Because I'm lame with titles...Thrifty Thursday

I thought I'd take a moment to brag on myself...well because its my blog and I can!

Jay and I try very hard to be frugal, sometimes to the point of being miserly.  I hope over all that's not the case, and I think the big year we've had proves it.  We got the thrill of paying off our 5.5 acres of land in less than a year as well as a super-cool awesome trip to California.

Not exactly the "self imposed poverty" that a friend of mine accuses me of.

I suppose, in her defense, we are very weird. 

We don't have cable.  Which honestly this time of year sucks.  All the normal TV is off until January and all the Christmas specials are lame.  So I've been going to sleep around 9 each night - and loving every minute of that extra sleep.

We figured it out, and could rent a Redbox movie every night for a month and still make it out cheaper than cable.  Since the sparing TV choices is an exception, not the norm, we're just fine with Redboxing it for Christmas.

I also don't spend that much at the grocery store.  I stockpile ground turkey when its on sale for $1 lb and do the same with chicken breasts at $1.99 lb.  (I tried the chicken parts thing, and its just not worth it to me.)  I only buy coke when its on sale (I never pay more than $2.50 a twelve pack), never buy chips or cookies, and menu plan so that I use from my stockpile (and replentish the stockpile when things are at their rock bottom sale price).

Our goal is to have the new home paid off in 5-6 years.  Its totally doable assuming our incomes stay the same and we keep our standard of living where it is.  He is 1/3 owner of some commercial property, and if we can get that sold, then we'd probably be able to pay the house off sooner.

The thing about our standard of living is that neither of us feel like we're missing out on anything.  Sure I'd like to go out and buy a whole new wardrobe of clothing, but that's just impractical.  We've set price limits on Christmas ($15 for my sister and $15 for her husband - they are doing the same) not because that's all we can afford, but because none of us need anything. 

Jay and I were talking the other day and I told him the one area that I'd like to branch out in and spend more money (when we've got the house paid off and we're off rice & beans) is our meat selections.  I got some beef cubes on manager's special last year and they were delicious in with stir fry and rice.

Can you keep a secret??

I spent $37 at the grocery store this week!!

I normally spend about $100 or less on groceries for the month, so this was a big splurge (although I've only spent $30 the rest of the month, so I don't think I'll go over budget.)

There were a couple of packages of beef shank something or other on sale for $1.50 each (slightly less than a pound per package) so I figured I would grab those suckers up!  Chicken breasts were on sale, as were the tenders, so I grabbed about 6 lbs of those. 

I was excited that the tenders were on sale for the same price as the whole breasts because i usually end up cutting up the chicken and putting it on the George Foreman grill for recipes calling for cooked chicken any way.  The tenders saved me a step!

I found two 1/2 gallons of milk on manager's special - taking it down to the same price per ounce of a whole gallon.  Since Jay doesn't use milk, a half gallon is the perfect size.  I put one in the fridge for use this week (its sell by date was today) and one in the freezer for later.  I'm sure between cereal and protein shakes I won't have a problem using it up.

Speaking of cereal, I had noticed a $2 off any all bran cereal coupon in my binder that expires at the end of the month.  I figured I check it out, and if the cereal wasn't too pricy I'd go ahead and get a box.  Most of the flavors were in the $3 range. 

Then I noticed an item close out sticker.  The All Bran Yogurt bites cereal was on sale for $2.58.  Which mean $0.58 after coupon!!  Not the most yummy sounding flavor, but for the price I couldn't pass it up.

I also had a coupon for frozen fruit, so I splurged and got some frozen peaches (to be used on oatmeal in the future).  I finished my splurgefest by getting wheat thins and garden veggie cream cheese just because I was craving it.

I grabbed the salad stuff for this weekend's Christmas party and I was headed to checkout.  Mentally it was hard spending almost $40 on one week of groceries, but I keep telling myself that was Money Saving Mom's budget so it couldn't be too frivilous.  (Of course all the while ignoring the voice in the back of my head reminding me that she's a family of 5, and I'm just feeding one and a half people - Jay only eats dinner).

