Beginning of being debt free and menu plans

I am about to embark on the debt free plan, tomorrow is payday and the beginning of my journey. We have always been what we thought was frugal but seemed to not be making a whole lot of progress so I am hoping this keeps me focused. My first big step was yesterday when I just told my friends at work that I from this point forward would have $40 a month to go out to eat with them on. This will be my "fun" money and so if we go out once a week for $10 lunches then that is all I can do. They were fairly understanding although it seems like a low amount to some of them since they eat lunch out everyday. It is stress relief and "fun" for them and they are able to spend the money on it where I am not.

My other point of the day is that our meals at home have actually been better since I have started the $200 challenge and my leftover group on FB. It has forced me to be more creative and get out of a rut. Since the groceries have to last and I do not want to waste any leftovers I have tried some amazing recipes. I will admit that some of them have been flops but they are few and far between. I have also dug through some cookbooks I had on the shelf and tried some great stuff from them. The older cookbooks I have also had some great dishes in them that normally we would purchase as processed meals. There has been some awesome beef stroganoff at our house without any processed ingredients and it was amazingly easy, I discovered also how easy making fried rice is and that has been a great go to meal with left over rice and small amounts of veggies.

Budget in works starting today

I am going to use the template from the Debt Free book to put everything down on paper today, scary thought! I have read a couple of other books and I think I will end up with a hybrid plan in action but I am going to see what this one looks like for now and how doable I feel it is. Dave Ramsey is the other book but I think cutting everything out will cause the honey to go into meltdown mode.

Overdoing the goals

Most people set 1 goal for themselves when the new year comes around and generally I follow this pattern. The 1 goal I set keeps morphing and now feels like an octopus that keeps coming at me. This blog was the extension of my goal to get our grocery bill at $200 and stay with my belief in not shopping at Wal-Mart and Aldi. As this year and this blog have continued I found that I needed to put up our menus so people could tell I was not feeding my family rice and beans every night in order to stay on budget and then I decided I needed to be accountable with our debt reduction. All of these goals on top of my normal everyday life of being a working mom trying to be frugal and environmentally friendly is weighing heavy on me, I am having trouble managing my time.

Last night I left work and made an awesome trade on the way home. I traded the partial bottle of laundry detergent that the honey bought while I was out of town and 2 rolls of paper towels for an 8" cast iron pan made by Lodge. Dinner went pretty quickly since I had put a roast in the crock pot yesterday morning before work. I steamed some carrots to go with the roast and the munchkin helped me make a dump cake for dessert. We ate and while the cake was baking (takes an hour) we all went out to work in the yard. The munchkin rode his toy tractor around while I brought the clothes in off the line. I then pooper scooped while my honey weedeated the yard. We use a reel mower so while my honey finished the back yard I went around the front to mow. The two boys went inside while I did some weeding on the flowerbeds so their showers/baths were done by the time I came inside. I showered and then started a load of laundry and played with the munchkin. After some online surfing of my for sale items, listing some more misc stuff for sale or trade and reading 3 books for someone to go to sleep to I hit the hay. In all of that about 6 items from my list did not get done but there is always tonight!

plans for evenings

My OCD dictates that I make a plan for my evening even though I know that it is not going to all happen. Last night is an example of one of those evenings. I completed my trades and then headed home to see my honey and the munchkin as well as work on the house. I did go outside and bring in the laundry and then sat down with a couple of slices of gouda to talk to my honey and relax. That lasted very little time before I needed to make a decision on dinner and put up my trade items. I decided to grill ribs which tasted decent and paired that with some wild rice and green beans. Clean up did not take that long and the munchkin was excited to help me wash the new glass pitchers I traded for. I am going to make sun tea now that is the height of summer here and save a touch on my electric bill. I worked on cleaning up the kitchen island which seems to be a dumping ground for everything in our hands. Between that, playing with the munchkin, and getting more trades together the evening was done.

This morning I did manage to sort out the stuff in my bedroom chair to be dealt with tonight and got the clothes ready to iron tonight. As you can tell I will be ironing tonight after dinner and see what else magically gets accomplished. I need to get more items listed on the trade site and get them out of the house. If you have not found a trade site on FB in your area you need to start one, it has been the best thing to happen to us in ages. I have been able to move things out of the house in exchange for items and services that I either want or need. This has gone a long way in helping our budget as well as helping me minimalize so I can hopefully spend an evening in the  future reading or sitting outside instead of worrying about the multitude of chores I need to do.

