Saving Families Money Since 2007
A reader sent me a link to the Zero Waste Home blog yesterday. I was inspired! Here’s a video which Yahoo! did on this family that shares how they are seeking to live a Zero Waste Life:
Now, most of us probably won’t ever achieve zero waste in our homes. However, I’m motivated to think of small steps I can take to reuse, reduce and recycle.
They have a list of tips here which you’ll find interesting.
What simple ways are you seeking to reduce waste in your home? I’d love to hear!
This Easy Lasagna Casserole has been a staple recipe in our house for as long as I can remember. It is SO versatile and you can just throw in whatever you have on hand. It ALWAYS turns out yummy! (Psst! You might also love these Easy Individual Mini Lasagnas — perfect for on-the-go meals, busy schedules, single people, or hungry teens!)
We love lasagna… but I rarely buy lasagna noodles because there aren’t as many sales or coupons available for lasagna noodles as there are for spiral and rotini noodles.
So, a number of years ago, I re-did our regular lasagna recipe substituting spiral/rotini noodles for lasagna noodles and dubbed it “Lasagna Casserole”. It has since become a staple recipe at our home and it’s one of the first things I consider making when I find marked-down cottage cheese!
Not only is this casserole so delicious, but it’s also very frugal (and easy) to make.
Back when we were first married, we just left the meat out of this recipe, since it wasn’t in our budget. We like it better with meat these days, but it’s still hearty as a meatless casserole.
The best part about this easy recipe is that I never make this recipe exactly the same. It really depends on what I have on hand — so feel free to mix up the ingredients based on what you have in your freezer or pantry, or even what’s on sale at your grocery stores.
I seriously just use whatever pasta, cheese, tomatoes, and pasta sauce I have gotten recently with coupons and sales, so it always turns out a little bit differently. But it’s always good! Here are some suggestions for variations:
1. Brown ground beef and onion until cooked.
2. While the meat is cooking, boil the noodles according to the package directions.
3. Mix spaghetti sauce with diced tomatoes and browned ground beef.
4. Set 1/2 cup of mozzarella cheese aside to sprinkle on the top.
5. Combine the rest of the mozzarella cheese, cottage cheese, beaten eggs, parsley, and salt and pepper.
6. In a 7″ x 11″ pan, layer a third of the meat sauce, then the noodles, then the cheese mixture.
7. Repeat two more times.
8. Sprinkle with cheese.
9. Bake at 350º for 30 to 45 minutes (until bubbly).
10. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving.
This casserole tastes great with a simple side salad, fruit, and garlic toast. It also pairs well with most vegetables and any type of bread/rolls you have in the house.
Let the casserole come to room temperature, cover, and refrigerate any leftovers.
You can also put single-servings into smaller storage containers and freeze for easy lunches.
You can cover it with aluminum foil for the last 15 minutes if the cheese is getting too brown.
You might have too much sauce, or it might just need to sit for a bit after baking. Try tenting your pan with foil and letting the casserole sit on the counter for 10-15 minutes after it’s done baking.
Make sure to share and save it on your favorite platform below!
Meal time just got so much easier!
I post a lot of free House Party opportunities and some of you are still not convinced whether you should sign up or not. So I thought you’d enjoy seeing this email from Kim:
I just wanted to thank you for posting about the Philadelphia Cooking Creme House Party. I was chosen to host a party this March and received a great party pack full of fun freebies! I’ve attached a picture. -Kim
Secrets of a Former Credit Card Thief is a fascinating article and one which everyone who uses debit and/or credit cards needs to read in order to protect themselves:
We’ve all heard the standard tips about preventing identity theft and credit card fraud. But what would a real identity thief tell you if he had the chance? Dan DeFelippi, who was convicted of credit card fraud and ID theft in 2004, says simply this: You can’t be too careful.
DeFelippi, 29, mostly made fake credit cards with real credit card information he bought online. “I would make fake IDs to go with them, and then I’d buy laptops or other expensive items in the store and sell them on eBay,” he says. DeFelippi was also involved in several other kinds of scams, including phishing schemes that exploited AOL and PayPal customers. Committing credit card fraud is still “ridiculously easy to do,” he says. “Anyone with a computer and $100 could start making money tomorrow.”
After his conviction, DeFelippi faced eight years in prison, but under a plea deal he agreed to community service and to pay back more than $200,000 in restitution. He also worked for the U.S. Secret Service, helping to infiltrate the online underground and training agents in the latest fraud techniques. His help led to the arrests of five to 15 people over two years. Today, he’s a Web developer at a graphic design company in Rochester, N.Y. He agreed to take an hour with CreditCards.com to share his story and his top tips on how to protect yourself.
