most of Tuesday as he picked up an overtime shift on his day off. Hopefully he will be home for dinner.

My slow but productive Saturday continues now. I just heard the laundry finish. Lucky for me, my earl grey tea has just kicked in and I'm ready for another round of cleaning! 

- M

Excellent Budgeting Month

Just for the record this is the first year in as long as I can remember that we have gotten passed Christmas without any credit card debt. Even not buying anything dramatic or over the top on Boxing Day - although I did look but more on that in another post. It feels really good not only because I know we are entering 2016 completely consumer debt free but because we could have purchased something if we really wanted too.

We were $141.91 under budget this month and snowballed that money to our vacation fund. The biggest area we saved on was groceries - I had allocated $350 for the month and only spent $256.66. I’m really happy about this because I didn’t feel so great after failing the grocery challenge at the beginning of the month. Other areas under budget: $13 under for fuel and $35.57 under for Mocha.

So with that we moved another $200 to the vacation fund. I figured adding $2000 this month to the moving fund was more than enough and wanted to be a bit selfish. Not all months will be this good - we need to do a city run sometime next month so our grocery bill will be a lot higher unfortunately. You win some, you lose some.

- M

Lets Double That Goal...

This was a very good week. Our moving fund goal of $1000 is going to be completely blown out of the water. On Wednesday, G’s paycheque had a good amount of overtime so just that day alone we were able to add $1300 to the moving account. Then on Friday I got paid and was able to move an extra $300 to the account – most of this coming from a bit of extra pay, travel expense claim, and selling a few items. The moving account now sits at $1700. Another $100 is for sure getting moved over as an automatic transfer so I just need $200 by the end of the month to double our goal. I’m confident we can do that.

I was able to send out all out Christmas cards this week, plus two packages. We were completely done Christmas shopping at the end of last month so as packages started arriving from online orders, I would spend a bit of time each night wrapping the presents. Once the last items came in the mail I could pack it up and off to the post office I went! Being organized really helps when I’m trying to make sure our packages arrive before the holidays, also saved us money because I didn’t have to express post it! Still cost $40 to ship two separate boxes out and prices are increasing in the New Year. Thank god we got a giant roll of permanent stamps from Costco a few years ago – we are pretty much set for life.

I never said this in my last post but ND Chic had a grocery challenge on her blog: $100 to get you thru to the 15^th of this month. I was doing awesome until Friday when I went to do my grocery shop. Over budget by $10…. Damn. I’m not beating myself up too much about it since it was a slightly odd list of groceries I had to get. My friend came over today for lunch and she has a gluten allergy. So I had to buy some gluten-free pasta for the dish I made and I got a gluten-free brownie mix for dessert. Just those two items: a little over $10 – having allergies sucks. (Shout out to anyone with dietary restrictions – your grocery budgets must be insane). I don’t really care about going overbudget, she was really grateful – since she can technically eat gluten but gets really bad headaches and stomach cramps. I don’t want to make someone feel like that. We had a really nice time catching up and doing our Christmas exchange since we won’t see eachother till the New Year. Definitely worth the $10!

- M

Parents Visit & Vacation Talk

Sorry I haven’t been writing these last few weeks. Things were kind of busy around here while preparing for my parents visits. I haven’t seen them in over two years so I’m sure you understand me wanting to spend some quality time with them, lol. They were here for a week, and since they drove all the way from Southern Ontario we didn’t really do much except relax and play cards. G and I cooked a homemade meal plus desert every single night. My mom doesn’t really cook all that much at home so I wanted to spoil them/show off (i.e. make them proud: which btw my mom commented saying these were some of the best meals she's had -- score!). That being said – our food budget is about 3x more this month, lol. I’m going to be happy if it we keep under $800. This is one of those moments I really don’t care though – I’m glad to feed my family good food and have nice memories & we can afford it. We ended up only spending $260 on groceries last month so we are sort of balancing out.

One nice thing my parents did was let us purchase USD at par! We bought $300 US for $300 CAD. I just did a quick calculation in Google and that would have cost us $400 CAD!! Ouch… Also the day they left G found a note from my mom that said, “Enjoy a nice dinner in Vegas” with a $100 bill tucked under. They had to hide it because they know we wouldn’t have taken it if they handed it to us, lol. Our vacation account is a little over $800, not that much considering our vacation is a month away but we are still owed the expenses from G’s La Ronge trip ($1366) which was approved a month ago – I’m hoping that comes in soon. Also this is all our ‘fun’ money, the hotel has been paid for so its really about how lavish or frugal we want our trip to be. We will be putting away as much as possible this month and next as we would rather have a surplus in our vacation savings account than a balance on our credit cards; but that’s really a no brainer. ;)

- M

Frugal and Productive Weekend

Yesterday after work I spent the evening cleaning out and organizing the guest bedroom. My parents are coming in less than two weeks so I want the house to look perfect for them! I was able to get rid of three more boxes of stuff I completely forgot we had. Canadian Diabetes is coming to do a pick up next month so everything is being donated to them. I’ve given up counting how many items I’ve gotten rid of this year; it’s over 800 items that’s for sure.

