![breadmachinebutteryrolls](https://moneysavingmom.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/breadmachinebutteryrolls1-600x435.jpg)
You will love this Buttery Bread Recipe
My dad surprised me with this brand-spankin’-new bread machine for Christmas!
My other bread machine was on its very last leg after being used countless times over the last seven years, so I was thrilled with this gift. Plus, this new one is more high-tech, larger, and has two kneading paddles.
I’ve already been extremely impressed at the difference in the texture of the dough I’ve made as opposed to my other smaller bread machine.
The new bread machine came just in time for the Eat From The Pantry Challenge and has proven to be a very useful tool to have at my disposal — especially on days when I don’t have a lot of time to spend in the kitchen.
I tried a new recipe yesterday since we needed some bread to go along with dinner. This is a recipe from my brother, it uses basic ingredients you usually will always have on hand, and it literally took me 5 minutes of labor!
The rolls turned out beautifully and my whole family thought they were very delicious.
It’s definitely a winning recipe and one I’ll be making many times again.
Bread Machine Rolls ingredients
- 1 cup warm milk (90-100 degrees)
- 1/2 cup butter, softened
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 4 cups flour (I used half fresh-ground whole-wheat and half unbleached flour.)
- 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast (or one packet)
How to make Yeast Rolls (Bread Machine)
1. Add ingredients in the order list to your bread machine. Run on dough cycle.
2. When the dough is complete, divide the dough into 20-24 equal portions and shape it into balls.
3. Place dough balls on a greased baking sheet. Cover and let rise for 15 minutes.
4. Preheat oven to 375º.
5. Bake risen rolls in preheated oven for 13-16 minutes, or until golden brown.
6. Brush with melted butter as soon as they come out of the oven.
How to Serve this Buttery Bread Recipe
These delicious rolls go wonderfully well with almost any meal — soup, pasta, meat and potatoes, casseroles, etc.
They also make yummy sandwiches — perfect for quick lunches!
How to Store Bread Machine Dinner Rolls
Let them cool completely and store leftovers in an air-tight food storage container or zip-top bag.
You can also freeze them for several months.
Bread Machine Rolls FAQs
If you used denser flour (whole wheat, whole grain, etc) your rolls won’t be as light and fluffy. We recommend using at least half all-purpose or bread flour for this recipe.
Try adding a bit more liquid (or less flour) to the recipe next time. Also, don’t over-bake the rolls — check them a few minutes early to prevent them from drying out.
Now that I have a bread machine that makes beautiful dough with only a few minutes of work, I think I’m going to be doing a whole lot more baking. I might even attempt making cinnamon roll dough in the bread machine–something I’ve never had success with before.
![](https://moneysavingmom.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/breadmachinebutteryrolls1-300x300.jpg)
Buttery Bread Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup milk 90-110ºF
- ½ cup butter softened
- ¼ cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp salt
- 4 cups flour
- 2¼ tsp active dry yeast (1 packet)
Instructions
- Add ingredients in the order list to your bread machine. Run on dough cycle.
- When the dough is complete, divide the dough into 20-24 equal portions and shape it into balls.
- Place dough balls on a greased baking sheet. Cover and let rise for 15 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 375º.
- Bake risen rolls in preheated oven for 13-16 minutes, or until golden brown.
- Brush with melted butter as soon as they come out of the oven.
Nutrition
Love this recipe?
Make sure to share and save it on your favorite platform below!
Do you have any favorite bread machine recipes which only take staple ingredients that I’d likely have in my pantry? Leave me a link to them so I can consider trying them during our Eat From the Pantry Challenge!
Pantry Challenge: My Update and Menu Plan (Share Your Progress, too!)
Pantry Challenge: My Update and Menu Plan (Share Your Progress, too!)
Well, we've officially been Eating From The Pantry for a whole week. And I'll admit, it's definitely been a challenge.
We always have surplus since I practice the "Buy-Ahead Principle" in my grocery shopping, but I didn't do a whole lot of shopping in December, so we actually started this month a little low on reserves.
I'm okay with that, though, because I wanted this to be a true challenge. A learning experience. Something to force me to be creative.
You see, I've been feeling stuck in a rut when it comes to cooking recently. I've been making a lot of the same things over and over again. Sure, they are good recipes–and we like them!–but too much of the same thing quickly becomes lackluster and boring.
So this Pantry Challenge and spending a few days eating at a gourmet chef's house has been exactly the motivation I've needed to experiment in the kitchen again. And while it was hard at first to get my momentum going, I'm starting to get all inspired. In fact, I keep coming up with new ideas and am beginning to wonder if the month will be up before I have a chance to make all the recipes I want to try with our pantry ingredients. I suppose that is a good problem to have.
We made a quick trip to the store yesterday to pick up fresh produce, milk, and cheese and then I made up a list of meal ideas for this coming week based upon those ingredients and what we already have on hand. These ideas are just to serve as a starting point as I'm giving myself free reign to be creative in the kitchen–so long as I can make the recipe with what we already have on hand!
