Frugal Friday Wrap Up 10/7/22

 

   Another week has gone by.  Gas, electric, insurance and food prices continue to rise.  I saw a news report that all of this combined, along with rising interest rates, is costing an average of over $7,000 per family here in America and it continues to rise.  So how do we deal with this?  Some of us cut way back on our spending, try to pay off debt, and others continue to live like they did and put things on their credit cards. 

   Since Jeff and I are saving up for our trip to see our little granddaughter Peyton and her big brother Tate, we have cut back a lot in order to have cash for our trip.  Every decision we make impacts how much money we will have for that trip because we are paying for half of the ticket price (Josh and Lauren gifted us the other half and already bought the tickets as a wonderful surprise).  We are also paying someone to take care of our home and kitties while we are gone.  In addition to that, I really want to have some spending money for while we are there because we would love to treat our kids to a meal out as a thank you, have breakfast with a dear friend of mine and have some additional spending money so I can go to Ikea and pick up a few things there.  At the same time, we are paying down debt and stocking up our home for the long winter ahead making sure we will be warm and well fed.  That means that even on days when the pain is great, I need to be out in the garden harvesting and then processing produce.  There are a few days that I have missed, but for the most part, I try to push through.  Jeff works hard at his job and then comes home and helps me with things along with trying to keep up on the weeding, lawn mowing and fixing things around the house.  I really do love and appreciate him so very much!  I know that some people would say that we should cancel our trip, but here is the thing...with the world being what it is today and with Josh becoming eligible for deployment again in March, and Lauren being in the reserves, anything could happen that would take them away from us and from their children.  We need to build memories while we can because tomorrow is never guaranteed.  We have to continue to live our lives but do it in a financially responsible way.

   I have other friends who live by the motto of "you can't take it with you, so spend it all now and heck, put it on those credit cards too".  They continue to live ABOVE their means, getting deeper and deeper into debt.  They could easily live within their means but choose not to do so.  It breaks my heart because Jeff and I lived that way in the past and it took us years to climb out of it and retrain our minds to think differently.  I don't want them to go through the pain that we did.  That whole "we'll pay it off later" thing was how we (and now our friends) justified that reckless spending, never even considering that something might happen that would or could prevent us from being able to earn enough to actually pay things off quickly.  Hard lesson to learn and even harder to live through.  Been there and continuing to pay things off from having to live off one income instead of two and having some high medical bills.  We borrowed against my life insurance policy to pay for my medical bills up front since they hospital needed that money before they would do the surgery I needed.  We are in a much better position now though because we did pay off a bunch of other debt.  

   So here are the frugal doings for the week...

~We picked more blackberries, froze some and gave some to our neighbors, who were thrilled to receive freshly picked blackberries.  I have also been adding them to my cereal and snacking on them fresh.

~Jeff and I went up to the local apple orchard here in town and picked apples.  They are still just .50 a pound, which is an amazing deal!

~Jeff fixed Jaysn and Rachel's lawn mower that we are borrowing.  He was then able to get our lawn mowed.  Jaysn told him to just hand onto the mower since they now have a riding one.

~I had a lovely visit with Uncle Bob.  We had coffee and he shared some of his memories of his childhood.  In all the years that I have known him, I had never heard about how hard his childhood was on him before.  It really did explain why he values family that way he does and why our family is so special to him, as he is to us.

~I made a large batch of herb salt and it took me 2 hours of hands-on time since I had to strip the rosemary and tiny little lemon thyme leaves off their branches.  It was so worth it though because now I have enough to last me for another year and to also give some out as gifts.  My mother requests it every Christmas now as her gift from me, so she also will be set for another year. 😉

~Jeff and I did the grocery shopping over the weekend and were very careful with what we bought.  We noticed that prices are going way up, but that there were still deals to be found if you looked carefully.  We pretty much stuck to the basics like cheap produce like a 5-pound bag of carrots, a 10-pound bag of potatoes (both of these were much cheaper per pound to buy them in these quantities), milk, creamer (ok, this is a splurge item, but something I use on a daily basis), hot cocoa mix (another splurge item, but Jeff loves it and uses it daily), store brand cereal, ketchup (it was on sale and had a long out use by date), store brand crackers ($2 less per box than the named brand stuff), brown sugar on sale and a few other items.  I had offered to do the shopping on my own, but Jeff did not want me to do that with how crazy people have been acting.

~We watched several of the Mission Impossible movies here at home on Paramount channel and made popcorn to snack on.  Fun evenings and frugal too!

~More bread was made.  I am just appalled at the price of bread in the grocery store.  It is so easy to make yourself at home and so much cheaper and better for you!

~I used the leftover rice to make jambalaya for dinner on Monday night.  The tomatoes and onion I used in making it were all from our garden.  The smoked sausage was bought previously on sale and tucked safely into one of our freezers.  Celery was bought on sale a few weeks ago, although I do have some that is still growing in size in my garden.  The seasonings are ones that I always have in my pantry.  This is one of our favorite and very easy meals to make and a great way to stretch out meat since You don't have to use a lot to get all that yummy taste.

~I made some chocolate chip cookies with some cookie dough that I had bought on clearance and had frozen.  It was cheaper to buy it on clearance than make it from scratch.  It made for a very nice surprise for my sweet hubby that had a very long and frustrating end to his day at work.

~One of our sweet neighbors, that we gave some blackberries to, baked us some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.  They were delicious!

~Our hanai son, Benny Weag, is on the TV show "The Voice".  It is so wonderful to be able to see him pursuing his dreams!  Now we have to teach our youngest grandson Tate to say "Team Blake". 😊

~I was able to harvest more squash and tomatoes from the garden.

~A major fibro flare hit again this week.  Jeff made us pastrami sandwiches for dinner one night (I had bought some pastrami at a good price a while ago and froze it) and another night I made a quick 4 cheese pasta and pepperoni casserole using only pasta, spaghetti sauce and cut up pepperoni.  I had everything I needed here at home.  A well stock pantry is a huge money saver.  Sure, I would have loved to have Jeff bring home Panda Express for dinner, but that would have cost about $20 or more.  

~We skipped going to the thrift stores over the weekend while we were in town doing the grocery shopping because although I have things to donate, the temptation to go in and "browse" usually ends up with me buying something.

~Thursday nights are Jeff's bowling league night so I am on my own for dinner.  I made a salad for dinner using cabbage, carrots, celery, and sliced almonds.  So yummy!!!

~Friday night I made lemon chicken pasta with the lemon juice from the lemons I zested for the herb salt earlier in the week, some homemade frozen compound herb butter that I made last year, 1 large boneless skinless chicken breast sliced thinly, 3 cloves of garlic, about half of a Walla Walla Sweet onion, a red bell pepper, farfalle pasta and some sliced up zucchini from the garden.  It was so good, easy and is one of our favorite meals.

~Jeff and I got caught up on watching "The Amazing Race" on Paramount Plus.  It is something we both enjoy, but comes on to late for him to watch during the week.

   So that is our week in a nutshell.  We did learn Friday night that Uncle Bob had a heart attack and is in the hospital for observation.  Please keep him in your prayers.  If he is not home by tomorrow, we will head over to see him.  The last time we had a visit over at his house, he told me he did not think he would be around for much longer...just the thought of losing him breaks my heart.