Weekend come and gone again

I always have grand plans when the weekend comes of amazing stuff I will accomplish. Needless to say only about half of what I wanted to do was even attempted.....I did work on the flowerbeds at our church but they are not completed. Once we made it home from the church I took down the load of clothes I had hung out on the line earlier in the morning and put out a couple more loads. I estimate that hanging out the laundry is saving us between $30 and $50 a month on our electric bill which quickly paid for the $30 clothes line. After that the munchkin and I had baths/showers and headed for the library. After we made out with every train book he could find on the shelf and I had some more canning books we headed home. The evening was just a lot of working on cleaning the house and getting my trade items together. Night night time could not have come fast enough, the munchkin even asked to go to bed at least an hour before he normally goes to sleep. Sunday morning we were up and putting more clothes on the line, fixing breakfast and getting ready for church. Church was nice as I was able to read some while working the nursery. The nursery/toddler room consisted of the munchkin and a friend playing trains. We went out to eat after church and then home for a couple of hours before heading to a baseball game for the evening. Once again baths when we came home and no fussing from the munchkin about bedtime.


Tonight I have several trades to complete and then home for dinner and dishes. I really need to walk Turbo and pass out fliers on our street for Nextdoor.com, I want us to have a stronger identity as a neighborhood. We shall see what wins out since I currently have no idea what I am fixing for dinner.

The grocery budget has stayed pretty steady, I did pick up 4 gallons of milk on an amazing half price sale on Friday but have not needed much else since the trip to the commissary. I was hoping the co-op would be offering peaches or cherries this week so I could do some more canning but no such luck. If I come across a good deal I am definitely going to jump on it. As far as the budget goes I need to flush out how much canning my own food will cost versus buying from the store. the initial investment in jars is the biggest expense but I have been collecting them as I could for a long time. The health benefits and lack of trips to the store will be the best rewards for us I believe. As long as I am not going to the store I am not finding "great" deals and buying stuff we may or may not need.

Reading The Debt Free Spending Plan by JoAnneh Nagler currently for a different prospective and ideas on ridding us of our debts and get us where we feel comfortable with our finances.

Canning

This weekend I canned like a crazed woman! It was my first ever attempt at canning by myself. I bought 8 pounds of strawberries and 25 pounds of peaches through my co-op and went to work. 6 pounds of the stawberries went into jam that ended up not setting so it is being billed as strawberry syrup. I made infused vodka, ice cream, cobbler, jam and sliced canned peaches with the peaches. I also sliced some and put them in the freezer for smoothies. The peach jam also did not set up so it is also syrup. The sliced peaches are amazing and popular opinion is that they are better than store bought. I am going to stick with this for a while since I hate putting in the work on jam and not getting jam at the end. The initial investment in jars and supplies has made it more expensive than buying store bought but I think as the jars are reused and the produce comes out of my own garden it will be a great budget stretcher. I also found another use for the syrup left when we eat the canned peaches. I am going to use it to sweeten my tea so I will have peach sweet tea with no additional sugar used!

debt free

In addition to all the other books I am reading on how to get this blog up and functional the way I want I decided to read on debt free living. I have decided the goal I am working toward besides the relief of being debt free is another tattoo. Another tat will be my reward to myself when I am out of debt and have saved enough for one. After that we will be saving up for a truck and a real vacation!

Vacation etc, etc, etc

It feels like forever since I have posted which it nearly has been. I took 5 weeks off work to spend time with the munchkin and get some stuff done at the house. I ended up spending 2 weeks doing those items and 3 weeks driving to see my mom in Florida and bringing her home with me and running her around town here before she flew home the morning I came back to work. My grocery budget for May stayed the same as I posted on here. June totals will be up soon but it will look crazy since I was traveling, stocking up for the honey so he would not starve while I was gone and then having an extra person eating with us for a couple of weeks. July will look better but will still be over. My mom was here and has a military id so she was able to get me back on the base to shop at the commissary. I picked up as much meat as I thought my freezer would hold as well as a few other items I knew would be cheaper there. I do not really need a lot of other items since I was not home for part of June but I still wanted to do some canning so I bought 2 bulk deals through my co-op which pushed my total up but should help keep it lower in the next couple of months.

I also decided to work harder at getting out of debt and so will be honest on here as far as progress is going and what we are doing to reach this goal.