Saving money

Since I won't be going to the store for a few days I figured I would write about saving money. Specifically, what I and my family have done to save (or make) money over this weekend and today.

1. This is more of what we didn't do, we did not go out to eat. When we first started cutting back we would go out to lunch or dinner once a week. This month MOST of us have only gone out once and that was ONLY because it was #1 birthday. We went to Chili's but neither my husband or myself really enjoyed the food. That might partly have to do with the fact we are watching what we eat (I Lost 10 lbs!) but restaurant food is so salty in general. That was all I could taste.

2. We ate leftovers for lunch on Saturday and Sunday dinner. I was busy all day on Sunday (which is it's own number) and didn't feel like cooking.

3. Drove the 2001 truck instead of my 2008 Honda Odyssey for my shopping over the weekend. When I am going to be running around I would rather use the truck that has over 130,000 miles than my Odyssey that has 6000. We learned a HARD lesson in the summer about miles, condition and brand...lesson learned thank you very much. Now if we had only purchased a USED Honda Odyssey we would be better off. The vehicle we traded in, I (and yes I did most of it) had put 25,000 miles on it the first year alone. Purchased Nov 2005 traded in June 2008 with 77,000 miles on it and not in the greatest condition.

4. Saved the chicken back and wings from our Chicken fricassee dinner on Saturday to make chicken stock today. Even though it didn't make a whole lot of stock, it still made enough that I won't have to buy a few cans (though I do get those cans for $.02 each which is tax).

5. Served Chicken Fricassee for dinner to company, instead of an expensive piece of beef. The chicken was $.57lb, even had we had hamburgers those were $1.99lb.

6. Made the chicken stock today.

7. Took my son out to go pick up soda and beer cans on the road to earn him extra money. When you are 9 yrs old there are not a lot of ways to make money. I explained to him that I had read about someone that takes her 2 kids out to get cans from the sides of the road. Well, we went out for about 3 hours total and he got 2 trash bags worth of CRUSHED cans. I figured it out, it is about $.02 a can. Today when he came home from school he was ready to head out again today! Side note, people are PIGS!

8. Hung my clothes to dry INSIDE the house. We have an HOA rule that we can't hang outside, not that I really want to with it being 45 outside anyways.

I hung the shirts on hangers (all our shirts are put on hangers anyway), and the socks I went ahead and paired them up before I clipped them to the hangers.