Breakfasts Ideas:
Cereal x 3 (trying to use up some of our extra boxes of free or $0.50-$0.99 cereal!)
Oatmeal with cinnamon, apples, and sucanat
Side options: Fresh Orange/Apple Juice, Oranges, Grapefruit
Lunch Ideas:
Tuna Salad
Mixed Green Salad with Hard-Boiled Eggs, cheese & crackers
Chicken Nuggets
Fish Sticks
PB&J
Leftovers
Side options: oranges, apples, carrot sticks, frozen veggies
Dinner Ideas:
Lit'l Smokies with Potatoes, Onions, and Carrots in the crockpot, Cornbread Muffins, Oranges, Chocolate Pudding
Sweet and Sour Chicken Stirfry over rice with Chow Mein Noodles, Apple-Pineapple Salad
Turkey Meatballs, Sweet Potatoes, Homemade Rolls, Corn, Grapefruit
Chicken Tetrazinni, Mixed Green Salad, Broccoli, Homemade Bread
Barbecue Chicken in the crockpot served on buns, Steamed Mixed Veggies, Twice-Baked Potatoes, Oranges
Homemade Pizza, Carrot Sticks, Apples, Brownies
Dinner out
Snack Ideas:
Popcorn, Crackers/Cheese, Fruit, Cereal, Homemade Funnel Cakes, Hot Cocoa
So there's my list of ideas to work from this week. I'll let you know how it goes. And if I have any colossal flop or discover a really incredible recipe, I'll be sure to let you know.
How's your Pantry Challenge going? If you've been blogging about it, be sure to leave direct links to your update posts below so we can all be inspired!
Super Savings Saturday: I skipped shopping this week
After a four-week-long hiatus, Super Savings Saturday is back! Only I have nothing to report on the shopping front because I didn’t go shopping this week.
I was planning to go in the middle of the week, since we’d been gone for almost a week, but I challenged myself to make the milk and produce stretch until Saturday–and it did! We didn’t eat the most varied meals ever, but we didn’t go hungry by any means.
(But lest you think I was really being heroic for skipping shopping this week, I confess that I had a rather selfish motivation: I was trying to avoid having to take three children out into the bitter, bitter cold we’ve been experiencing here to go shopping!)
We’re stopping by Aldi later today to snag some of their produce deals and also to pick up some milk and cheese. I’m hoping to spend about $25 total and make that last for another week and a half. The rest of the food will come from our pantry.
I have to tell you all that I really appreciate the encouragement you’ve been for me in the Eat From The Pantry Challenge. Your blog, Facebook, and Twitter updates have kept me going this week when I really wanted nothing more but to pick up carryout. It was just one of those kinds of weeks and had I not had your inspiration, I am pretty sure I would have given in to the temptation.
So thank you. It was a good exercise in self-discipline for me–something which I feel like I’ve not been as good at recently.
I had planned to write a detailed update this week on what we were eating and how we were pulling off the Pantry Challenge. But it just didn’t happen. The children have been cranky and fighting colds, Silas has been teething, and I have just been plain tired and uninspired, so blogging has gotten shoved to the bottom of the pile.
Here’s to hoping for warmer weather, cheerful children, and a little uninterrupted sleep this next week. 🙂 And look for an Eat From The Pantry update and link-up here bright and early on Monday morning.
————————–
Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways?
If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link
below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you
personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order
to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in
their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content
other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to
make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your
link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.
How We Spent $145 Trying to Save $40
We had a wonderful trip to San Diego last week, but it was not without a few mishaps–one which cost us pretty dearly.
We'd watched the sales, compared lots of prices on many different websites, and ended up getting an excellent travel deal through Travelocity for our trip package. To further sweeten things, we had shopped through ShopAtHome during their double cashback days around Thanksgiving so we also got a nice refund on our travel purchase.
And we were paying with cash we had set aside for this celebratory vacation, so we were feeling pretty happy about how inexpensively we were pulling off this trip to San Diego. We should have known better than to be patting ourselves on the back, though, for we were about ready to make a silly and costly mistake–all in an effort to save more money.
We're not seasoned travellers and we've only flown a few times in the last few years so we haven't done a great job of keeping up with the rules and regulations for air travel. The last time we'd flown, we'd brought in our two smaller hand-me-down suitcases and ended up having to pay $80 ($20 per suitcase per flight) to get our suitcases to our destination and back. That seemed like an awful lot of money to pay and we noticed pretty much everyone else around us checked only one large bag.
This time around, we decided we'd get smart. We'd do what it seemed everyone else did when travelling and we'd only bring one suitcase. This would save us $40 and would be more efficient, right?
We used a gift card to buy the largest suitcase we could find and we packed everything in it. And I do mean everything. Aside from us each having a small carry-on bag, we had packed every article of clothing, all the diapers, and pretty much every other thing we'd need for five people to be gone for six days. Suffice it to say, it was a lot of stuff, even though we tried our best to only pack essentials.
