Frugal Friday- Update

It's been so long since I posted about our families journey of getting out of debt I thought I'd post a little update. We are doing so much better than we were two years ago.Back then were living paycheck to paycheck, a lot of times we were already into our check before we even got it. It took a LOT of work, sacrifice, and patience but it is so worth it! Both of our vehicles are paid off and we hope with maintenance to keep them a very long time.  We ended up having to buy a new washer and dryer and that was a huge expense that we didn't count on. And we bought Ashley a car which we paid cash for (using our tax refund). We were so tempted to go to a dealer and get under a note but we stuck to our cash on the barrel plan and paid it straight out. Unfortunately she ran the car with no oil and blew the motor up! So we went back on our plan and borrowed the money to fix it. We have been very aggressive about paying it back and only owe about 9 more payments. Even with these setbacks though I'm very proud of our progress. We still use the envelope method of budgeting. I am really amazed how well it works! We have adapted it a little bit though. Now I try to only pull out the bare minimum that I need for bills and leave as much as I can in the checking account. Then the night before payday I check our balance and transfer whatever is in the checking account to the savings. By doing this we finally have money in our savings account for the first time ever. It's not a lot yet but it is slowly building up. And the kids all opened a savings account and we even opened one for our grandson. I took a tip from The Automatic Millionaire and called our mortgage company and did two things, first I set up our mortgage payments to be paid every two weeks instead of once a month, Second I set up to pay a little extra each time to go straight to the principle. Just by making those two small changes we will knock almost a year off our mortgage which means our house will be paid off in a little over two years! Yeah! I have to admit since money isn't as tight we do eat out a little more often, but try not to eat out more than twice a paycheck. We were able to reduce our phone bill nearly to half but ended up getting Hulu and Netflix (less than $20 for both) so we still came out ahead. Ashley graduated so we were able to save $70 a month on her school. I think the hardest thing is not making any new bills. It's so tempting to just go buy it on credit, but it is so nice not to worry every single payday how we are going to pay everything when we have more going out then coming in. We were even able to use some of the extra to start a retirement fund! So that's where we are, It took along time and we aren't where we need to be yet, we still have set backs, and Shane's job is so up and down but at least now when he gets a low paycheck it's not such a stress it usually means there won't be any left over to save instead of there won't be enough to pay all our bills.

Frugal Friday-Update

Whew! This has not been a great week! Shane got another pay cut, several people were laid off at his job and his hours were cut as well! We are trying so hard to stay on budget and get out of debt so this is really aggravating and frustrating  I'm glad that we have our budget in place, this pay was really tight but everything was paid. I had to really tighten up our grocery budget so I bought another 10 pound bag of chicken and got 5 meals out of it! Plus I have an almost endless supply of eggs, so we are eating a lot of eggs lately, egg salad, scrambled eggs, fried eggs, and omelets. I'm getting about a quart of milk a day from Mandy so all this is helping our grocery budget. I know everything will work out but, I'm glad we are pretty much done with Christmas. I spend a lot of time looking for ways to lower our bills, I cancelled our family text plan so that saved us $30 a month and I cancelled Lily's Pre-K which saved us $15 a month. That's really all I could think to cut. I know I could get a job (maybe I could?) but I don't want to have to do that right now. I have some clothes and books I'm going to try to sell on eBay. I gotta say this though, We went to an animal auction yesterday and i seriously almost bought a horse! They sold a pretty little brown mare for $20!!! And sold her baby for $10!!! That is crazy ridiculous and it was all I could do not to buy them! Afterwards though I thought I should of gone ahead and got them I'm pretty sure I could of sold them on Craigslist for a profit. Anyway that's my report this week, hopefully next week will be better.  If anyone has any ideas how to live a little more frugal please let me know.

