Menu Plan, Missing in Action?

Happy Tuesday!  I missed Menu Plan Monday yesterday as we had a cable & internet outage, but you can bet that I am working a menu plan, once again mainly based on items in the pantry and freezer.  We have:

• Broccoli, Kale and Cheddar soup
• Make Your Own French Bread Pizza and arugula salad
• Shrimp and Twice Baked Potatoes
• Spaghetti
• Breakfast for dinner

I ran a Quicken report on grocery spending for the month of September and we averaged 85.00 a week.  This has been a pretty consistent amount for us since I started writing a menu plan based partially on what is available at home.  I like to check the numbers every month so I can be sure my impression of how much we are spending is correct.

I feel I am having “emergency preparedness” week this week.  Today at work we held our first lockdown and evacuation drill (to prepare for any type of gun/shooter incident).  One colleague commented during training, “This is just all way more than we need to know…”  but knowledge and planning is power, always.  Speaking of crises, we received my husband’s first check since the government shutdown and it was 50% less than usual.  Are you prepared for a sudden drop in income?  What baby steps could you be taking now to make things more secure in the event of a financial emergency?  Finally, I read the ‘Disaster Preparedness’ post by CrazyNoiia.  This is a season where some face hurricanes, and others have snow storms on the horizon.  Are you ready?

 

Here Comes Santa Claus . . .

I’ve been missing a bit this week from blog-land.  Would you believe I have been preparing for Christmas?  Our family Christmas celebration is in 2 months at our home.  The early parts of December are filled with fun family times and I want to be able to enjoy them and not be messing around looking for Scotch-tape and a gift for the mail carrier.  Last year I got so busy that I barely made any Christmas cookies, which is something I truly love to do.  I hope to do better this year.

The best resource I know for preparing for the holidays is Flylady’s Holiday Control Journal.  It is completely free and you can start it using whatever timeline you have until your winter celebration.   Each day you can take a small action towards preparing for your holiday, for example I checked my supplies and I need tape, ribbon, and possibly one roll of wrapping paper this year.  Another day I looked through our summer vacation pictures while enjoying a cup of coffee and marked some for possible use in a card.

Despite the continuing federal government shutdown, we had a budget surplus this week so I bought one gift card to stash for gift-giving.   I will do this periodically, budget permitting, and the rest of our gifts will come out of our budget category for Christmas gifts.

All this thinking about Christmas made me check my daughter’s winter coat.  It was a size 6x!  More appropriate for a 1st grader than a 3rd grader!  We ordered a new one this weekend (money in the budget set aside for winter kid clothing) and were able to partially pay for her new coat with some of the money in our Paypal account from my Ebay selling binge in August.

Now I ought to make sure we don’t forget to get a Halloween pumpkin with all this Christmas planning afoot!

What I Did This Week to Save Money – Oct 5

Well, it has been an interesting week, to be sure.  My 8 year old’s comment on the Federal Shutdown: “Do they even REALIZE what they are doing to the American people?!” Can I get an ‘Amen?’

So, with questions about when my husband will be paid, and for which days, we did the following this week:

• Daughter brought home the catalog for the Scholastic book sale at school.  Had her mark some titles she was interested in and I requested them from the library.  When I wish to do something charitable for the school I prefer to make a tax-deductible donation rather than participate in a fundraiser.  The books should be in at the library even before the sale starts.
• Husband used his furlough day to get a free haircut at a new SportClips place in our neighborhood.  He had a good experience and liked the cut as much or better than his usual higher-priced stylist.
• Kid birthday party this weekend… I tapped my reserve of American Girl gifts I bought at the crazy American Girl Warehouse sale.
• We are entertaining during an NFL (football) game tomorrow, and I worked out a menu that takes advantage of some ingredients we already have on hand.  I am planning a quesadilla bar, Pioneer Woman’s restaurant-style salsa, and a Halloween-ish cake.

Other than that, we are relaxing at home – economical too!

How was your week?

Strange Times for the Savers

Here we are on Day 2 of the federal government shutdown.  Honestly, I thought that the shutdown would last a day and life would be back to business as usual.  It looks like that won’t be the case and there could be several weeks yet to come.

Right now my husband is classed as “essential” and is at work.  He will be paid… eventually.  His next check will not include any earnings from October 1 on, but will have all the usual deductions so that will be a small check to be sure.  At the end of the week he will begin to rotate in and out of work so his colleague with the most similar background can have an opportunity to earn some money to also be paid eventually.

The most stunning thing to me is that we have come upon a situation where we may need to rely on the financial position we have been working to create for the past 10 years or so.  No mortgage, no car payment, no other loans.  We need cash flow for daily living expenses, not debt payment.  We have money saved and can meet daily living expenses this way rather than putting it on a credit card.

The other thought I keep going back to is that while we have worked super hard to be in a good financial position, there are many people who have other life issues that make it hard to get to a spot of such solid footing.  Single parents, people dealing with mental illness, people supporting elderly family members, and those who have entry-level jobs would be hard pressed to weather a lengthy furlough.  We are lucky that we don’t have these kinds of financial barriers and we are very grateful we heard about Dave Ramsey and acted on his plan.

I hope I will be back with you in a of couple days saying, “It’s all good – back to work and back to getting paid.”   Till then….

Reason 1,457 to be Debt Free

Everyone has an opinion on money matters.  Is there “good debt”? Should you avoid paying off your mortgage early because of tax benefits/deductions on the interest?  Today, I am as grateful as ever to be 100%  debt free because my husband may not get paid next week.

The US Government’s fiscal year ends Sept 30, and at the moment, no budget is passed for the next fiscal year.  Federal employees are in limbo while the House and Senate try to reach a resolution on the budget.  Guess what? They don’t play well together in the sandbox.  No resolution=no work and no pay starting October 1.

No tax deduction for mortgage interest can match the security of becoming your own bank. . . creating a situation where you can borrow from yourself should you face loss of income or another crisis.  Building savings is like making your own insurance policy that can be activated when life throws you a curve ball.  You can create this level of savings more rapidly the less debt you have.  The less debt you have, the lower your expenses are should you lose income.  We have money saved that will get us through this possible government shutdown, and we continue to save so that we could weather a more lengthy loss of income or other larger crisis.

A fellow blogger wrote this week on our tendency in America to curse the politicians minding the country’s budget in Washington without reflecting on our own money handling and personal debt.  Stop by and read his post  for more food for thought.