We could barely lift the stuffed-to-overflowing suitcase to get it in the van when we left, but we'd done it–we'd only used one suitcase!
By the time we got everyone out of the van and into the check-in line at the airport, it was only 40 minutes until our flight was scheduled to leave. (In our podunk Kansas airport, there's usually no need to get there early since the lines are short and move quickly.)
We were feeling happy with how everything was going until we noticed that the folks in front of us had their big suitcases open and were rearranging things. The couple next to them had clothes and miscellaneous items all strewn around the floor in front of the check-in counter and they were quickly dumping more out and angrily talking amongst themselves.
It was then that we heard the reason behind all this craziness. The lady at the check-in counter bellowed out: "If your suitcase is over 50 pounds, there's a $145 charge!"
Jesse and I instinctively looked at each other, looked at our one gigantic suitcase, and looked back at each other. We were in trouble.
We took our suitcase up to the scale and weighed it. It totaled a whopping 71 pounds. Um, yes, what were we thinking?!
A simple phone call or web search would very likely have let us know days ago that our suitcase was going to be too heavy. But we'd foolishly never taken the time to check.
With about 35 minutes to spare until our flight took off, we quickly surveyed our limited options. There was no way we could lighten up the load in the suitcase by 21 pounds–we'd basically only packed essentials but when you're travelling for six days with three little children, it requires quite a few essentials! And we'd miss our flight and very likely not be able to catch another in the next 24 hours if we waited for someone to bring us another suitcase.
Realizing we didn't really have any other options, we stepped up to the counter, gulped, and paid $145 for that massive suitcase.
Next time we think we're making a "smart" decision based upon what we think we see other people doing, we hope we'll remember our suitcase mistake and stop and do our own research. It just might save us $145–or more!
By the way, we borrowed a carry-on suitcase from FishMama for the way home and we were able to strategically work things so our big suitcase only weighed in at 49.5 pounds!
The Envelope System “Prettified”
I like pretty things. They make me smile and they make life more cheerful and exciting. I wasn't gifted with a knack for creating pretty things, but I sincerely admire others who are skilled in that area.
So when I saw Kelleigh's Envelope System, my heart fluttered. Yes, it did.
Wouldn't paying cash just be so much more exciting if one's envelope system was all prettified like that? (Wait, is "prettified" even a word?)
You know what's so cool? Kelleigh isn't selling her envelope system (though I really think she ought to!), instead she generously posted the complete tutorial and template here so you can create your own.
By the way, if you're new here and wondering how The Envelope System works, you can read more about it here and here. We save thousands of dollars every year by using this system.
Ready or not, our Eat From The Pantry Challenge is beginning!
Now that we're back from vacation, our almost-month-long Eat From The Pantry Challenge commences today. I'm excited and just a little bit scared as to how it's all going to work out. Whatever the case, it'll certainly be an adventure!
I'll keep you posted on how it goes and will be sharing recipes and pictures as the next four weeks unfold. My husband has promised to be a willing participant in this whole thing (bless his heart!), so I'm hoping my creativity in the kitchen doesn't turn out to be a whopping failure.
I'm usually sort of a make-do-with-what-you-have cook anyway, so it's not a completely new concept. However, I've never "made do" for four whole weeks, so I'm positive there'll be some flops along the way. Be prepared to laugh along with me!
Are you participating in the Eat From The Pantry Challenge? If so, I'd love to hear about how it's going for you. And if you've been posting about it on your blog, you can link up your progress over here.
Home Sweet Home!
We arrived home from our family celebration trip to California a few hours ago and were immediately shocked at how cold Kansas was after six days of sunshine in San Diego. Brrr!
In the next few weeks, I'll be sharing some fun stories of our vacation adventures… like how we paid $145 in an effort to save $40 (that would fit in the "Frugal Failures" category!) and how I was flabbergasted at how inexpensive the grocery prices were in California! (I always had heard prices were twice as much or more in California. Not hardly! I visited grocery stores and saw with my very own eyes that the prices there are every bit as good or better than what I can get here. Stay tuned for my full post analysis on that.)
It was great to be away, but I missed you all–and I missed blogging. Thanks for letting me have a few days off to play in the sand with my family, hang out with a good friend, and just recharge for the new year. It was a wonderful trip and we came home refreshed, rejuvenated, and ready to hit the ground running.
I have a lot of catching up to do, so you can expect an avalanche of great deals here in the next few days. I hope you don't mind! 🙂
Eat From the Pantry Challenge: Are You Ready for an Adventure? (Guest Post)
Eat From the Pantry Challenge: Are You Ready for an Adventure? (Guest Post)
Guest Post by My Friend Kelly
Let's face it: we're all busy. No matter if you are married, single, in a
career or working at home, mother to seven, one or none, we all have enough to
fill our days and then some. Maybe the thought of adding one more challenge to
an overflowing Resolution list is too much to consider right now.