So that's my shopping trip for the week.  Probably the most boring post I've written in a while, but I was quite proud of myself and wanted to share my exictement!!

What's your money saving tip that you swear by?  Is it in your grocery budget?  Clothing budget?  Frugal McFrugalson is always looking for new ideas!

Financial Friday

One of two very exiting financial things will be happening for Jay & I within the next week. Either we'll begin the process of owning our first home - or we'll make our final land payment!!

We've saved up enough money to pay off the land - and trust me when we finally do it, I'll blog with pictures of the land. Jay wanted to hold off though, until this weekend.

Since we live in a tourist area, the cabin market is pretty heavy around here. Its actually the kind of real estate that Jay specializes in. Too many people bought rental cabins with not enough down, expecting the rental income to carry their payments.

Given the "current economic climate" (said in my best news anchor doom and gloom voice) people just aren't able to make their payments. There is a surplus in foreclosure cabins and I'm very proud of Jay, helping people buy 2nd homes or rental properties for half of what the cabins sold for 2-3 years ago.

What does that have to do with this weekend? An entire cabin development is being sold at an absolute auction this weekend. 50+ cabins are being sold, and Jay thinks there is a chance we could get a pretty good deal.

We've crunched the numbers to figure out how much we can afford to spend. Those numbers include taxes, insurance, HOA fees, AND how much it would cost to store our current furniture. The plan is to live in one of the cabins for a couple years while saving up for our dream home, then use it as a rental property. So we'd still need the cabin furniture for when we rent it out.

All of that to say, that if we're able to get a cabin this weekend we'll have to use the money saved as a downpayment on the house. Even if that happens, we'll be able to use the savings (difference between our current rent payment and what would be our smaller mortgage payment) to pay down the land quicker.

Pros of buying a cabin:
Owning instead of renting
Monthly savings on the lower payment
taking advantage of the $8,000 tax credit for first time home buyers
Jay has agreed to get rid of Ole Gray - the couch that's older than him and passed down from his father. Its the biggest, ugliest thing you've ever seen. Fortunately, it would cost too much money to store it :D
a hot tub on our back deck (comes with the furnishings)
community pool
trash pickup

Pros of paying off the land
$250 a month extra, to save toward the dream home
owning 5.5 acres of land outright
not having to move from a gorgeous home I have taken great pride in decorating

Sounds like I'm a winner either way.

Well except for the Saturday wasted at a boring auction.

So what do you have planned for the weekend?

Brooke vs. the Chicken

Two weeks ago while I was at the store, I saw that Kroger had their chicken leg quarters on sale for $0.59 a pound. Since I normally buy boneless skinless breasts for $1.99 a pound, the bargain price jumped out at me.

Jay and I love buffalo wings, so I got the chicken and used my $0.40 Frank's hot sauce coupon (that doubles at my Kroger) to buy some buffalo sauce. I put the legs in the freezer to deal with at a later date.

Last night Jay was out late showing property to a client, so I had a date with that chicken. Who knew that chicken with the bone in and covered in skin was that gross.

Thankfully I was getting it ready to marinate over night, cook tonight, and not eat until tomorrow night. I would have rather thrown up and gone hungry than eat that chicken last night.

But sure enough I riped the skin off that sucker with all my might. I didn't realize a knife would be handy till I already had my hands in chicken carcass. And the news was on reporting a little kid that just died in our town of E Coli.

I'm paranoid any way, but that news story made me wash my hands 4 times, and spray everything down with anti bacterial cleaner twice. I just hope baked buffalo chicken is worth it.

I may not being a cooking diva, but Jay better realize what a wonderful frugalista wife he has. I should get major wifey points for doing battle with a chicken to save $1.40 a pound. Just don't remind me that some of that weight got thrown out with the skin and will get thrown out with the bones later...

