January Food Spending Week 1, Meal Plan January Week 2

*I am taking part in Precious' MONEY SAVING CHALLENGE again for 2012.  You can find her blog FRUGAL MAKES CENTS and a list of other participants and their blogs  HERE.

Check it out.  You might find some new ideas for incorporating frugality into your life there!*


I love searching around for old photos and advertisements featuring kitchens from years gone by.  These are mostly the kitchens from my youth in the 1960's or earlier.  

Today's kitchen......

The house design is one of those California style, open concept homes of the 1950's-the early1970's.  The cabinets are enameled metal with those funky colors, which put them squarely in the 1950's to early 1960's timewise.  I like that there is only 1 set of overhead cabinets  and 1 strip of the kitchen is open above the floor units.  The two tone pink and turquoise is a tad much for my eyes tho.lol 
And the unit on the far left looks like it's a washer or dryer?  Laundry facilities in the kitchen were oh, so modern back then and never really continued here in the States, once that era was over.

Enough of that, onward to the Meals and Food Spending. 8-)


Last week's meal plan is in the books.  Here is what actually happened....

SUNDAY--Leftovers-Pizzas, BBQ

MONDAY--Taco Bell

TUESDAY--Ham, Harvard Beets, Mashed Potatoes

WEDNESDAY--Leftovers

THURSDAY--Rigatoni and Meat Sauce, Salad, Garlic Bread

FRIDAY--Chinese Take-Out
SATURDAY--Chicken Parmesan, Brussel Sprouts

The leftover ham and barbecue pork, along with some fresh mushrooms I didn't use after Christmas got frozen.  Everyone was tired of eating those two proteins now, so it's either freezer it for later or toss it, and we just don't toss food in this house anymore!

The food spending was high last week.

In all, I spent $109.87 last week at the grocery/drug stores.

I made 8 trips to various stores....3 to Rite-Aid, 2 to Big Lots, 2 to the local Shursave market and 1 trip to Save-a-Lot.   Reg. retail of $276.73(including the Rite-Aid items)so I saved 60.30% last week(mostly due to the Rite-Aid savings)....without R-A items it would have been 34.80% savings.
And besides Rite-Aid, I didn't use a single coupon. ;-)

1 Week in and I've spent 1/3 of my January food budget.

Going into Week 2, we have leftover penne pasta, meat sauce and some odds and ends.

This week's menu.....

SUNDAY--bucket of KFC *weekend special for $11*

MONDAY--Mac and Cheese, Broccoli

TUESDAY--homemade Chili, Cornbread

WEDNESDAY-- Fish, Wild Rice, Peach Salad

THURSDAY--Leftovers-fried chicken/mac and cheese/chili or ?

FRIDAY--homemade Pizza, carrot & celery sticks w/dressing
SATURDAY--Kielbasa on rolls, Onions, Ginger Carrots

I plan on using the leftover pasta to make mac and cheese(as there is a lot left), the leftover meat sauce will go into the crockpot chili(a small container of corn that's hanging out in the fridge will go into the cornbread that evening).

Other than the chicken we had Sunday night, there is no other take-out being served here this week.....crossing fingers.

Items needed for this menu.....I have everything needed to make/serve this menu. 
There is, however, a Catalina Deal on Nesquick at Weis this week which I may run, as the stockpile needs refilling.  If I run the deal 4 times I'll net 16 canisters + 4 other items and it will cost me $56.80 for all(with a $5 Cat Q leftover).  My cost will be 40% off reg. retail(not counting the leftover Cat Q).  If I can find some coupons to use, the deal will be better.  At any rate, those 16 canisters should get us through to next year.

So what is everyone else eating this week?  

Sluggy

I Must Be Out of My Mind.....or Not

Yes, I spent money!
I spent it non-frugally.
And I spent it on.....gasp!....myself!!

Let me start at the beginning....
Last month when Daughter came home from college for the Winter break, I had to take her clothes shopping.  She had to do job shadowing this month at the dr.'s office and she has an interview at the Medical College next week, so she needed some business/professional clothes--2 dress slacks, a blazer, 2 blouses.  We hit Fashion Bug first(sales and I had a gift card)and found nothing.  We hit Salvation Army and found a blazer and 1 shirt.  Then we hit Kohl's and found 2 pr. of slacks and another shirt-all on sale.  I also found some pants for #2 son and a new comforter for his bed(which I have been promising him for about a year)-all on sale while we were there AND they had that Spend $50/Get $10 in Kohl's cash thing going all month, so we got items on sale and got Kohl's cash for later.
I also went back and made some Christmas purchases the following week.
In the end, I had $60 in Kohl's Cash to spend during the week between Christmas and the day after New Years.

