Friday, August 25, 2017

Frugal Friday With Marsha -- Meals from the Cupboard


When there is no money for groceries then it's time to start taking a serious look at what is in the cupboards, freezer, and fridge.  That's the week we've had here.
Most of the time we are always thinking, "there is nothing to eat", when in reality, our cupboards and such are pretty packed with food.



My husband had shopped for one meal the Sunday before.  He chose to buy all the fixings for soft tacos/burritos.  I commented to my daughter about how I could have shopped for a few days on what he spend for one meal, but as it turned out, we ate tacos/burrittos for 3 days on what he bought.  In fact, we even threw in a night of chef salad with the taco ingredients and adding hard boiled eggs and some lunch meat cut up. (We did end up on the 3rd time just with refried beans in our tortillas and no meat with the fixings.

Another night my daughter got to looking in the freezer and she found 2 of the thin pork chops from Dollar Tree.   She cooked those up and cubed them.   She then added a packet of onion soup, a can of beef broth, a can of black beans, a can of pinto beans, and a can of kidney beans out of the cupboard.  She also added in what was left of the onion from the taco nights and some cubed boxed commodity cheese.
It was a really good soup and 5 of us ate it for 2 nights.

One night there were 3 tortillas left.  There were also 6 eggs left.  I got out the Eggtastics, and cooked us each 3 eggs, splitting up the little bit of shredded cheese that was left, cutting up a package of Buddig Bull lunch meat that was still left from our camping trip, and cutting some of the onion that was left, I fixed us nice breakfast burritos.  I dig in a drawer and found sauce packets from Taco Bell too.

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I was paid $25 PayPal by Swagbucks so that gave me a little grocery money.  I used $5 for gas leaving me $20 to spend at the store.  I opened up the ibotta app to see what I could see there.
I spent $19.25 and I bought:
My husband and I each a 2 ltr of Dr Pepper
gallon of milk
package of tortillas
dozen eggs
4 packages of Buddig Bull meats (with $1 ibotta rebate)
Sargento sliced cheese (using 55 cent coupon and 25 cent rebate from ibotta)
Martha White Muffin mix (25 cent rebate from ibotta)
ground turkey (on sale and 50 cent store coupon)
3 bananas
I think I did pretty well with $20 plus I received $1.75 into my ibotta account too.

My daughter made us some good sliders for a meal too!  She used the slider buns that I had brought home left over from the quilt retreat, some of the Buddig Bull meats, and some of the cheese slices.  She topped them with melted butter with garlic salt.  That was an extra yummy treat for a meal!

Last night I had forgotten to take my pound of ground beef out of the freezer, but I got to looking around and I uncovered a package of sausage links from Dollar Tree.  I then seen tater tots that were left over from a time when we had made tater tot casserole.  I used those and made scrambled eggs for a nice breakfast for supper.

All in all we ate really well this week. I wish I had thought to take pictures of our meals throughout the week, but alas, I didn't.   My lesson for this week is to eat out of the cabinets....at least if yours are like ours, and full.  We will be doing this for awhile yet as we get some financial things straightened out.  I know there is still at least 10 lbs of chicken in the deep freeze so it's looking like we will be having chicken several ways this week as well as using up some of the many bags of rice and beans that are stacked in the kitchen too.


No, we didn't have a cat for supper, but I found this picture of Moo in the skillet in my photos and thought I would just share it for fun.


Did you get tired of reading all of that?  LOL  I hope I did give you some "food" for thought today!!
Until next week, have yourself a Frugal week ahead!


Wednesday, August 23, 2017

WIP Wednesday -- Working Away

I have actually been working daily on sewing.  Not that I get nearly as much done as many of the blogs that I see in the linky's but for me it's a good feeling to be doing more sewing.

I didn't get much done on the yo-yo table runner, but at least a start.  I need to highly concentrate on it mostly if it's to be done by September 4th.  I get so frustrated working with the invisible thread!


This is the lay out for my wall hanging for my quild's sponsorship in the state fair.


I got all 5 of the drawstring backpacks finished for quilt guild, which will be donated to First Call For Help.


I have a nice stack of coasters ready to sew up too.


I am working towards keeping my Etsy shop active.  I added another drawstring back pack to my inventory---after selling the other 2 that I had in stock.   I may need to think about getting more of those made to list.  Firstly though I must finish the items that I am entering in to the fair.  My next in line after that is making more microwave hot pads for my shop.

So much to do and so little time!!

I link up with the following blogs:
WIPs on Wednesdays

Jo's Country Junction:  http://www.joscountryjunction.com/













Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Get $12 when you sign up for Hulu



If you're a TV lover, Hulu has an offer through Swagbucks where you get $12 (paid in the form of points called SB) for trying Hulu for a month. That will cost you $7.99, so you're making $4 on the deal! 

Hulu has tons of current and classic programming, movies, brilliant original series, and more. Here's how you do it: 

1. Click this link
2. Create your Swagbucks account (takes 30 seconds)
3. Click "Continue" and sign up for Hulu
4. Enjoy Hulu! You should have your points within 30 minutes. You must be a first time Hulu member to receive SB for this offer.

Haven't tried Swagbucks yet? They're a site where you earn points (called SB) for doing things like online shopping, watching videos, taking surveys, and discovering deals and services you might like to try (like Hulu!). You then take those points and turn them into free gift cards to places like Amazon, Starbucks, Walmart, Target, or PayPal cash.

This is a great time to join because when you sign up through the link above and get your 2000 SB, you'll get a bonus 300 SB at the beginning of September. So that's $12 (1200 SB) for trying Hulu plus your $3 (300 SB) bonus, which gets you 1500 SB, which means you make $7 total for trying Hulu!

Monday, August 21, 2017

The Financial Briefing by Eric Hutchinson



Eric Hutchinson has over 30 years of experience in the areas of financial planning, investments, estate planning, and tax planning and his joy is working with families to help them manage their financial affairs and make their dreams a reality.

In his book, The Financial Briefing  Answers to Life's Most Important Questions, he has taken those 30 years and questions his clients have asked him over the years, and put the answers into a book for everyone.  The book covers every stage of life, and the author suggests to read it cover to cover and then use it as a reference point from then on.

The Financial Briefing is set up in 2 sections and 7 chapters:

Finance 101:
  Budgeting and Saving Basics
  Planing Basics

Finance 102:
  Planning for Unexpected Change
  Planning for Growth and Prosperity
  Planning for Taxes
  Planning for the Next Generation
  Planning for Retirement


The name of the book, The Financial Briefing, sums the book up very well.  Each section is brief, and to the point.  It's an awesome starting point for everyone.
Here is what is really awesome though!!  You can visit http://www.thefinancialbriefing.com where can access the video library.  Yes, there is a video for almost every single section in the book.


I only recently started "dabbling" with a bit of money in the stock market.  I found good information in The Financial Briefing.  In our situation though it's best for us to start right at the beginning of the book.

I loved reading the chapter How to Begin Saving and Investing.  One thing that stood out to me was his advice if there just is no extra to start saving.  He actually suggests clipping coupons for those items that you buy all the time.  Then, take that money saved and put it into savings.    I've been using coupons all of my adult life, but never have I taken what I saved and put it aside as savings.  I fully intend to take this advice to heart.

I did read completely through the sections about investing, and look forward to also watching the videos on the website that go with those sections.

I can honestly say that I do feel this is a book for everyone.  One of those books that you do keep for current and future reference.








Disclosure:  I rec'd a copy of the book for the purpose of this review.  I was not compensated in any other way and all opinions are my own.  Post contains affiliate links.
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