Read the full article.
Guest Post by Sarah from Clover Lane
So much of what we read, see and hear today are problems. Things to be solved, discussed and debated. Many of these are trivial things, but it’s hard to not get sucked in by it all. The busy-ness of being a mother and all the duties that it entails sometimes means that days fly by with me never thinking of all the things I take for granted.
I catch myself sometimes complaining about the chore of grocery shopping all the while I’m pushing my cart in a clean store with money in my pocket, throwing food in my cart for my children’s stomachs. What is there to complain about? How can this be one bit of an inconvenience to me? How many mothers in this world would give anything to be able to pick and choose what to feed their family?
I hear myself sighing loudly about the laundry, yet we are warm and clothed and have cozy beds to sleep in! I hear myself looking at my little chores with dread, but I have a house to clean, indoor plumbing and fresh water!
The last couple of years I’ve really tried to make an effort to stop myself when I hear those complaints creeping in, and thinking, “What is the other side of this?”
Instead of complaining, I try to change my outlook to one of happiness and total gratitude for how blessed I am.
Sarah is a mother of five who blogs at Clover Lane. She coined the terms “Vintage Parenting” to describe how she strives to raise her children, using old-fashioned values to bring a different perspective to the pressures we all face today. She strives for the simpler, slower, family-based life.
Sabrina emailed in the following simple tips for saving time, money and energy in the kitchen:
::Buy extra veggies when they are at their lowest price, then chop and freeze them. I have found this is usually near the end of their season.
If I find bell peppers for an awesome price, I will buy maybe 8-10, take them home, slice half of them and chop the other half. They then get thrown into a freezer bag and into the freezer. I do this with onions also and it’s perfect for stir-fry.
This will save you lots of money! For example, I bought peaches for $o.49/lb in season, and my store usually has them for $2.99/lb out of season. Great deal!
::Buy discounted meat, and freeze or cook immediately. The stores will not sell outdated meat, so they are trying to get rid of it before it expires. The grocery store near my house marks the meat down two days before the “sell by” date.
I can get a five-pound pork roast for $2.00! I actually have two pork roasts, two Angus beef roasts and two packages of boneless skinless chicken strips in my freezer now, and I purchased these all for under $10 total.
::Keep inventory. I keep a pantry, freezer and refrigerator inventory list in my household notebook. It consists of a list of items, and boxes to check as I use up the items. I put one slash in each box to show quantity, and as I use the items, I put a slash in the opposite direction, turning it into an “x”. This helps you know what you don’t have to buy, and it helps you put meals together because you know what you have.
I don’t have any calculations as to how much money is saved doing any of these, but I will say that I have been following MoneySavingMom.com for about a year now, and the above tips along with the things I’ve learned at this site helped me keep my grocery budget under $40/week (and I live in California, not a cheap place to live!).
Lasagna Casserole — recipe coming on Thursday
We have a really busy week this week (I try not to plan more than one or two extra things each week outside of our normal routine and schedule, but somehow I totally didn’t follow that rule of thumb this week!), so I’m sticking to super simple meals for our menu. You know, the kind which can be whipped together in 15 minutes or less.
Breakfasts:
Homemade Granola, Fruit
Toast, Scrambled Eggs, Fruit
Cold Cereal, Juice x 2
Orange Cream Smoothies, English Muffins
Baked Oatmeal, Fruit
Overnight French Toast Casserole, FruitLunches:
Leftovers x 3
Macaroni & Cheese, carrots, apple slices
Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwiches, fruit
Cheese Quesadillas, frozen veggies, apple slices
SmartOnes meals, frozen veggies, orangesDinners:
Marinated Chicken, Toast, Frozen Veggies, Fruit
Sausage Potatoes Onions & Carrots in the Crockpot, English Muffins, Fruit
Brown Bag Burritos (from the freezer), Green Rice Casserole (from the freezer), Fruit
Lasagna Casserole, Broccoli, Bread Machine Buttery Rolls
Dinner with Friends (we’re bringing a veggie tray and dessert)
Dinner at Extended Family’s House
Dinner Out
What are your favorite 15-minute meals?
We spent all day driving up to Kansas City and back and attending the Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover Live Event. It was our third time to attend and we always learn something new each time. We took Jesse’s brother with us which made it even more exciting since it was his first time to attend this event.