After Christmas, Daughter gave me the pitiful look and said she needed new sweat pants, so I gave her $40 of the KCash and sent her up to look at sweat pants.
She came home with .02¢ left on the KCash and 2 pair of pants.
"$20 for sweat pants?!?!", I screeched.
"No, nice casual pants I can use as sweat pants", said she.
"If you wanted/needed sweats you should have gone to Kmart/Target/Salvation Army and bought sweats for way less than $20 a pr. and not spent MY KCash!!", I retorted.
Ugh.

So I had $20.02 left in KCash to spend.  I don't buy clothes for myself at Kohl's and I had picked up all the non-clothing items I wanted/needed there before Christmas so I decided that I would go buy myself a 'nice' purse.

My current purse came from Target online and cost $5 on clearance.
The one before that was some outrageous amount like $7 on clearance at Kmart.
As you can see, I am not about carrying around an expensive hunk of faux leather/plastic/fabric on a strap status symbol that costs about a week's pay.
But I thought I'd throw caution to the wind and get myself a marked down to $20/usually much more expensive purse with this KCash.

Thus began the great Purse Hunt.......
Hubs decided to accompany me on this safari into the jungle of the purse dept. at Kohl's.  Just about every purse was marked down from 40-60% off, which helped my KCash go further and helped me NOT to have convulsions when I looked at the price tags on the bags.
WTF?!?!?
$110 for a hunk of plastic with 2 handles that you can cram the stuff you can't leave home without into?
Ok, so it was $60 on sale, but even so!!

An identical bag was only $30 on sale but that was because it did NOT have the name Vera Wang on it.

Too bad that one didn't meet the Sluggy bag test--1 strap not 2, the strap has to be long enough for me to carry said bag on my shoulder but not too long that it hangs to my knees, and the strap has to be substantial enough that it won't fall apart within a short time even though the bag is still in good condition.

All the bags that would have not cost me anything OOP were tiny "going out on a date" bags or for a nubile  20-something gal bags.  I could have maybe wedged my wallet into one of those but keys?....checkbook?....lip stuff?....phone?......never would have fit.

After a solid hour of bag hunting, in which I believe I tried on every single style/color/brand configuration of bag they had I found 1 that met the Sluggy criteria.

*Satchel style
*Colors black and grey with purple, fuschia and teal-they had a tone-on-tone of this same fabric in black/charcoal I liked better but they didn't have this style bag done in that fabric
*Strap a good size, not rolled so it stays on the shoulder and extra wide at the center(you can't see that in this shot)to reduce 'slipping' plus strap width reduces change of strap breaking prematurely
*Not too many pockets/zippered compartments inside and ample enough for all my stuff
*Price?.....well even on sale and using $20.02 in free KCash I shelled out $13.04(After an additional 15% off the amount after using the KCash and then state sales tax).

So it's not a Vera Wang, a J-Lo, a Dana Buchman or whomever Designer bag.  I don't care.
I did still spend more than I wanted to but I can live with this price.
Hopefully it lasts me for a good long time.

Of course, while we were in Kohl's Hubs decided to look at the men's business dress shirts and he ended up bringing home 2 of those as well.  My first inclination was to put the bag back and used the KCash on his shirts.
But I stopped myself and got the bag.
I saved $34 Thousand of our income last year dagnabbit!.....I DESERVE that $14 purse! ;-)

I like my purse and I am content with the money I spent.
That's all that really matters, isn't it?
That and the fact that I didn't put this on a credit card. 8-))

Sluggy

Ever Slow Sluggy Saves-A-Lot on Meat

 **This post is linked to the 2012 Money Saving Challenge over at Frugal Makes Cents.**

I confess I am a slow learner.
Nay, I am a VERY slow learner!

For the last few years, Hubs and I have taken short mini vacations to Ocean City MD in the fall, after the hoards of sun worshipers leave and the place is once again civilized and empty.

As is my frugal habit, we do our souvenir shopping at food stores down there.  Hardly ever stuff, just food.
One such outfit we frequent is Save-a-Lot.  That's the penny pinching cheaper brother of the mega Acme, Albertson's or Jewel-Osco chains.  All are owned by SuperValu.
There is a Save-a-Lot in West Ocean City we like to stroll through and often bring non-perishable foodstuffs home from.
We get home from those trips and I lament that we don't have access to those Save-a-Lot deals around here.

