Some Frugal Wins Lately

Here are some of our Frugal Wins this past week.......

*  Who would have thought that having your spouse break his leg in a major way would lead to frugality?!

While this accident did lead to a tad more Eating-Out/Take-Out Spending it also has meant less money spent in other ways.
We have a Christmas eve tradition in our family of enjoying a meal out at our local Chinese restaurant.  This generally involves inviting the brother in-law and nephew, as well as friends of College Boy along for the evening.  We spring for a full spread-appetizers, sushi rolls and dessert if wanted as well as everyone's drinks(not alcohol)and entrees. Cost hovers in the $100 area for the night.

This year, since Hubs is unable to go out to the restaurant we ordered take-out from the place instead.  No extras were ordered just entrees and additional family and CB's friends were not invited to partake, just us 5.  With tip the meal ended up costing $60.  Since I spent over $50 on the order I also got a $5 off your next order coupon from there.

*  I got 5 Kohl's rebates sent in on Friday from my Black Friday online shopping.  At $12 a pop that comes to $60 in money coming back to me.  These were small appliances that are $7 after rebate-I gifted 3 different ones to Daughter and the BF for when they eventually get their own place again and I bought 2 toaster ovens for spares.  Our toaster oven is on it's last legs plus College Boy will be doing an internship his last semester and living goodness knows where for it(not at school)so I picked another toaster oven up in case he needs something to cook in wherever he is located for that 14 weeks.  It just made sense to take part in this appliance deal at that price.

*  This arrived in the mail last week.....

A coupon for a free 12 pack of Coke products.  I consider this a freebie as it was "bought" using coke points I acquire from drink bottles the BF throws away(He buys those bottles.)  Unfortunately this year the Coke folks limited each registered user to 1 redemption of this free 12 pack reward. boo!  In past years there was either a 5 reward limit or no limit at all.

*  I got a cash back summary for my online Christmas shopping from the site I go through when I shop via websites.
A grand total of $7.13 in cash back.
Whoopee, right?
Granted I didn't buy much online this Holiday season but every little bit helps.

*  Gasoline taxes are set to rise 8 cents per gallon here in PA on January 1st.  We already have the highest gas taxes in the nation so yeah, I am not thrilled about this.  I had 70 cents in gas discounts at Weis(PMITA)Markets that expired Dec. 31st so College Boy and I took both of our cars up to fill the tanks using that lower price.  The discount was good for $1.779 per gallon for 20 gallons and between the cars we were able to squeeze in 18.5 gallons, saving $12.95 on gas.  I told the Daughter that she and the BF should fill their car/truck tanks before Saturday, but when I went out on Thursday I saw that all the stations in town had already jacked up the regular gas price by 8 cents a gallon.
bleh.

*  I got all my medications filled before January 1st when our high deductible kicks in for 2017.  If it's a choice between paying ZERO OOP or the full Usual & Customary price on drugs after Dec. 31st, I'm all about the free rxs.

*  We've only used non-essential electricity this week during the cheaper off-peak hours.  This includes running dishwasher, washer and dryer and taking showers and some lighting.  This weekend will see bed linens/towels washed/dried as weekends are also off-peak times.

That's about it from Chez Sluggy for frugal wins lately.
What good things have you been accomplishing?

Sluggy

What Santa/The Mailman Brought Us Last Week....Yikes!

After the scare last week about not getting the disability paperwork in on time so that the paychecks keep rolling in at Chez Sluggy, Hubs got an envelope in the mail from our insurance company.

This wasn't in the packet of EOBs that came separately, the size of which could chock a horse.
No this EOB came under separate cover.

And just look at the amount of this bill..........!!!

Gulp!
Merry Christmas! lolz

This was not for the ER visit stuff or the X-rays, CT scans, docs, etc. or the surgeon and anesthesiologist fees.

This was for the use of the OR, drugs, equipment and the subsequent 1.5 day hospital stay(2.5 days if you count the day between being admitted and when they actually performed the surgery), nursing costs, meals, etc. while there.