Jon Acuff was there (of Stuff Christians Like fame) and we enjoyed chatting with him for a few minutes about blogging and how he juggles everything he does. If you’ve not read his blog, you’ll definitely want to check it out. He’s an amazingly gifted and funny writer. I’m halfway through his book Gazelles, Baby Steps and 37 Other Things Dave Ramsey Taught Me Debt. It’s hilarious and so poignantly true.
As far as my shopping trips this week, here’s what all we ended up buying:
Dillon’s Shopping Trip #1: spent $13.98 — see the full details and coupon match-ups here
Health Food Store Shopping Trip: spent $5.32 — see the full details here
Target Shopping Trip: spent $0 (used a gift card) — see the full details and coupon match-ups here
Dillon’s Shopping Trip #2: spent $8.05 — see the full details and coupon match-ups here
Aldi Shopping Trip: spend $30.34 — see the full details here.
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.
A testimony from DeAnna
My husband and I only take one vacation a year and usually try to plan it around October 4th in order to celebrate our wedding anniversary as well.
He is a truck driver and I am a nanny and full-time student (recent graduate, actually!), so money and vacation time are both pretty tight. However, we managed to save up enough money to not only go on a five day cruise to Cozumel, Mexico but to also take his mother and my grandmother along for the ride — all expenses paid! They’ve never been on a “real” vacation before, and his father died just six months ago, so we felt that it’d be a lovely gift to share with them. Both women live on disability/social security, so we knew that we’d be covering the whole bill.
We used the $3000 to pay for gasoline from Kentucky to Miami, Florida (roughly $200 roundtrip; my car gets 40mpg, thankfully!), two hotel rooms for two nights, food for the trips down and up, spending money for everyone on the ship and ports of call and $250 for the overpriced but beautiful on-ship photos.
My husband also set aside $400 of that money to cover bills for that week, since he does not get paid vacation. We did not end up spending all of the money set aside (had $800 left!) so when we returned and learned that one of our dogs caused $66 dollars of damage, we were able to pay without blinking an eye.
A cruise worked well for our family because it was an all-inclusive vacation and provided many activities for everyone to do at all hours of the day.
Additionally, by booking and paying ahead, we saved a great deal of money. We saved $200 per stateroom just by booking three months in advance!
I think that my husband’s favorite part of the whole vacation would have to be the amazing food and 24-hour room service, since he never gets waited on at home and we’re too busy to cook elaborate meals.
For me, a week of pampering and getting dressed up for dinner was worth the small sacrifices made along the way and not having to work, study and keep house definitely has me saving money already for next year’s trip!
DeAnna is a recent graduate of Austin Peay State University and a full-time nanny who is currently applying to law schools and hoping to keep her family’s debt as low as possible. She and her husband of two years, Brandon, are parents to six special needs “furchildren” and are striving to be debt-free and career-secure before having children some day.
Have you saved up and paid cash for something — large or small? Submit your story for possible publication here.
While there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot to report this month, we were able to bump our retirement up to 10% of our income and we’ve also been working on slowly funding our children’s educational savings accounts with the amount we’ve decided to put in them. So here’s the rundown:
1. Significantly increase our giving to needs in our community and around the world. This is an ongoing goal, so we’re keeping it uncrossed off from the list.
2. Pay cash for a replacement washer and dryer for our very used set.
3. Pay cash for a replacement for Old Blue Van.
4. Pay cash for a couch for our basement family room.
5. Pay cash for bunk beds for the girls.
6. Fully fund our IRAs.
7. Bump up our retirement savings to 10% of our income.
8. Fund our children’s educational savings.
9. Double our Emergency Fund Savings (Instead of having around six month’s worth of expenses set aside, we’re planning to set aside a year’s worth of expenses.)
10. Save for our next BHAG.
We’d love to hear about your recent financial goals and successes! You can post about it on your blog and leave your link in the comments. Or, just share about your progress/goals in the comments. Let’s all keep each other accountable to be better stewards of our resources!
In addition to Aldi and Target, we also made a quick stop at Dillon’s last night. Here’s what we purchased:
3 boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios — on sale for $2.18, used 3 $0.55/1 coupons (these “doubled” to $1 off), $1.18 per box after coupons
2 Green Giant Steamers — on sale for $1.29, used 2 $0.50/1 coupons (doubled), $0.29 per bag after coupons
2 bunches of red-taped ripe bananas — $0.29 per pound, $1.28 total
1 package of Brats — marked down to $2.29
1 tub Cool Whip — used my last free coupon they sent with the gift basket
My total after coupons with tax was $8.05
I also noticed they had Mom’s Best Cereal on sale for $1.50. I didn’t have the $0.75/1 coupons with me, but those will make the cereal only $0.50 per box after the coupon “doubles” to $1 off.