Well the other day, I suddenly realized that yes, WE DO have a Save-a-Lot in a town about 20 mintues south of here!
Yes, I'm rocking the Homer Simpson "Doh!" now. ;-)

Having great weather for a January yesterday, Daughter and I took a ride down there to do some browsing and we came back with this....

The box of Easy Mac in back is for Daughter to take back to college....not a great deal at $2.59.
The 2 no name mac & cheese dinner boxes were .39¢ so I bought them for Daughter to try while she is home. *She is addicted to that chemical cheese thing.lol
The cole slaw was also not a frugal buy at $2.99 and the Tootsie Pops are my weakness at $1.19 a bag.lol

Moving on to the actual deals here....
The bananas were .38¢ lb. and the 1lb. hunk of liverwurst(Hubs addiction)was $2.49.

They had 1lb. packs of bacon for $1.99.  Not a name I know but the slices looked real nice and thick.  You can barely touch bacon around here on SALE for $3.99, forget regular retail which is upwards of $6.99!
I found Gwaltney(a well-known name in pork down South that is hardly EVER seen up here!)roll sausage, 12 oz. rolls for .99¢ each.  At that price, the 1 lb. rolls I am use to buying/seeing would be $1.32, which is an amazing price!
The store also had country ham!!.....biscuit slices, ends, side meat, steaks and whole country hams!  The whole hams were $1.99 lb......I think I actually squealed with delight when I saw that.lol
I bought 3 rolls of sausage and I will definitely be back for more later. ;-)

But the best were the prices at the fresh meats counter.  Swift Pork Tenderloins for $1.99 lb.  I bought one that was just under 5lbs. and plan to cut it into chops.  They had Angus ground beef for $1.79 lb. and boneless/skinless chicken breasts for $1.38 lb.   I also bought 2 packages of discounted/UTOF sirloin tips marked down to $1.79 lb.
The fresh meat came to 4.77 lb pork loin, 5.80 lb chicken breasts, 6.01 lb. ground beef, 1.60 lb sirloin tips.
Add the 3 rolls sausage, 3 packs of bacon, 1lb. of liverwurst and the non-meat items for a total OOP of $55.40.  Regular retail around here would have been $75.86.
And nary a coupons was in sight......

The store isn't that far and I have other errands I can run to make the trip more economical.

The worst part?  It's next door to a liquor store and there was a drunk staggering around the parking lot as we left soliciting for money so he could "fortify" his bottle of orange juice he carried with him, taking swigs of every now and again.

If you have a Save-A-Lot in your area, go check them out!

Sluggy

Rebating and Side Monies for 2011 Totals

Well to sum up my rebating efforts in 2011 were, to use a kind term, Half Assed!lol

In 2011 I received $433.22 in rebates.  This is way down from my previous year's total of $1160+. HERE is my post from last year on my 2010 Rebating Totals.

Keep in mind that I do NOT live in a NBPR state(that's No Beer Purchase Required)so I don't do those awesome alcoholic rebates that net you free or close-to-free food.  If I tried to do the NBPR rebates, I would be required to spend money on booze and appear to be an alcoholic.  The former would make me go insane and the latter would make me not care about being frugal, now would it?lolol

Even $433.22 is pathetic in Rebating circles.
In my defense, the rebating opportunities outside of NBPRs tightened up even more in 2011 from 2010.  Add in that Rite-Aid didn't have nearly as many good SCR opportunities last year.

And the primary reason I sucked at rebating last year?....I just didn't make much of an effort.

My side income did much better however.
* I netted $48 in Pinecone payments.  I didn't do all the surveys offered however.  Yes I was a slacker there too.

* After a rather slow start, I cashed in for $60 in checks with Toluna and I am halfway to another $20 check.  I need to give a thank you! shout out to SonyaAnn for turning me on(oh, don't go there!lol)to them.  While my demographic gets dumped out of most of the surveys, I kept persevering and actually got some cash monies....ka-ching! ;-)  I do find that on occasion surveys would freeze up and not be recorded as complete, thus I would go through all that effort for NOTHING(and I have let them know just How I Feel on that score.lol) and then other surveys are so damned looooong and booooring and if I think it's boring, well, it's a doozy! 8-)

* The big winner for me in 2011 income was Focus Forward, where I earned $880.  I did some surveys with them but their main thing is focus group work.  Some of it is short term and some can take weeks but you pick and choose what you want to do, once you qualify, that is.
If anyone wants to join their team please use my referral link HERE.  Thanks if you do!