Relax, the Eat From The Pantry Challenge isn't boot camp. Crystal and Jessica are quite the opposite of
screaming drill sergeants. These are women who are willing to spend
considerable time and energy to share their struggles, successes, and failures
in order to encourage us.
This month-long challenge doesn't require you to
create a blog, starve your children, or eat leaves and wild roots. It's closer
to finishing the unread books on your shelf before buying new ones.
At the end of November, I embarked on my own challenge to clean out my pantry
and freezer. I am proof it can be done even if you’re not a master baker or planner.
If this pantry month seems too difficult let's start with a new perspective.
This is not a challenge, it's an adventure! Adventures are fun and exciting,
full of surprises and exploration. Here’s just a taste of what you might learn
on this adventure:
Re-discover Creativity
Remember the days when an empty plastic container and cardboard from the paper
towels could entertain you for hours? Or times in college when you made pasta
in the coffee pot and grilled cheese sandwiches with an iron?
It's time to get creative
again! Whether it's breakfast for dinner to finish up some pancake mix, using
stale bread for croutons, or finding substitutes, cooking is about enjoying the
process and breaking out of the mundane.
Creativity comes when you have seventeen cans of tuna and need a new recipe.
Creativity is testing new sauces on pasta and trying new recipes, ingredients,
and styles of cooking.
Discover Thankfulness
As we settle into our routines, grocery shopping can become a tedious chore.
Take this month to focus not on what you don't have in the pantry but what
you do. Instead of focusing on the deals you might miss, enjoy the ones you
found already! It's simple to grab chili on sale and celebrate a great
deal but it's a little harder to make chili and cornbread or chili on a baked
potato three times a week to use it up.
Look at all the opportunities we have to buy food and utilize discounts,
coupons, and rewards. It's easy to take that for granted. When was the last time
your family gave thanks for having a local grocery store, fresh produce, and the
funds to pick up a treat or two?
Discover Usefulness
Once you embark on the Eat From the Pantry "Adventure", try a little trick I call 'spelunking.'
Simply dig through your stock and find something you can use in place of going
to the store. Crunchy salad toppers can be used in soup. Top macaroni and cheese with the last
tablespoons of bread crumbs. Turn mushy apples into
applesauce and juice into popsicles.
Try Amy
Dacyczyn’s Universal Casserole Recipe. Or, if you get stuck without an “essential”
ingredient this site
on substitutions is one of the easiest to reference.
I know my great grandmothers would be ashamed to see the amount of food I
let spoil each week. They didn't waste; the mantra was to "use it
up!" In that spirit during my Pantry Month I rescued a ham from the work
potluck that was to be thrown away. Ham omelets, sandwiches, added to beans and
soup helped stretch many meals. If you're thinking your stock can't possibly
last 31 days give it a shot and find out how long it WILL last. The worst that
can happen is you'll find your answer.
Discover Giving
Crystal has connected her savings to a charity, would you do something similar?
Soon we'll be collecting 2009 receipts and income information for taxes. Do you
find yourself wishing you could give more in time, donations or money? Food
banks are struggling this year so whether you donate some of your savings of
that can of creamed corn you don't want to eat, this is a great time to give
back.
How about making a Saturday trip to a soup kitchen to
volunteer your time? Encountering people in your own city who really do
struggle for daily meals can add some much-needed perspective.
Discover Purpose
What are you saving money towards in 2010? Do you have a family vacation, new
baby, cash-only Christmas plans, or need new clothes? Remind yourself with
pictures posted on the fridge that represent your savings goal. When you sit
down to a meal get excited about your next adventure and what it means for your
family. If you have kids, talk to them about the importance of paying back
debts, saving for summer camp, or giving to others.
Check out some books on frugal cooking, there are hundreds available from the
library and paperback book swap
for just the price of postage. Or check out a new food blog for recipes that
utilize what you have on hand.
Re-discover Family Time
When you've got all you need right at home to prepare and share a meal, the
time really does center around family. Instead of running out to pick up one or
two things, find a substitute and create a new tradition–you may even
discover a new taste when you introduce variety!
Set the table, light a candle, and share about your day. And don't dismiss
family time if you're single like I am; use this time to decompress and relax.
Enjoy your quiet time and then call your parents or a friend and ask about
their day. Or pick up some nice cards and write a note to a friend or family
member.
What I discovered
While I've never had a baking day or tried to prepare a month's worth of food
in one weekend, I survived the month of December without grocery shopping. When
I found myself thinking of eating out or running to the store for “just one
little thing” I would immediately challenge myself to recreate the meal at
home. And on the days when I was busy and pressed for time, a bowl of soup and
peanut butter with jelly sandwich worked just fine.
You will find yourself accomplishing more on this adventure than you ever
thought possible. Case in point: I've gone 31 days without Starbucks coffee!
