Grocery savings: frozen dinners

My mission the last few weeks has been to come up with a plan for after baby #2 comes. She is due November 3rd, and I feel the weeks closing in on me so rapidly. When Olivia was born I went to the store ahead of time and bought a ton of nice looking frozen meals. The prices ranged from $5 to $8 a meal, but they were ready to go, and we had frozen dinners for a few weeks. I cooked nothing. When I started feeling the pressure of getting things together again, I started to think about those frozen meals. They were SOOOO easy. But SOOOO expensive in the long run. Something I could definitely save on our budget.

I contacted a cousin of mine, and she sent me all of her freezer friendly recipe's. She spends a week or so cooking these meals, making some for them to eat, and the rest to freeze. Everything from enchilada's, soups, casserole's, you name it, she does it. So she sent me all her recipe's, and I'm getting started. Today I'm making a HUGE pot of corn chowder. We will have it for dinner, and I will freeze the rest for after baby. Yum!

Grocery savings: Beans

Today I'm trying Great Northern Beans. My mom used to make them all the time, and it was tradition that the first snow of the year brought Great Northern Beans over potato's. It was great! So I soaked the beans all night in cold water to start rehydrating them. Then this morning I called my mom and asked her how to make her beans.

Boil the beans in water. I used a bag of beans, and 7 cups of water. I boiled them for 2 hours, and kept tasting them to see when they were really soft, (like melt in your mouth soft). Then I added salt, pepper, and half a stick of butter. Meanwhile I boiled six pealed, medium potato's in salted water. I peeled them, and quartered them first. I boiled them until they were tender to a fork, and drained them. Then I put a few potato quarters in each bowl, and covered them with the beans. SO GOOD!!!!!!!!!!! Sometimes my mom would add a ham hawk for flavor, but not usually. And I like them both ways a lot. They are excellent with fresh bread as well, but unfortunately I forgot I'm almost out of flour. So we won't be doing that tonight.

Grocery savings: Cleaning Products

I researched today, how to make your own cleaning products. I have calculated all the cleaning products I use and I think this would also be a good way to cut back on grocery spending. The product I use in the kitchen the most is Clorox Cleanup. I found a few interesting recipe's. Some of them looked kind of dangerous, so I skipped over those. Most people know not to EVER mix cleaning products.

First recipe:

1/4 C Clorox

1 tbsp Dish Soap

Fill the rest of the spray bottle with water

This recipe had a warning about mixing liquid soap and clorox. It says it can produce very toxic fumes. If I try this, I will try a little in a well ventilated room only, and see that there is a lot of air movement.

Second recipe:

1 part Clorox

1 part Purple Degreaser (can be found at Home Depot)

1 part Water

It didn't say anything about this, if people have tried it or not. This one I'm a little more hesitant of, not knowing anything about mixing Sodium Hydroxide (which is found in Purple Degreaser) with bleach. If the others fail, I may research this one more in detail.

Third recipe:

1 C White Vinegar

Fill the rest of the spray bottle up with water

This one is a more mild form of Clorox Cleanup, obviously. Vinegar is a very cheap product to buy as well. So I may try this first. My main concern is raw meat juice in the kitchen. I have small children, and don't want anything getting to them. So I will research further to find out if this works as well.

This one also said to try a sprinkle of baking soda instead of comet. I don't know about this one. Baking soda doesn't seem to have the same cleaning ability as comet, but I'm going to try it anyway. You can buy a very large box of baking sode for a few dollars, so this would also be cheaper. We'll see how it works.

One thing that I spend quite a bit on is Swiffer Wet Jet. It's so convenient! But I could go through a bottle of the cleaning solution for the Swiffer in 2 weeks, and they're a 3+ dollars a bottle, not to mention the mopping pads. So there again, a place I could cut back on. (**sigh**) This one's gonna be a sacrifice. :)

In the bathroom I use The Works toilette bowl cleaner. We have hard water, and NOTHING cleans that like The Works. So far, I have found nothing that even claims to be the same as a home made product. So, I am trying a few others.

First recipe:

Equal parts White Vinegar and Baking Soda

a little Salt

This one is a dump recipe, meaning you kind of have to guess as you go. After pouring ing. into toilet bowl, leave sit for 20 min, then scrub with a toilet brush. I will try this one today. I'll let you know how it works.