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Frugal Friday- Christmas update

Well, we are still staying on our budget. Yeah! I bought Ashley's big present. I'm super glad to have that done and out of the way. I'll probably buy her 2 more super small $10 gifts just so she will have more to open Christmas morning. I paid on our layaway. We are really hoping Shane will get his safety bonus soon, every three months his company gives a $300.00 safety bonus. He is due for another one in November. We plan to use $150.00 to pretty much finish up our lay-a-ways and the other $150.00 to help out with the bills. I didn't shop ahead for Thanksgiving as much as I should of so Thanksgiving dinner will be a bit of a crunch. I do NOT plan on repeating that mistake for Christmas dinner. So starting this week I am going to add at least two items a week to my grocery list for Christmas dinner. It's much easier coming our 5 or 10 dollars a week as opposed to an extra 60 dollars one pay for one meal! I am kicking the idea around of getting a job through the holidays but I REALLY don't want to do that. My mom was nice enough to have me do some housework for her last month and I used that money to buy the girls each a really cute pair of boots and a pair of black dress shoes from one of our local resell stores. I also bought Kyle two pairs of jeans ( for $3 a piece!) and Lily a skirt. All three of them just really needed more clothes so bad, I hated to spend the money that I was hoping to put on Christmas but Lacey had no shoes at all. Her summer sandals  are no where to be found and besides it will be too cold for sandals soon. And Lily's one pair of sandals were about wore out. But at least the money didn't have to come out of the family budget. I'm really struggling staying with my goal of not buying any extra gifts for the kids. I went to Hobby Lobby the other day and saw so many cool craft projects. I have visions of teaching the girls to cross stitch, sew, knit, and crochet. But I resisted the urge and didn't buy anything! Yeah! I'm already so excite about Christmas I was seriously considering getting my decorations out of storage and decorating the house. I didn't do it but the day after Thanksgiving the decorations are going up! :)

*Update* Shane did get his safety bonus but it was a little less than we expected. We ended up using it all on Christmas.
Lacey found her sandals. Yeah! They were in the church lost and found.

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Frugal Friday-Stretching The Grocery Dollar

Feeding a family of 7 on a budget can be tricky. Our grocery budget is $150.00 for two weeks so I really have to shop smart and plan ahead. Some of the ways we stay on budget is by making a grocery list and a meal plan and not buying many sweets, sodas, chips or snacks. I buy all my groceries for 2 weeks at a time to keep me out of the grocery store between paychecks. I mentioned this in a previous post but it bears repeating. The WORST thing on a budget is a quick trip into a store especially when you are hungry and tired. I stick to the grocery list! When I find a really good deal I buy extra to put in the freezer, this sounds like a contradiction to the last statement but sometimes I run across pork chops or chicken super cheap, when I do I buy a few extra and put them in the freezer. Even if it means I have to adjust our menu for the week or take the money from somewhere else, it really helps to have a little extra in the freezer for those short pays. My sister gave me this tip- add ground turkey to the ground beef. It stretches the meat, it's healthier and cheaper. Ground turkey is a dollar a pound I can add it to 2 pounds of beef and make a really good sized meatloaf or patty them out to make some tasty Salisbury steaks. Another thing I do is use less meat for recipes that are casseroles and add more of the other ingredients. So for recipes like tatortot casserole I'd use 3/4 of a pound of ground beef and add extra tatortots. It stretches the meat and tastes just as good. I usually buy 10 pounds of hamburger meat a pay and divide it into 8 bags. I put about 3/4 a pound in 2 bags and divide the rest into the remaining 6 bags. I can also buy a 10 pound bag of chicken legs and thighs for about 6 dollars a bag. I boil it all up and pull the meat off the bones. With that I can make 3-4 meals! I just boiled up a bag yesterday. I had 2 legs and 2 thighs left over that wouldn't fit in my pan. I will boil them another day. I divided the cooked chicken in half and with one half I made an Indonesian rice dish, which is basically rice, vegetables, chicken and sauce and a chicken salad. Today I used the other half and made 4 chicken pot pies. I gave 1 to my mom and dad for their dinner, froze 1 and had 2 for our dinner. And I still have the 2 legs and thighs leftover! I am thinking maybe a chicken stew. Not bad for a six dollar bag of chicken. I'm always searching for ways to stretch our groceries here are a few blogs I've come across that have really good tips. The Mooberry Farm Homesteading Journal and Little Farm in the Big City both have some really great frugal living tips.