In the end I still survived and I'm stronger for it. I
certainly believed I'd be down to mustard, olive, and spaghetti sandwiches by
now but I'm eating just as well as before. I've learned a lot of lessons which
I share on my blog. And I’m looking
forward to reading what y’all learn as well.
Are you up for a little adventure?
Kelly is a 25 year old single homeowner living in Northern
California. Despite a high cost of
living and tough job market, Kelly has created a cozy home without acquiring
debt. Now just $3,000 away from eliminating
student loans (the last of consumer debt), Kelly looks forward her first trip
abroad, thrift store decorating, and teaching financial awareness. Kelly blogs at My Friend Kelly.
photo by ex.libris
My 2010 Blogging Goals: Priorities, Personal Posts, Diversification, Community, and Networking
My 2010 Blogging Goals: Priorities, Personal Posts, Diversification, Community, and Networking
If you know me much at all, you know I'm a strong believer in having written goals. Not just dreams or ambitions or pie-in-the-sky ideas, but realistic, achievable goals.
At the end of every year, my husband and I sit down and review our goals from the previous year and make out a list of goals for the new year. We try to do this in all areas of our life–from personal to spiritual to vocational.
While we don't always complete all of these goals and some of them we decide to chuck altogether, just discussing where we're at and where we want to go and then writing it down is a very beneficial and motivational exercise in itself. And we've been amazed at how much more we accomplish when we are purposeful in how we live our lives.
As the saying goes, "If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every time." If you aim high, you might not quite make what you aim for, but you'll likely go much farther than you'd go if you aimed at little or nothing at all.
Over the next week, I'll be sharing some of my goals for 2010 with you here, not only so you can get a little peak into my life, but also because also because I've found public accountability to be a highly motivating thing.
To start things off, here are my blogging goals for 2010:
1) Keep God and my family as my first priority. If I manage to do nothing else this year but grow closer to God and spend the bulk of my time loving on my family, it will be a successful year. Everything else pales in comparison to those relationships.
While the computer can be an incredible tool and I love the opportunity I have to blog and interact with many of you, my family is my number one priority. Email, blogging, comments, Twitter, and Facebook all take a backburner to my husband and children.
One change I've made in the last few months is to set up parental controls on my computer so it is only accessible during certain times of the day–for an hour before my children wake up and for a few hours during our afternoon Quiet Time.
These self-imposed boundaries have been a huge help as they keep me accountable to make sure I am only spending a limited amount of time on the computer and am completely focused on meeting the needs of my family when my children are awake and my husband is home.
In the time that I do have set aside for blogging, here is what I want to focus my energies and efforts on:
2) Write more personal posts and share more pictures. While I plan to continue to share lots of great deals and bargains here like usual, I'm going to put forth a much greater effort in 2010 to share personal posts of things I'm learning, insights I'm gleaning, frugal tips and ideas, experiments and failures, and give you a little glimpse into our family's day-to-day lives.
3) Provide diverse content through guest posts. I have some excellent guest posts lined up for 2010 which I'm excited to share with you. My goal is to run one per week and I hope to include a variety of posts from individuals who come from a plethora of backgrounds and financial situations.
4) Foster community. We have some new features lined up for the site redesign we're rolling out in the next month which will encourage more interaction and help to foster more community and forum here. Many of you have asked for this so I'm thrilled to be able to launch these features in the near future.
5) Network with bloggers and encourage and help newer bloggers. A few months ago, a few bloggers and I banded together to create
SavvyBlogging–a website with the mission of helping others make the most of
their blogging efforts. What started as a simple idea for a
get-together, turned into a complete Round Table Dinner and
Discussion and an active Twitter stream packed with helpful tips and
ideas for taking your blog to the next level.
I also will be collaborating with other bloggers on some other exciting projects over the next year and am even jumping way outside of my "comfort zone" to speak at the Relevant Conference in October. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to encourage other bloggers and share a few things I've learned along the way.
Those are a few of my blogging goals for this coming year. Check out others' goals or link up yours here.
Our Journey Towards Saving 100% Down For Our First Home: Part 1
Our Journey Towards Saving 100% Down For Our First Home: Part 1
Yes, we paid cash for our home, but we don’t think most people should follow in our exact footsteps. While we hope to encourage and inspire you through our story to think outside the box and set big goals, we want you to adopt goals which are right for your own family — even if they are much different from our family’s. Every family is in a different situation with different needs, different circumstances and different longterm goals.
We think being debt-free and owning a home outright can be a wonderful thing, but there are many ways to get there and it’s going to look different for everyone. We chose to do something pretty counter-cultural and save up and pay cash upfront, but this was because we were in a unique position to do what we did. And it started way back when we were young…
A Wise Financial Upbringing
My grandpa had raised my dad that the only debt which he should ever have would be a mortgage on his house. My dad took this to heart and when I was very young, my parents, who had never had consumer debt, began working towards paying off their mortgage early. After they paid off their mortgage, they began saving to build a house debt-free.