I tried the recipe for the toilet cleaner directly above. It worked very well for cleaning the toilet, however it didn't get all the hard water stains completely out like my loved The Works cleaner. So my mission continues to a recipe for that.

Grocery savings: Beans

In my research I also found that a huge savings can be found in just the food that you buy. I love to cook, but while pregnant, and busy, sometime I find myself staring at the frozen food section, some of the meals calling out to me, and they finally make themselves into the cart. So reevaluating just what we buy at the store seems like a good thing to do. Usually one of those quick meals, already put together in the box, ranges from 5 to 8.00 for a family. So if I buy 5 of those every week, just that is 25 to 40.00.

I've been thinking about how much people used to get by in life and so much less. What did they do? It seems like the cheapest meals can be found in beans, cabbage, potatoes, meat, vegetables... exc. I think they must have had some pretty good recipe's for these things back then. When I researched this online I found a wealth of information. Wonderful looking recipe's, good ideas (buying beans in bulk and savings tons), and other things. So I bought a package of each kind of dried bean in WalMart last time I was there. And I plan on trying some recipe's in the next few weeks. If I find some things we like I'll know what to buy in bulk. I'm recording everything I do with these beans, so I can remember my successes and failures.

Last night I made 15 bean soup. It was very good. I made a few mistakes, but Ryan and Olivia loved it. So it was, in all, a success. I will just do a few things differently next time. The recipe is below.

15 BEAN SOUP

1 bag, 20 oz, dried 15 bean mix

1 lb ham, pork, or italian sausage

1 C onion

1 can, 15oz, stewed or diced tomatoes

1 tsp chili powder

juice of 1 lemon

2 cloves garlic, minced

Soak beans overnight, or at least 8 hours, in 2 qts of water. Drain, add 2 qts water again, and raw meat. Let come to a boil, turn down and simmer for 2 to 2 1/2 hours. Add onion, tomato, chili powder, garlic, and lemon, cook another 1/2 hour. Right before serving, season with salt and pepper to taste. Some 15 bean soup bags have ham seasoning in them, this is when you would add that as well.

I served with fresh bread that I found online as well. There's a great website with some really good ideas. I will list it below. I made the french bread on the website. I tasted the beans after cooking with meat for 2 hours, but before adding other ingr. They were so good, I almost would have rather left everything else out. Maybe I'll try that sometime also.

www.frugalvillage.com

Grocery savings: Laundry detergent

I've been doing a lot of research online about saving money in the grocery area. Something I found a lot of is making your own laundry detergent. I researched the different types, the different recipe's, read people's reviews of all of them, and decided to try it for myself. The basic ingredients are the same in most recipe's. I prefer powder detergent, seems to be less messy to me. So I bought Borax, Washing Soda, Fels Naptha bar soap, and Oxi Clean. I shredded the Fells Naps first in my food processor, ground it until very fine, then added the other ingredients. I must say it smells soooo good! I started with 2 tbsp. per load. Then added more and more. Now I use about 1/3 of a cup. Our water is very hard, and it seems to eat up more detergent. I did find that it works better if I start every load with warm water, then after I add detergent, switch to cold if needed. The detergent dissolves better that way for some reason. But I've now used this detergent solely for 3 months, and it's saved us, so far, over 40.00. So that's an amazing savings! I figure a load of laundry costs a few cents to do now, detergent cost alone. So I will continue to do this as a money saving strategy. The actual recipe is below.

1 bar of Fels Naptha

1 C Borax

1 C Washing Soda

1/2 C Oxi Clean

This is the recipe that works best for me. There are other measurements out there, but try them, and adjust them to your needs. My first attempt I used ivory soap, it didn't seem to work as well for me, but others have had success. I finally found Washing Soda at Tops, couldn't find it in any other store. You can also get it online. I make several of these recipe's at once, so I save time in the long run. I just throw everything in the dishwasher then to clean, saves a lot of time in cleanup.

The Bills vs. The Budget...

So first of all we're taking a look at how much we are spending on bills, other necessities, and nonsense (things we don't need, just desire).

