Bulking Up My Emergency Fund

When do the rainbows get here?
Originally uploaded by Todd Baker << technowannabe

Lately G and I have been steadily bulking up our emergency fund. While we're focusing on paying down our credit card debt we don't want any surprise bills to overthrow our efforts.

It's a good think we have been, too, because we recently had some roof damage and the insurance company has decided it's time to replace it. If we had to come up with our deductible a few months ago, we would have had to put it on a credit card and it would have taken us three months to work our way back from the negative progress.

Now we can take care of the roof calmly and continue our road to financial recovery.

Whew!

Jam-Packed Weekend

(okay, bad pun)
One of my favorite money saving tools of all time is my freezer. We bought a small chest freezer about 8 months ago to supplement our refrigerator’s freezer section, and I know that within the next 6 months it will have paid for itself. Not only is it great to be able to purchase greater quantities of perishable sale items for future use, but it’s also a great time savings when I can prepare a double amount of a meal and freeze half for later.

But I can’t keep stuffing things into it constantly without eventually taking something out. It’s been getting a little cramped in there and I need to clean it out a bit, organize what’s in there, and make an inventory so that I use up my freezer stocks to strategically stretch my food dollars.

This weekend I did a little freezer magic... After Thanksgiving, huge bags of fresh cranberries were on sale for practically nothing, so I bought a bag and threw it in the freezer. Cranberries are very easy to freeze because they don’t need any prep work at all and they freeze beautifully. Since the end of the summer is typically when I make jams and jellies and can veggies, it’s also the time of year when my stocks are lowest.

This year, our personal crops weren’t very abundant and we haven’t had a lot of time to hit the farmer’s market, so my canning adventures have been few and far between. But I decided it was time to make a bit of room in the freezer and fill up the jab cupboard at the same time. I searched around for a yummy sounding cranberry jam and came up with this one. The addition of cinnamon was intriguing and I wanted to see how it would turn out.



It turned out great-looking and -smelling. I haven’t tried it on toast yet, the ultimate test, but should tomorrow.

I also put up a few containers of strawberry freezer jam since I found a great deal on strawberries at the grocery store but didn’t get a good picture. I used the standard recipe that comes in the liquid pectin package. Has anyone else tried this? This was my first time for a non-cooked jam and the sugar didn’t seem to combine in properly. Is this normal with freezer jam?

I’ll try to get our menu plan posted sometime today. It’s been tremendously helpful for me to plan out our meals at the beginning of the week, since when I get the question “What’s for dinner, Mom?” I have a solid answer. It makes grocery shopping a very streamlined affair as well. My weekly grocery trips are getting quicker and less expensive the more consistently I meal plan.

What time or money saving trick has been working best for you lately? Please comment, I’d love to hear from you!

School Daze

Well, G is finally registered for school, and E will be registering for her new elementary school tomorrow. Everyone's going to school around here but me! That's okay, with everything I've got going on lately, there's no time for school.

One thing I've figured out I do need to make more time for, though, is diet and exercise. Doing the menu planning weekly has helped tremendously, but I haven't been watching my portion sizes as well as I should and the gym has been last on my list of priorities lately. I've been watching the scale creeeeep upwards and I'm not liking the result.

So tonight I'm going to hit the books and figure out a healthy plan for a little weight loss. I'll probably work on a modified 'Weight Watchers' type program. I tried them before and the program does work, but the group meetings weren't the right environment for me. There are lots of great online resources out there and I have the basic booklet still from my last foray into the world of WW.

Menu Plan July 20 - 26

Last week's menu plan went really well. We did substitute pizza on one night when we took a trip to Costco, but all in all, menu planning went well. One thing we do need to plan in more detail are breakfasts and lunches. Packing lunches at 6 in the morning when you have no idea what to pack makes for some pretty interesting lunches. So here's the plan for the week:

Breakfasts:
Pancakes
Sausage biscuits
Oatmeal
Cereal
Eggs & Toast

Lunches:
Tuna
Broccoli Salad
PBJ sandwiches
Egg Sandwich
Leftovers

Dinners:
Sunday: Twice baked potatoes
Monday: Broccoli Rice casserole
Tuesday: Turkey Pasta Bake & Salad
Wednesday: Salmon Croquets & Veggie Medley
Thursday: Veggie Pasta Sauce
Friday: Date Night
Saturday: Leftovers/Everyone for themselves

To see more menus for the week, check out the main post at I'm an Organizing Junkie

Lunches are a little tricky because G is essentially vegetarian at this point and doesn't like traditional lunch foods such as sandwiches. I'd love to think of a few more options for him, as sending a lunchbag full of fruit, cut up veggies, and pretzels seems like a skimpy lunch. Any suggestions?