I stopped by Aldi expressly to stock up on fruit and a few other staples. I was sad that they were completely out of the $0.99 pineapple and $1.49 strawberries, but happy for the great deals on apples and oranges. I might have to make another trip to get the strawberries and pineapple as they told me they’d be getting in another shipment tomorrow.
Here’s what I ended up getting:
Chicken Breasts — $5.49
Milk — $2.80
Three bags of apples — $1.29 per bag
Paper Plates — $1.29
Tortillas — $0.99
Kidney beans — $0.55
Cream of Chicken soup — $0.59
Applesauce — $1.19
Two bags of oranges — $1.49 per bag
Oil — $2.29
Butter — $2.38 (Yikes! This is much more than I usually pay. Must. look. for. a. sale. on. butter. stat! Or, buy a milk cow. :))
Carrots — $0.99
Two cans of refried beans — $0.69 each
Raisins — $1.49My total was $30.34 including tax.
And no one flip out that I bought plastic plates, okay? We’re going to be hosting some folks for meals over the next few weeks and I just decided to make it easy on myself and stick with plastic so we didn’t have to mess with dishes when we had company.
Also, those of you who are observant will notice I bought oil. It’s been months since I’ve bought oil, but I’ve been hankering for some Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins and they just really taste better with oil instead of butter or applesauce or coconut oil. So I caved. Yes, I did.
Coffeemate Creamer – $1.46
Used $0.75/1 printable
$0.71 after coupon
Reach Floss — $0.97
Used 2 $1/1 printable coupons
Free after coupons
Rimmel Mascara — $2.99
Used $2/1 coupon
$0.99 after coupon
Cool Whip — used one of the free coupons they sent with my gift basket
Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut cereal — $2.50
Used $1/1 coupon from the 1/23 RedPlum insert (expires 3/6)
$1.50 per box
Kashi TLC Bars — $2.65
Used $2/1 coupon printed from RecycleBank
$0.65 after coupon
My total was $4.79 after coupons. I used some of my gift cards I earned last week to pay for my total, so I paid $0.00 out of pocket.
Lisa emailed in the following testimonial which I found so encouraging:
About three years ago, my husband and I were in big financial trouble. We each carried a checkbook and a debit card that shared the same bank account. We would each make daily purchases using checks and debit.
Most of the time, the purchases were for small items such as coffee, gas, lunch, etc. We were never very good with keeping track of our money because we were always broke anyway and we felt like we were just robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Every week, we would go into the negative in the bank account because we would be out of money, yet we still needed to provide food for the family and put gas in the tanks. The NSF charges applied to our account multiplied with each and every purchase we made, sometimes even adding up to more than what our direct deposit checks would cover on payday.
This continued for several months and we found ourselves in a big black hole that we could not get ourselves out of. The total of the bank fees alone totaled to over $3,000 in a three month period. Needless to say, all of our bills got behind including our rent.
It was a huge mess and we were struggling to turn it around. We decided the only way to stop the bleeding was to close the bank account and stop using checks and debit cards all together. We have never used credit cards so that was not an issue.
We closed the checking account and opened a savings account. We made a written budget that included putting money away for an emergency fund and we started using cash only for everything.
Since then, we keep all our cash in the savings account and we have to go to the bank to make a withdraw each time we needed money. We have not turned back.
We continue to use cash only. I can look around my house and honestly tell you that everything in it is paid for completely with cash. Now, we never have to worry about a debit purchase not getting posted before a deposit.
If we need or want something, we save up for it and purchase it with cash. We bought a new stainless steel kitchen appliance package, a nice HDTV and TV stand, our sofa, our dining table, as well as our car — all paid in full with cash.
Using a cash system has taught me patience. I have to save money before I can buy anything, and I wait for the best deals to come around for things that I would have bought on impulse in the past! I now believe that even only one overdraft charge is one too many.
We all make mistakes and of course, our family’s mistakes got way out of control. We had to be honest with ourselves and be willing to make changes to better our lives according to the truths that we know. My husband and I have never been good with managing our money and therefore, we had to force ourselves to make drastic changes.
Now, we are working together in our finances. We are no longer slaves to the bank card. We assign each dollar that we make. It is freeing, not restricting.
We are debt free! There is help and there is always hope!
Lisa simply wants to share her lessons learned. She knows that many people are in the same boat as she was and are afraid to admit it. She believes it is nothing to be ashamed of, and that we can all comfortably live within our means if we just commit ourselves to putting the effort into it and it pays!