Healthy Cheap Food

Well, it’s spring time and the spring cleaning is done. It’s amazing how much stuff we have acquired in just the last 6 months that we don’t use anymore. Usually I am inclined to have a spring yard sale when we have this much extra stuff, but our house is not the best place for a yard sale and we may not get enough traffic to make it worthwhile.

That’s why we are thinking about taking our stuff to a swap meet. It’s cheaper than taking out an ad in the newspaper and there is a lot of foot traffic there. That means we can make even more extra money. It looks like we will doing it as a family outing.

It’s been really nice having our own home now. It’s nice knowing that we will eventually own and that we are building equity right now. That means that we are making money off of our home payments. It’s almost like a savings plan.

A lot of people are interested in how we did and ask us often. First off, we got fixer upper. This meant that we could build sweat equity right from the get-go. Secondly, we shopped around for the best loan at the lowest rate possible so we could save on our payments. All in all, we’ve have a very positive home buying experience.

It’s spring time now and that means it’s time to start thinking about garage sales. Not only are garage sales a great way to get good used stuff at great prices, but it’s also a great time to unload all of those things that you thought you needed but you really could live without.

I like finding clothes at garage sales. The prices are better than at the thrift stores and sometimes the quality is much better. It helps us save a lot of money on clothes for the kids.

We will be having a garage sale this Spring ourselves. We have collected many things that we don’t use and we might as well get some cash from them.

I was just thinking about what a neighbor of ours is doing to earn extra money. He has a few paper routes and he and his son deliver newspapers every morning. For a few hours of work every morning, they make several hundred extra dollars a month. It’s not the best sideline, but it does pay the lot rent and utilities here in the trailer park.

Another neighbor donates plasma for extra money. She makes $150 a month just selling her blood. That’s not too bad, between her and her boyfriend, they have enough to pay for their lot rent just from selling plasma.

Still another neighbor is a canner. He goes out every day and he collects recyclable stuff for extra money.

Lots of ways to earn money. What do you do?

If you are really interested in saving money and controlling your expenses than you need a budget. A budget will keep track of all of your income while at the same time keeping track of all of your expenditures. You can easily at a glance see how your finances are. By keeping to a budget, you can save money and reach your financial goals.

That’s the advice always given, but it ignores one important idea. Your budget needs to be flexible in some respects. It’s a good idea to take a look at your budget every few months to make changes needed to keep your budget current.

We normally do not go out to eat very often. It’s an expensive luxury that seems rather wasteful. I much prefer cooking at home where I can better control the quality of food that my family eats, but we like to splurge from time to time.

This splurge meant going out for pizza. It’s been awhile since the last time we went out to buy pizza, but it’s always a family favorite. We ordered a family sized pizza as always. When the pizza arrived at the table, I was a bit shocked. It seems like I remember the family sized pizza being a lot bigger.

I don’t know if it was a joke or an attempt at cost cutting. I know I’d prefer seeing a slight increase in prices while keeping the sizes the same. All of us went home a bit hungry and I ended up having to make up sandwiches anyways. What a loss.

I am so excited about the coming tax credit. It looks like we will be getting a total of $1200 for the tax credit when it gets mailed to us in May. My husband and I have already talked about what we will be buying with our tax credit.

It is going to be used as savings. You got that right. We don’t have much debt and we are doing our best to live frugally so the best place for the money right now is in our savings. It will be for a rainy day emergency and I think that’s good. It should help us reach our goal of 3 months of expenses saved up.

That means that we are going to be able to start devoting our savings into more long term investments. This will be very good because I have been particularly interested in that for awhile and now my husband will let me try my hand at trying to invest in some mutual funds Yippee!

When my husband and I recently bought our new home, we did a lot of looking around to find the right kind of mortgage. Luckily, he is a real estate agent so he was able to help us find a very good mortgage, but it still required a lot of looking around and comparing rates.

One thing we found was that even a small difference in rates could translate into a lot of money over the term of the loan. The difference would equate to thousands of dollars so naturally my husband and I knew we had to get the cheapest rate possible. We also made sure the fees were the lowest possible as well.

If you want to really save money on your next mortgage, try to be frugal and don’t accept the first offer from the first mortgage company or broker you come across. Do shop around so you can save good money. It’s better that you have the money than the mortgage company, right?

Frugal living is what many of us need to do with the economy doing what the economy is doing. It’s tough and I know some friends who have lost their jobs. They have had a tough time of it because they weren’t prepared for the loss of income.

When one of my best friends lost her job, I decided that I would make sure that my family was prepared. One of the things we have done is buying extra food each time I go to the market. I make sure that we have some staple food back. That means extra rice, flour and canned goods.

A second thing I have done is make sure that we have a budget and we stick to it. It means coming up with a weekly food budget that we adhere to and a monthly expenses budget that we adhere to. If we are over budget on gas for the car, we don’t drive.

It was very tough when we first started doing this, but now it is much easier and the savings are good.