Menu Plan July 13-19

Now that we're back from vacation it's time to really get back on schedule. Beginning with menu planning for the week and getting the laundry washed, folded and put away.

This week's menu will look something like this:

• Sunday: Beans & cornbread


• Monday: Salad with grilled chicken


• Tuesday: Salmon & rice


• Wednesday: Bean burritos


• Thursday: Leftovers


• Friday: Pasta with veggie sauce


• Saturday: Out to eat or breakfast for dinner

This is my first week submitting to Menu Plan Monday. To see more menus for the week, check out the main post at I'm an Organizing Junkie

Dustbunnies and Socks

So far I’m doing alright with the Flylady system. I’ve shined my sink two nights in a row, and two nights in a row H has put a dirty bowl into it within minutes of my shining it. It’s okay, though. It’s a new system and I try not to sigh or comment maliciously.

Yesterday I took a few minutes to dust the dustbunnies off the ceiling fan. Formerly this fan would run 24-7, but I’ve been turning it off when we leave the house lately to save on energy. Meaning when we walk into the house we see this bunny-encrusted ceiling fan just sitting there taunting us. So I dusted it. I realize now that the bunnies were a crucial part of the balancing mechanism for the fan, because now it’s making little ‘tick-tick-tick’ noises every couple of minutes.

Next week my focus will be on laying out my clothes the night before. We do this with E, as she has a hanger with compartments and we fill it up with a weeks worth of clothes at a time. This helps her get up and dressed a lot faster without worrying about whether she has clean socks. This week I’ve had to worry about socks, and more importantly pants for work, and it has not helped us get out of the house quickly in the mornings.

I’m feeling a little more centered about the process of getting my act together, as I’m realizing it is a process and will not happen overnight, or even in a week. As long as I’m making progress I think I’ll be okay.

Financially we are still right on the edge and still waiting for our stimulus check, but it comes when it comes.

Beginning Again

austin1
Originally uploaded by torres21

Lately, I’ve fallen off the financial planning wagon as several things have clumped up to make things rather tight for us as well as very busy and I’ve fallen off the blogging wagon as well. For some reason, I feel as if I shouldn’t blog if I’m not doing well in my financial goals. But if this is truly going to be a record of my progress, in this and any other goals I’m trying to accomplish, I need to record the good and the bad. So I’m calling a mulligan and starting over.

I did a bad thing. I had planned to use our stimulus check to pay some credit cards off and buy some camping equipment we needed for a trip we were planning. Originally we thought the check would be direct deposited, but that didn’t happen. So we were looking at the payment schedule and figured the check would be here mid June, so we used our regular paycheck to pay for the camping equipment and trip and figured the check would be here by the time our trip was over and we needed to pay our regular bills. But somehow we managed to read the schedule wrong. So our 2nd check for the month covered the bills for the 1st half of the month, and the 2nd half bills will be covered by the check when it gets here.

Moral: Never count your chickens before they hatch.

Meanwhile, I will be starting a new job in 2 weeks. This won’t make much difference in our financial picture, but the commute will be a bit shorter and I will hopefully be less stressed. The new job situation looks to have a much saner boss and work schedule.

And I’ve decided that I need to make some major organizational changes in our household… in that we need a little. So I’m looking into flylady.net. I’ve been on Flylady’s program before, but more in the ‘I read the emails and don’t really follow the advice’ kind of way. This time I’m going to read the emails and follow along as best I can. I’ll try to keep an update here on my progress in that department.

Also, I’m going to try to follow along with the Going Green group that ’Burban Mom is starting up.

So a lot of changes here at Trifling Occasions. Let’s hope I can keep up.