When I was 10 years old, they sold our current paid-for residence and our family moved to a rundown trailer (which didn’t have heat, air conditioning or a stove!) while they built a house debt-free using the money from the sale of our paid-for house and the money they had saved. My dad was the general contractor and did a lot of the manual labor in order to save money. I recall going with my parents to store after store while they negotiated prices on everything from the trusses to the light fixtures to the toilets.
Within seven months, our home was finished enough for us to move out of the dilapidated trailer. And they had paid for everything in cash! Observing their commitment to live a debt-free life and the sacrifices and creativity they employed in order to accomplish it had a profound impact upon me.
When my husband was 11, his mom died after a long struggle with cancer. After her death, Jesse received a small sum of money and his dad wisely invested most of this money for him to use for college — which we are so grateful for! His foresight to do this is one of the main reasons our family is in the financial position we are today as that money, combined with what Jesse was able to save while working part-time through high school and college, added up to almost the exact amount needed to pay cash for law school ($35,000).
Jesse’s dad and stepmom also modeled careful financial stewardship: they always lived within their means, didn’t buy things they couldn’t afford and worked hard to pay off their house early. Jesse was inspired by this from an early age and started to hope he could follow in their footsteps when it came to finances.
Paying Cash for College
In his last year of high school, Jesse started applying for scholarships in earnest and he was able to get a full ride for the first two years of his undergrad. He also lived at home and worked part-time, so his expenses were very low and he was able to continue to save money.
He transferred to a private Christian college in Virginia in his third year. While he learned a lot from his year there, it cost an arm and a leg and he also wasn’t able to work much while going there. When he ran the numbers, he realized that if he were going to stay at the private college for his last year of undergrad, it would significantly cut into his law school savings. So he decided to move back home and finish out his final year at the state university he’d started at.
There was also another strong reason he chose to move back home: he was anxious to marry me! 🙂
Getting On the Same Page About Finances
When Jesse finalized his plans to move back home and finish his final year of undergrad at the state university, he started applying for scholarships there. We were thrilled when he was able to get an almost full scholarship again for his last year. He once again lived at home and worked part-time, enabling him to keep his expenses very low and allowing him to save money.
Soon after he moved back, we got engaged and started planning for our future. One of the things we spent a lot of time discussing and praying about was finances.
Since we had both had such an excellent financial upbringing and wise examples in our parents, neither of us had any debt, and we were very committed to living beneath our means. However, in crunching the numbers, we knew it was going to take some extreme creativity and frugality if we were going stay out of debt through law school.
Jesse had researched the costs of law school and determined it would likely be a little over $10,000 per year if he were to go to an in-state school and get a scholarship. He also had to add on the cost of books, which would be somewhere in the vicinity of $4,000 total.
All told we were looking at it costing right around $35,000 for three years of law school — which was almost the exact amount he had in savings thanks to the money his father invested for him plus the money the money he saved while working.
So we could pay cash for law school, but we also had to find a way to survive and pay our bills during those three years. We figured that we could live on right around $1,000 per month if we basically only spent money on the bare necessities. I had saved up $5,000 from working some part-time jobs before marriage, but we were hoping to keep that set aside as an Emergency Fund to use in case we had some crisis (and we did indeed end up using it a few months into law school when Jesse totaled his car!).
We were looking at having to find a way to come up with at least $36,000 extra in cash to pay for our basic living expenses for the next three years. That probably doesn’t seem like much to some of you, except we were hoping to start a family soon after we were married and we were committed to me being a stay-at-home mom once children came along. In addition, Jesse was limited to working only 20 hours per week per the law school rules (they limit students to only working part-time since the class load is so heavy in law school. And, in retrospect, I think anyone would be pretty out of their mind to try and work much more than that!)
We made a very barebones budget and we talked about every way possible we could come up with to cut expenses and bring in extra income. In addition, we discussed what sacrifices we’d be willing to make if it came down to it.
After much prayer, we knew this was the path God was calling us to; but it didn’t mean we weren’t scared or stressed sometimes, wondering how it was all going to work out. At the same time, though, we were excited to make a leap of faith and see God do miracles on our behalf.
Practicing Frugality From the Get-Go
We got married right before Jesse’s last semester of undergrad and we started practicing frugality from the get-go: we honeymooned in an old and inexpensive hotel in a small town in a neighboring state and splurged once to go out to eat at Subway. The rest of our honeymoon we ate food we’d brought from home or which we picked up at Dollar General while we were there!
Back from our honeymoon, we rented the cheapest apartment we could find and we outfitted it with furniture hand-me-downs we got from friends and family, plus a used couch we bought for $100. We both worked as many hours we could at our part-time jobs, we saved everything we possibly could and we learned that a strong marriage is not dependent upon how much money you spend, but on the depth of your love and commitment to one another.
Jesse graduated from the state university in May and we started making plans for our move to Topeka, Kansas, for him to go to law school. The real test of our faith and frugality was about to begin.