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Frugal Friday- Meal planning made easy

We have really been working on living within a budget since June. So with that in mind I began making a biweekly meal plan. It took some time tweaking to come up with a system that works for us. One problem I had with other meal plans is that they schedule what to cook each day of the week and I always ended up not really following it. Sometimes I didn't want to eat what was on the menu for a certain day, or I didn't want to cook what was on the menu. I'd end up cooking Monday's meal on Friday and Friday's meal on Thursday and pretty soon my meal plan was a mess. Most other plans I felt were to rigid. Some days I want an easy meal and other days I'm just in the mood to cook a more complicated meal. I wanted flexibility. So what I  did was write up 14 dinners numbered 1 through 14. I try to add a variety of meals, easy, crock pot, cheap, nice dinners and at least one new recipe or one we don't eat very often. Then I make my shopping list. I write the meals on the top half of the paper and my shopping list on the bottom. It's really easy making my grocery list because I have my menu right in front of me. Then I add the breakfast and lunch items to my grocery list. What I like about this plan is that each day I just pick whichever meal I feel like cooking and afterwards I cross that meal off the list. I always know that I have the ingredients on hand so I don't have to make any hurried trips to the store. I buy enough of everything for two weeks except for milk. I tried buying enough milk for two weeks but Shane doesn't like the milk once it's been frozen. This really cut down my trips to the grocery store, which cut out a lot of the impulse buying, which ended up saving us money. Below is a sample.

Meals

1. Meatloaf/mashed potatoes. 
2.CJ casserole                            
3. Spaghetti                              
4. Chili Cheese Burritos             
5.Smothered Pork Chops/rice   
6. Tacos         
7. Sloppy Joes/Chips                 
8. Barbecue Chicken/potato salad

9. Chicken spaghetti
10. Hamburgers/French Fries
11. Roast/potatoes/carrots
12. Tator Tot Casserole
13. Beef Stir Fry
14. Mexican Casserole

 

Grocery List

milk 

bread

etc.

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Frugal Fridays- Staying on budget and Christmas Shopping

I love Christmas but this year I'm really trying to stay on a budget. And I know how easy it is to blow a budget around Christmas time so I have come up with a plan. First, I know how caught up I can get in the season, not just the presents but the whole season. I love all the activities of Christmas, getting and decorating the tree, baking cookies, looking at Christmas lights and yes I love shopping for presents. To get rid of any impulse buying I may feel, I sat down with Shane and we made a shopping list for all of the kids. Then I went in September and put everything that I could in Lay-A-Way. One thing I have learned is that the best way not to spend money is to stay out of stores! So now all I have left for the little ones is one present for Lily and three for Kyle. I can pay for the Lay-A-Way through the checkout or maybe even online. I put Donna's present in Lay-A-Way. I need to get gifts for my sister's family, brother's family and my parents. I'm not sure what I am getting Ashley. When I figure it out I'll either put it in Lay-A-Way or buy it straight out. I plan on two more shopping trips this year. I usually buy individual gifts for all my nieces and nephews but this year I plan on buying 1 gift for the whole family. Some of the ideas I am kicking around are games, a family pass to the zoo or museum, or gift certificates for dinner and a movie. I'm really excited to be starting early this year. And I'm really determined to not get carried away with presents.

How do all of ya'll stay on a budget during Christmas time? 