Depression Bread - Cooking with Clara...and Tiffany...and Brooke

A few weeks ago I found Tiffany's blog about making depression era bread. She had taken one of Clara's (a 90+ year old woman who lived through the great depression) recipes and made it her own.

I bake it last night and it was great. I think I used only about 6-7 tsp of dry active yeast, and 4 tsp salt.

Now you see why I'm not good at baking cookies and things like that - I'm not an exact cook. I love things that you can just throw the ingredients in and eyeball it.

I made the bread last night, but at the advice of my grandmother left it sitting out (covered with a towel) to rise overnight. This morning I divided it into 6 loaves - baking one and putting the other 5 in the freezer.

I brought a piece with me to work, and its delicious! :)

And at $0.50 a loaf, you can't beat that!

Yard Sale Update/Dave Ramsey question

I forgot to give yall an update on the yard sale – I made $150!!

Considering that my biggest ticket item was $10 (a leather purse) and everything else was $5 or less, I was really pleased. We got rid of a lot of junk!

I’m still new to this married thing. In my head, I had already decided what to do with the money. Then I remembered that it was just as much his money as mine (very literally – he gave up a lot of ugly, pleated front, old man dress pants for us to make that much money) and I should consult him about what we would do with it.

Being a Dave Ramsey fan (come on – drink the kool-aid! Its very tastey!) I wanted to put it on our debt. He and I were very blessed to come into the relationship debt free – but we’ve picked up two debts along the way – an HH Gregg bill for appliances, and a mortgage on 5.55 acres of land.

I know that Dave would beat me if he knew, but HH Gregg was offering 24 months interest free financing. Rather than take the money out of savings, we decided to take them up on their offer. Of course the “amount due” on the bill isn’t the amount we pay each month. We took the amount of the purchase and divided it by 24, so that we would have it paid off before the high rate kicks in.

As he would say, we’re playing with snakes and right now we have to be very careful to not get bitten.

Before you ask – the reason we purchased appliances is because we had to! His parents purchased a home (hand-picked by us) to use as a rental property. The home was a foreclosure and had been stripped before the previous occupants left.

Our other debt is 5.55 acres of land we purchased at an auction the weekend we got back from our honeymoon. After putting 25% down (what the bank requires on land purchases now, due to the current state of the economy), we were left with $33K.

My measly $150 from the yard sale doesn’t go very far in reducing that debt so I was afraid that Mr. Right would want to spend the money in another way. Or else just put it in savings for a rainy day.

Maybe I played it right saying “you might not like how I want to spend the money.” Because I think he had visions of a clothing shopping spree in his head, or else buying a headboard for our master bedroom. He looked pretty scared – until I told him I wanted to add it to our land payment for next month. He agreed that was the best way to use the money. Isn’t it amazing when you agree with your spouse on something like that? It made me feel really good knowing we’re on the same page.

For all you Dave followers – I have a question. Not counting the appliances and the land, we’re to baby step 4 in the process. I’m cheating and not counting the appliances, so pretend they aren’t there. (I know its hard, but just play along). Do you think that he would consider the land our mortgage and a part of baby step 6 (since our current plan is to get the land paid off then use it as our down payment to build the home of our dreams on that land), or would he consider it part of our debt snowball to be attacked before we move on to #4?

Suze Orman Ebook

For a free download of Suze Orman's 2009 Action Plan, say a big "thank you" to Oprah. I'm not Oprah's biggest fan, but I do enjoy Suze Orman (is it sad that her Saturday night call in show is one of the things I miss about cable) and look forward to reading this book.

Pocket change

I feel poor. Quite odd given the fact that I’m wearing a Moda trench coat, Express slacks, and pumps from a major department store. Not to mention the 46 diamonds adorning my neck and left hand.

Why do I feel like I’m destitute? Because I just carried a Dollar Tree plastic bag full of rolled coins to deposit into my savings account. Take a moment to grasp the ridiculousness of that statement:
1. I have money
2. I am fortunate enough to put it in a savings account, instead of using it to meet my monthly bills

I also need to mention that I wasn’t just depositing the $22.50 in coins. My mother had given me the remainder of the money for my wedding – so I was depositing a few thousand. And I felt poor.