* As for making money advertising on my blog.....I made nothing in 2011.  That's not quite right....I made something but not enough for anyone to cut me a check.  I should be seeing a check within the next 3 months or so unless everyone stops coming by here to say "Hey!" tomorrow.

All side income came to $988.  Too bad that's all reportable income and the $433.22 in rebates isn't.  The other way around works better for me.lol


* Gift cards came to $76.  That includes gift card rebates, gift cards sent to me for reviews/promotions/marketing purposes and gift cards I won in other people's giveaways.
In 2010 I received over $500 in free gift cards.  2011 wasn't a very good year for me but something is better than nothing, right?lol

* I received 45 Free Items, mostly in the form of Free Item Coupons that I redeemed, rather than actual free products mailed to me.  The previous year I received many more Free Items, mostly from companies jumping onto the Facebook promotion bandwagon.  Not as many or as lucrative Facebook offers in 2011.  I see 2012 being even more of a Freebie desert on Facebook(with the exception of a company launching a new product).

So did you do any rebating or survey/focus group work in 2011?
What are your totals looking like for the year?
How do you feel about continuing to rebate and/or do internet side work in 2012?

Leave a comment and let us know!

Sluggy

More Rite-Aid Shopping for Free & e-Coupon Program Problems

So I went back to Rite-Aid on Tuesday night and bought another set of the items I bought on the 2nd with a couple of additions......

The additional items were the 6 pair of No Nonsense Socks and the big bottle of Alcohol(rubbing, not drinking). ;-)

The socks were on a raincheck from early in December when they were BOGO50%off and gave a $3 +Up Rewards wyb 2 pair.  $1.99 socks, 1/2 off 2nd pr. at $.99=$2.98 w/ $3 +Up wyb 2=FREE Socks!

The Ear Buds I have a raincheck for are still out of stock so no Freebies there yet.

The alcohol......oh my.  If you go onto Rite-Aid's website you'll see that they are touting their "load your coupons onto your loyalty card so you don't have to use paper coupons" program.  Yes, Rite-Aid is attempting to step into the electronic age like the grocery store chains that have e-coupons.
Unfortunately, Rite-Aid's system is NOT working.  I loaded an e-coupon for .50¢ off a 32. oz. bottle of 70% Rite-Aid brand Rubbing Alcohol onto my Wellness Card a couple of days before heading out to buy the bottle in the photo.  While I got my 20% Wellness discount on the item, the coupon did NOT come off my order.
Bleh!

Now I get the great joyful job of calling corporate customer service about this newest snafu.  I guess I'll bring up the Orbit gum deal from before Christmas when I didn't get my $3 in +Ups back for buying 3 packs of gum that week too.
I plan on voicing my displeasure about something always not ringing up right/+Ups not printing right that seems to be de rigeur at Rite-Aid lately.
To have everything go smoothly at the register would just be a pleasure I haven't had in a great while!

UPDATE**
Just got off the phone with Rite-Aid.  This was the second call, the first girl was a Wellness person and couldn't help me with this e-coupon issue so she transferred me and after 4 min. on hold they disconnected me. grrrr
So I called back and explained the issue and was told I am one of the first to call about problems with the e-coupons(LUCKY ME!!!)in the country.  I am suppose to get a call back from some High Mucky-Muck about this issue to see what is going on.
Frankly I don't CARE what is going on, I just want my .50¢ discount!
And I want to stop having issues with Rite-Aid EVERY TIME I TURN AROUND!
 


At any rate, I spent $5 in +Up Rewards, put the remaining $.79 OOP on my free Rite-Aid gift card and received $2 in +Up Rewards back for the Centrum Supplements. 
No cash spent out of pocket yet again.

This order brought me up to $50 toward earning the $20 Resolution +Up Reward.  $50 left to spend to get that.
I can also submit for another $4 in Centrum supplement SCRs and the Oral-B toothbrush SCR under BIL's account.

I have to go back to Rite-Aid before Saturday night, as I still have $3 in +Ups expiring this week.
I don't know what I'll spend that on.  There is nothing I 'need' that's cheap this week.  I could get some Pantene conditioner for #2 son but since he cut his hair he isn't using it as much.  I'll find something we can use that also qualifies toward the Resolution Reward.

What has everyone else bought at Rite-Aid this week?
And have you tried loading and using the e-coupons on your Wellness card yet?

Sluggy