This morning I meal planned for the week (I’ll add the plan at the end of this post) and then G and I went off to the grocery store. We spent $41. Woohooo! This month our grocery bill has been $238. That is an all time record and way under the $350 I had budgeted. Even though we are debt free we are still pretty determined to cut back our budget when we can or want too. So far this month we were able to add $500 into our emergency fund, pay our annual property taxes (just a little over $1000) and purchase a brand new shot gun (haha, random). Next month is a three-paycheque month for G so there is a lot of savings on the horizon. :D

This afternoon I started doing a mini-reno of our master bathroom: a new coat of paint on the walls and trim, spray-painting the existing towel bar and toilet paper roll holder (both of which were a tacky gold colour). Better yet we had all the materials needed in our basement! The bathroom is small without any windows so I’m just painting the walls white to allow as much light as possible. We had a half used gallon of paint downstairs that was still perfectly good so I’m using that. G has some silver spray paint so that is what he is using for the fixtures. I’m currently waiting on the first coat to dry and will do another coat tonight. Sunday, I can put everything back in its place. I also painted the door in the guest bedroom, plus some trim touch ups that needed to be done. Excited to see what it’ll look like when it’s done!

- M

Meal Plan

Saturday – Lasagna (was in the freezer)

Sunday – Leftovers

Monday – Corn & roasted garlic potatoes (corn was crazy cheap this week and the potatoes we had already in the pantry)

Tuesday – Burgers with leftover garlic potatoes

Wednesday – Burgers and scalloped potatoes

Thursday – Chicken Sloppy Joe's with Greek salad

Friday – Leftovers

Saturday – Going to a wedding – will be eating dinner there

Sunday – Chicken Shawarma

Grocery Shopping in the Garden

Well, we are officially debt free except the mortgage. We paid off our car that was sitting on the LOC on Tuesday including a $54.37 interest charge that went thru. Once I seen that interest charge I knew I made the right decision. It feels awesome knowing we have nothing but the mortgage left and once we get a beefy Emergency Fund we can begin rebuilding my TFSA. I'm happy with where we are right now and this frees up so much more each month and give us so many options. We are really looking forward to seeing our net worth really amp up!

So far we are at $132.28 for groceries for the month and this week is going to be another cheap week because I got to go grocery shopping in my friends garden! I was over at her acreage today helping make pies for her wedding that is coming up at the end of this month. She's so sweet, we went thru and we picked a TON of vegetables for me to bring home. She said this is the first haul of many.

Green, Yellow and Snow Peas, Lettuce (two kinds), a huuuuge bag of tomatoes, celery, a mini-pie (not from garden but homemade! lol), basil (two kinds), carrots, beets, and cucumbers

G and I are going to make a huge batch of pasta sauce once the tomatoes ripen and I'm going to blanch and freeze most of the peas. The basil I froze because I cannot get fresh basil at the grocery store here, same with the celery leaves (for use in future soups). Everything was home grown from seed and pesticide free. I was snacking on the snow peas as we were picking them, lol. Nothing beats garden fresh.

This week has been extremely budget friendly, and even though we are debt free (besides mortgage) we are both very happy with a cheaper, minimal lifestyle. Definitely something we plan to keep up and even get better with each and every month. :)

- M

Grocery Budget & Meal Plan

I really like writing about my grocery budget. They are also my favorite posts to read. Not everyone is paying off debt, not everyone owns a house or a car, etc; but everyone has to eat! I love seeing how creative people can get. 

Anyways, last month I had a budget of $350. We went over (womp wompppp). $388.46 is what we ended up spending, $38.46 over. So close! But I’m not going to beat myself up about it because that is still pretty darn good and I'm getting better. I have the same budget this month for food and I’m confident we can do it! We spent Monday afternoon meal planning for the week and this is our menu:

            Wednesday: Left over ribs (from yesterday) and scalloped potatoes

            Thursday: Bacon burgers and salad

            Friday: left overs

            Saturday: Sole with rice and green beans

            Sunday: left over sole with a soup on the side

I did the weeks grocery shopping today afterwork. My grocery list only consisted of the following items: milk (cost us $6.77... ugh), tomatoes, watermelon, yogurt, lettuce, cucumber, orange juice, cranberry juice & hamburger buns - my only 'impulse' purchase was blueberries because they looked really good. Everything else we had in the freezer or panty - our freezer is a carnivores idea of heaven. My bill came to $40.13! What an awesome start to the month! 

G also got paid today and I was able to make a $2000 payment to the LOC, which is now sitting at $7500. That's a sigh of relief considering we weren't able to make any progress last month. Nice to be back in the groove :) 

- M

A Home-Made Weekend

Yesterday, G got all the information about his shifts up north. He will be going to La Ronge and policing the town as there have been quite a few break and enters – people taking advantage of a shitty situation. He needs to bring a weeks supply of water and food, but I’m not going to consider this part of our food budget as it will all get reimbursed. Oh and they warned him about the horse flies, I guess they are pretty bad up there so bug spray is also a must.

We talked things over and any extra money he will be making while helping up there will be going to our vacation fund. He has a minimum of 20 hours of overtime plus full incidentals for 7 days so it’ll be a nice bump for our Vegas trip in October. Work hard now to play hard later, lol. Joking of course, G and I don’t even drink alcohol.

Budget wise this week has been very good. Groceries are at $147 currently but I need to make a quick run to the grocery store tomorrow to stock up for the week. Although now that it’s only going to be me to feed it’ll be cheap. Tonight I'm making Beef Stroganoff for dinner– all ingredients we had in the house except onion soup. G is currently making a rhubarb pie for dessert – rhubarb was picked for free from a friend’s garden and we had the piecrust in the pantry! So it’s been a very inexpensive and ‘home-made’ weekend. J 

- M