I honestly believe that the same rational behind my thinking is behind the financial mess this country is in. We don’t want to acknowledge that we use (or need) pocket change to purchase things. Better to swipe your plastic card at each transaction, than to fool with change or even cash in the form of bills.

People see what we have, not who we are. And if we are judged by our things, we need to be sure that we have the best. As my pastor said this weekend – we spend money that we don’t have to buy things we don’t need, to impress people that we don’t even like.

I have recognized over and over during the wedding planning how blessed I really am.
• Fiancé that loves me
• Parents that love me
• Parents that can afford to pay the tab
• Being showered with generous gifts
• One of which is our honeymoon lodging paid in full
• Beautiful first home.

So why is it that I let the world get to me? Is Christ (and His blessings) not enough for me? Am I that greedy to want more – when I know that there are plenty of people that would love just ONE of my many blessings?

Grocery Store Deals

Several months back a friend of mine got me into the drug store game. Its truly been a Godsend. It gets me my shopping fix w/o spending lots of cash AND I've been able to give out these cute gift baskets to my family full of free goodies I've collected along the way.

I also like to save at the grocery store, although that's not quite as easy these days. When Kroger first ran their gift card promotion (allowing you to purchase a $300, $600, or $1200 gift card and they would add 10%) I immediately jumped on it. Since I normally just spend about $40-$60 a month on groceries, I only got a $300 card. Smart move, since I still have a $240 balance.

Mr. Right is the economist and I'm the shopper. After doing some research on the value of the dollar and the way prices are headed, he asked that I start to stockpile food. He's convinced that the value of the dollar will continue to decrease and that food prices will continue to increase. And since most savings accounts aren't keeping up with inflation, what better way to combat the problem them filling the cabinets with non-perishable foods?

Even if the economy was more stable - I agree its a good idea. I'm going to consider our stockpile sort of a backup emergency fund. As a true Dave Ramsey fan, I have my 3-6 months worth of expenses in the bank. Side note: Mr. Right and I need to do a budget and see if combining our emergency funds would work or if we need to increase/decrease the amount.

When he suggested buying a lot of food we would use any way, I thought it would be a great idea. If something unexpected happened and one of us couldn't work, how great would it be if we could mostly eat out of the pantry and just spend $20 or so a month on groceries?

The plan will work okay because we eat a lot of spaghetti, chili, and other canned tomato/pasta meals. Also, I'm OCD enough that I will rotate stock when I buy groceries each month. Once I get the stash built up, I'll continue grocery shopping each month as normal. But I'll be careful to use the oldest item first. I would hate for 2010 to roll around and all my pasta start to go bad.

I noticed that I was a few weeks late, and prices had already gone up again. A box of Kroger brand rotini pasta jumped from $0.99 to $1.15. Sure, an extra $0.16 isn't going to make or break my budget. But raising the price by 15% price is quite a large increase.

My mom isn't a Kroger shopper, so ever so often they send her coupons. This month was $6 off a $60 purchase for 4 weeks (starting this week). Since yesterday was the last day of the gift card promotion, I took my coupon for this week to the store. After buying my $300 gift card I spent $58.47 on the following:

4 cans cream of chicken soup
4 cans cream of celery soup
4 cans chicken broth
2 cans enchilada sauce
2 cans refried beans
2 cans tomato sauce
4 beef broth
5 cans sketti sauce
5 lbs rice
10 packets sketti mix
10 packets chili mix
4 packets alfredo
4 2 lb boxes sketti noodles
2 boxes rotini pasta
2 boxes penne pasta
1 container salsa
1 large container peanut butter

Next week's items will include ramen noodles and more canned tomato products. We use a lot of tomato sauce, paste, and diced tomatoes.

Any other suggestions for food that save well? I've got 3 more $60 trips to go!

Check out other money saving suggestions at Frugal Friday.