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Frugal Friday- Budgeting, finances and living simply

Our family is on a mission to live on a budget, get our finances in order and live a simpler life. My goal is  to post at least once week about how we are doing  that. We started in June, and this is what we've been doing so far. First we began to seriously pray about our finances and our desire to live debt-free. Then we sat down and made a plan. We figured out exactly what expenses we have. We included everything we could think of. Our house payment, van payment, loans, cell phones, electric, gas, groceries, tithes, offerings, etc. Next we figured up what Shane makes each month. And we realized we are not living within our means. We pay out more than we bring in. Bummer! So Shane decided to work one of his off days each week when his bosses will let him. Once we knew where our money was going we made up a very strict budget. And we started using the envelope method of budgeting. This is basically where we make up 1 envelope for every expense we have. So we have 1 for gas, 1 for groceries, 1 for loans and so on. We've tried several methods of budgeting but we really like this one. It really helps me see exactly how much money we have available and keeps impulse buying down. At the end of the month any money left over in envelopes can be put toward savings, bills, charities or whatever we decide to do with it. That's a huge incentive for me not to spend all the money in the envelopes. It really encourages me not to spend money on things I don't absolutely need. We decided extra money would be put in a Christmas envelope. It took a few months before we saw any real progress but by September all our bills were current and we bought our first Christmas presents in August. With 5 kids the earlier you start the better. Also I realized in June that Shane would be getting 3 paychecks in August. So we decided to pay all our bills with the first two paychecks and be very, very determined that all of August bills would get paid out of the first two paychecks so that the third check would be completely free. Man! That was hard and took discipline! It was so tempting to roll bills over to the last paycheck especially since Shane wasn't able to work as many of his off days. But we continued to pray about it and on August 31st we were able to pay extra on our loans and on Shane's truck note. So going into September we only had a half payment on the truck and no payments due on the loans! Yeah! In all this we have had a few setbacks. The biggest one being that his car began having motor problems and we had to trade it in for a used truck. Which added another expense to our budget since his car had been paid off. He works 30 miles away and the only other vehicle we had  was my 12 passenger van. We considered him driving my van but that meant I would have no way to church for an indefinite amount of time, plus gas for the van is crazy high. The other big obstacle was that he wasn't able to work as many of his off days as he had hoped. But all in all I'm optimistic about our plans and goals. 

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Frugal Friday- Planning to Fail

It's my first Frugal Friday! I thought it would be fun to share ideas and tips. Also I thought it would encourage me to stay on plan if I had some accountability.

I read once, If you fail to plan, you plan to fail, it's really stuck with me. Maybe because I'm such a planner. I love planning things and making lists and setting goals. When I first started homeschooling every year I would sit down and make out a detailed plan for each kids curriculum. I would spend hours looking through homeschool magazines and catalogs until I had the perfect plan in place. I've made school goals, parenting goals, and goals for my marriage. But I really don't ever remember sitting down and making any financial goals. No goals for retirement. Not anything beyond pay the bills the best we can and maybe some short range stuff like repair the roof or save money for a vacation. Wow! No wonder my finances are a wreck! Well, no more we now have our goals firmly in place:

1. First get out of debt! Pay off as many bills as we can. 
2. Get our credit in better shape.It's not horrible but it could be better.
3. Cash on the barrel. (don't buy on credit).
4. Start saving money.
5. Live below our means, we would like to eventually get where we live on 70% of our income. The other 30% would be for giving and saving.

We are trying to not only change our spending habits but also change our view of money and teach the kids to be more responsible with money than what we have been. I don't think we are frivolous with our money, we hardly ever eat out, we almost always buy second-hand clothes and furniture. We own one t.v. and one gaming system. We aren't frivolous. But we do have cell phones, and Internet. The van is a BIG expense not only the payments but also the gas! I think our biggest problem is that we don't have the patience to save for the things we want or need. So we are trying to learn patience. Oh, and I'm a collector, I'm always starting a new collection of stuff I really don't need. I love shopping at places like Goodwill or garage sells. I love finding old things, repainting them and fixing them up. But I am trying to learn that if I don't NEED it, it's not a good deal no matter what the price tag says. It feels good to have a plan in place. To set little goals and begin to reach them. I'm fully confident in our ability to do this because I know I can do ALL things through Christ, who strengthens me.

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