Bills: We were blessed with a very low mortgage payment. The payment is 458.00 a month, including escrow, it's a 25 year mortgage, and we've made every payment on time. We've paid nothing extra so far on our mortgage. We have budget billing on our utilities. Gas ranges between 70.00 and 100.00 a month. Electricity ranges from 70.00 to 120.00 a month. Sometimes I make these payments late, resulting in a late charge of 10.00. We have a package deal with cable, internet, and land line phone. It costs 133.00 a month. We have 2 vehicle payments, with very low interest rates. The first is 177.00 a month, and will be paid off in 4 years. The second one is 166.00 a month and will be paid off in 2 years. We have not paid any extra on these two loans. And sometimes the payments are late, which results in a late payment fee of between 5 and 7.00. Our vehicle insurance is 135.00 a month, and it is automatically withdrawn monthly, so it is never paid late. We have a personal loan with a low interest rate that is 120.00 a month, paid on time, and I had been paying extra on it, which resulted in an advance in our due dates. When I went part time I skipped a few payments, and it is now caught back up to our original contract. So, technically, nothing extra has been paid on it. We have 2 student loans, the first is 66.00 a month, and the second is 38.00 a month. They are never paid late, but nothing extra has gone towards them. We have 2 credit cards, the first is a payment of 50.00 a month, and has zero interest. The second one has a very low balance, and has an 18% interest rate. It will be paid off relatively quickly. We have a sales finance loan which is 57.00 a month at zero interest. We have paid nothing extra towards it.

Other necessities: We spend 100.00 a week in groceries, including formula, diapers, wipes, cosmetics, food, exc (400.00 a month). We spend 400.00 in gas a month. We have 2 cell phones with 1 year left on the contract, the bill is 100.00 a month.

Other nonsense: We get an allowance of 50.00 a week each (400.00 a month). This money is for any desires, hobbies, clothes, anything that isn't an immediate need. We always buy takeout on friday nights, between 100 and 150.00 a month. We always get movies on friday nights for the weekend, between 30 and 40.00 a month.

First, we agree, we need to cut back on takeout, and movies. If we don't do takeout, and we limit movies to 1 a weekend, that would cut 100.00 a month from takeout and 20.00 a month on movies. Next we decide that we're spending too much on groceries. We could easily cut back to less weekly. These are the places we decided to start. We can see how it goes and take it from here. These aren't big cuts, but I don't want any of us to feel overwhelmed by the change. So this is just the beginning.

Our Journey?

First, I better back up a little bit and explain a little about us, the Porters. I met Ryan 5 years ago at work. We started seeing each other, got married after 2 years of dating, bought our first house six months later, got pregnant 3 months after that, and had our first child 14 months ago. She is going to be a big sister in a few months, and doesn't understand, of course what that means. But she's excited when we say it, non the less.

8 months ago Ryan and I decided that we wanted to cut back on my hours at work, to spend more time as a mother. We came up with a plan on how to do that, a budget, so to speak. And decided that after 5 years we would have almost everything paid off, and I could cut back my hours.... It didn't quite happen that way, I started part time work hours 7 months ago, and our budget became very strict. We sat down just recently and have been trying to come up with a way ever since then to cut costs from everywhere. Not to survive, not go get the bills paid, because we have enough to do that, but to get things paid off. I have been working in the finance industry for the last 3 years, and I have become obsessed with the amount people pay in the long run, for life. Interest rates, finance charges, loan fees, over the limit fees, late charges... I could go on and on. I will look at someone's credit, page after page of debt, and wonder how much they will spend in the long run on things. It has come to the point where I can't see myself doing it. Yes, there will always be a need, most likely, for some type of financing. But shouldn't it be a rare thing? Something that happens in an emergency, and not just every day life? Can you imagine how much more money a family would have to do what they wanted if they didn't have to pay so much in charges? So this is our quest, everything we've been talking about lately is centered around how to shave money from different areas of our lives, to get things paid off quickly, and eventually be debt free.

Another motivating factor is todays economy. There are so many people losing their jobs, so many people in debt, losing income of some sort, and ruining their perfect credit score. They get behind, have less money, then have to start over, with high interest rates, more charges, and get themselves, inevitably, in a huge hole, possibly never to get ahead again. What if that were us?

So this blog is our journey. I decided to write it all down, for myself, for my family, and maybe for someone else who is trying to get ahead in life. Maybe we will succeed, and maybe we won't. But either way I'm in for the journey. I'm committed to changing our lives for our future, and not following in the steps of the majority of America today. Join me?