Tired of Missing Deals?Join Our Hot Deals List!
Click here to sign upCelebrating a Major Financial Milestone!
Early tomorrow morning our family is flying to California to visit some special friends of ours.
We're very excited about this trip for many reasons: we're looking forward to a vacation as a family; we can't wait to hang out with some incredible people; and we're anxious to get to introduce our children to what a real beach is.
But this trip is about much more than family, friends, and fun; we're taking this trip in celebration of reaching a huge financial milestone in our family.
If you've been reading my blog for more than a few months, you know that we got this weird idea to pay cash for a house and we set a big goal at the beginning of 2009 to have fully-funded our house fund by the end of the year. We started the year at 33% and it seemed very far-fetched to think we'd actually make our goal.
But God had other plans. He worked some miracles, moved some modern-day "mountains", and by His grace and enabling, I am thrilled to tell you that we are ending 2009 at our 100% goal! We're already seriously pursuing house-hunting and hope to have purchased a home debt-free by the end of April 2010, if not sooner.
Truly, "with God, all things are possible!"
This huge financial milestone did not happen instantaneously. It was not something we just up and decided to we'd aim for a few weeks or months ago. In actuality, our journey towards saving to pay 100% down for our first home began before we were even married!
On Thursday, I'm going to be sharing the nuts and bolts of our story and the struggles, lessons, difficulties, and victories we've encountered along the way. No matter where you are in your financial journey, I hope and pray our story is an inspiration to you to dream big dreams, set audacious goals, work hard, and not give up when the going gets tough. You just never know where it might lead!
Have you written down financial goals for 2010? If not, be sure to check out Simple Mom's post on the subject to nudge you in the right direction.
My Pantry Looks Different Than Your Pantry
Are you planning to join in the Eat From The Pantry Challenge? If so, you'll definitely want to check out this excellent article by FishMama on the importance of tailoring this challenge to the needs of your own family.
Remember, this is not a competition; this is an individual challenge and you get to make your own rules! Everyone's Eat From The Pantry Challenge should look different. Do what works for you.
For the record, I don't even have a pantry. Maybe someday, but for now, I'm happily using a metal shelf in our basement laundry/storage room. It works well–even if it's not some beautifully organized closet!
(Photo shown above is Myra's pantry. Read her post here on her Eat From The Pantry plan.)
Eat From the Pantry Challenge: My Goals and Plans (and come link up yours, too!)
Eat From the Pantry Challenge: My Goals and Plans (and come link up yours, too!)
It’s so easy to think we have to go to the store every single week (or maybe even more often!), but I’ve found that when I challenge myself to make do with what I already have on hand, we can usually eat pretty well. Plus, we can save a lot of money in the process!
In recent weeks, I’ve been feeling like we have all sorts of odds and ends in our pantry, refrigerator, and freezers which need to be used up. But with the busyness of the Christmas season, I didn’t have much creative juices or energy to come up with ways to use this random assortment of items. Thus, the Eat From the Pantry Challenge idea was born.
I’d been contemplating how I wanted to pull it off, when FishMama wrote and asked if I’d be interested in doing an Eat From the Pantry Challenge in January since she was also feeling like her cupboards were bulging. I guess great minds think alike, huh?!
So we brainstormed for a few days and decided we’d co-host an Eat From the Pantry Challenge on our blogs January 1-31, 2010. We’re attempting to avoid grocery shopping as much as possible and will be blogging what we’re feeding our families, creative recipes we’re concocting, and how we’re pulling this whole thing off.
To be perfectly honest, I’m still not exactly sure at this point how I am pulling this off because I’ve never done something like it before. Let’s just hope it doesn’t royally flop seeing as there’s no such thing as backing out now!
The good news is that I have all of you and FishMama so if I get in a bind or run out of ideas, I’ll know just where to turn. Whatever happens, I know it will be an adventure!
Now, let me say right upfront that I am not going to completely avoid buying any groceries for a month. We like to have fresh eggs, milk, and produce, so I plan to buy those at least three times during the month.
So here are our family’s goals for the Eat From The Pantry Challenge:
2) Only buy dairy (milk, eggs, cheese, etc.) and produce (fruits/vegetables).
3) Spend a total of $75 or less on groceries during the month of January.
4) Donate the extra $85 leftover (or more) that we would usually spend on groceries to Gleaning the Harvest.
Now for some caveats: we usually have dinner out once a week as a family (this comes out of our “Dates and Eating Out” envelope and is separate from our grocery money) so we plan to continue that. We also often eat a meal at our extended family’s house at least once per week and we plan to continue that, as well. Plus, we’ll actually be in California for the first few days in January visiting FishMama and her family so we aren’t going to officially start our Eat From The Pantry Challenge until we get home.
You can see FishMama’s goals and plan for her family here.
Would you like to join us in this Eat from the Pantry Challenge? We’d love to have you along! However, I want to encourage you to make your own rules according to what works best for your own family’s needs. Don’t feel obligated to do things the way we’ve decided to do it; do what works for you!
You can join in the entire month, or for two weeks, or just a week–it’s up to you! It’s not a competition, we just hope to encourage you to get creative and save money by wisely using things in your freezer, refrigerator, and pantry.
So, set goals for your own family for the Eat From The Pantry Challenge. And, if possible, consider setting aside the money you save by participating in this Challenge and either applying it towards debt, putting it into savings, or donating it to a worthy cause.
This is a simple way that you can squeeze a little extra out of a tight budget to help meet a financial goal or give to someone in need. It’s not required that you do this to participate, it’s just something I’d encourage you to consider.
At the end of each week in January, we’ll have a post with a Mr. Linky for you to share about what you ate from your pantry the past week and how the Challenge is going for you. You can also interact with others participating in this challenge on Facebook or follow along here on Twitter with the hashtag #pantry.
If you’re participating in the Eat From The Pantry Challenge, post about your goals and plan and then come back here and leave a direct link to your post below so others can read about it and be inspired. If you don’t have a blog, you can tell us about your plan and goals in the comments section of this post.
Eat From the Pantry Challenge–coming January 2010
I've been spending lots of time the last few weeks reflecting on this past year–the triumphs and struggles, the victories and failures. While doing so, I've been making out a list of concrete and realistic goals for 2010.
And I'm excited about what this next year holds–some of which involves this blog! I'll be sharing more details about some of my goals for 2010 and unveiling new features and additions to this blog (including a complete blog re-design!) over the next few weeks.
In the mean time, though, I wanted to tell you one big thing FishMama and I have up our sleeves. Instead of hosting another Freezer Cooking Day in January, we're going to be co-hosting a month-long Eat From the Pantry Challenge.
We realized in inventorying our cupboards, refrigerators, and freezers, that we have lots of food stocked up and many odds and ends which need to be used up. So during the month of January, we'll be challenging ourselves to stay out of the grocery store unless absolutely necessary and feed our families from what we already have on hand.
I've done this for a week or two at a time, but never for an entire month so it should certainly be an interesting adventure in creativity! We'll be blogging what we're eating, recipes we're concocting, and how we're pulling it off.
While no one is required to participate, we'd love to have you join us–whether for a week, two weeks, or the whole month!
Stay tuned for more details on the Eat From the Pantry Challenge coming early next week. If you're planning to participate, you can sign-up on the Facebook page here.
A broken tea cup, a humble manger, and the best deal I’ve ever gotten
A broken tea cup, a humble manger, and the best deal I’ve ever gotten
A few weeks ago, my rambunctious two-year-old accidentally knocked and broke a very special tea cup of mine. As I was sweeping the pieces of glass into a dustpan, I realized this was something one could easily find themselves upset over.
But instead of frustration, I found myself feeling grateful. Our lean law school years–when a hot cup of tea in my special tea cup was one of life's few luxuries–had taught me a profound lesson: things don't buy happiness.
It's a trite phrase, to be sure, but when you've found much happiness in spite of the lack of things and the lack of money to buy things, it seems anything but cliche.
There are likely many reading this right now who are experiencing financial difficulty. Maybe your husband is unemployed and there are no job possibilities on the horizon despite your incessant knocking on doors. Perhaps you have no idea how you are going to pay your rent or your mortgage and you're beyond tired of eating endless varieties of beans and rice.
No matter your current financial struggles, you can have happiness. In fact, you can find the very same kind of happiness I had when we were living on $800 a month in a little basement apartment in a new town with few friends.
You've likely read here about a lot of deals I've scored over the past few years, but today I want to tell you about the best "deal" I've ever gotten–one which changed my life forever and gave me lasting happiness and peace.
Two thousand years ago, in a humble manger in Bethlehem, a little baby was born. This baby, Jesus, would grow up to be the Savior of the world.
When I was 11 years old, I committed my life to Jesus and He become my personal Lord and Savior. Since then, my world has been turned upside down.
Where once I lived in constant fear and worry, I now have lasting peace. Where once I had emptiness, I now have true fulfillment.
Is my life perfect? Far from it! But I am loved unconditionally by the Creator of the universe. And that, my friends, is worth more than all the money in the world. He is what brings me true happiness.
As I swept up those pieces of shattered glass, I realized I wasn't upset over my favorite tea cup breaking because I have something which pales in comparison to a thousand expensive tea cups–I have Jesus.
The things of this world will fade, crack, break, and die. Jesus is Eternal. He will never leave me or forsake me. And someday, I get to spend Eternity with Him!
This Christmas, my prayer is that you also know Jesus, too. If not, don't delay another day until you get to know Him and commit your life to Him. (Go here to read more about Jesus and how He can change your world, too.)
I promise, this will be the best deal you'll ever find–worth more than all the money in the world can buy!
Merry CHRISTmas!