ER costs that have been billed amount to $2321.00 so far.  According to the insurance company's website there is another $6290.00 of charges on there for the EOBs that haven't arrived in our mail yet.

If you are keeping score we've got $95,626.82 in medical charges so far for his accident.
Add in 3 home health nursing/OT visits, the suture removal next week and then numerous Physical Therapy sessions in January to look forward to.
yay.......

Luckily(I guess it's lucky?)we hit our maximum out of pocket for 2016 so everything so far is covered 100% and we don't owe a penny of co-insurance/co-pays for any of this. (Add in $10K+ in charges for the Daughter's last back injection in November that was no cost either as we'd hit the maximum OOP before she had that procedure done mid November.)

Come January 1st, we are on the hook 100% for the first $3K in new medical charges out of pocket in 2017 and then 10% of each bill for co-insurance charges.
Goody.

I can't even imagine having a major health event without medical insurance!  No wonder medical debt is the number 1 reason people go bankrupt.
This was just broken leg(albeit a really bad one).  What do they charge for an organ removal/repair or a heart attack/stroke?

Sluggy

This Past Week at Chez Sluggy

Christmas prep continued last week, ready or not.
Tuesday was spent at home, recovering from Monday's excursion to Hub's eye doc. Daughter helped me complete 2 large pizza for dinner and I got a few more ornaments on the Xmas tree.

Tuesday also found me deep into cookie baking.

  Italian Ricotta Cookies. This recipe sure made a TON of them!

I don't usually make so many kinds of cookies for Xmas but A-I had to be close to home more than usual, due to Hub's and B-this year I have 5 people here(plus 2 more on Xmas Day)to eat all this stuff, so why not get "into" cookie baking this year.

      Coconut Macaroons cooling in the snow.

I had printed off 7 cookie recipes I wanted to do(plus 2 usual varieties I make). I also had some mint chocolate chip cookie dough that I bought Nov. 30th at the store on clearance that just needed putting onto a baking sheet and running through the oven.
This potentially gave us 10 different cookie types for Xmas...yikes!

     Lemon Gooey Butter Cookies. Good but a PITA to make.

I didn't get to all of them(either due to lack of energy/time or special ingredients-who knew the grocery store would run out of white chocolate chips!?)but I did make the following 7.......

Lemon Gooey Butter Cookies
Coconut Macaroon Cookies
Peanut Butter w/PB M&Ms Cookies
Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies
Italian Ricotta Cookies
Butterscotch Cashew Cookies
Chocolate Chip w/M&Ms Cookies

    The Cookie Tree, the best kind of tree.

I had to resort to this to keep the kids out of the cookies until Xmas.....

Yes I am that mom! 8-)

Also on Tuesday we spent an inordinate amount of time dealing with paperwork for Hubs' disability claim.  Not only does he have to submit paperwork to his work's HR, but also the disability board AND the FLMA folks.  His boss was suppose to handle some things with all this but she was wrong about it, Hubs had to do all this and he didn't jump right on it due to his boss saying she'd handle some of it and then she was on vacation this week.  So the paperwork is already late and he was freaking out that he'd not get it taken care of before the window closed and he's lose some benefits($$).
But we got everything back on track and the paperwork is in the pipeline now.

Wednesday, while I was out doing a Rite-Aid and grocery store run, a package arrived.

A bounty of unexpected Xmas gifties from buddy Kim.

MORE Cookies! lolz

Hubs even received a package...........

Homemade CANDY! *drool*
Thankfully the tag on his gift said he had to share it.  Score! lolz

My present said to open immediately.

And indeed I did because the next day I began the pie baking marathon.
And this lovely ensemble Kim sent me came in very handy..........

It's a Maxine apron(complete with ginormous rick-rack trim)and matching pot holders.
I posed for a photo with one of the pecan pies I made for Daughter.  Photo bombed by the dog too....how nice.  ;-)

On Thursday I made 3 pies-2 pecan and 1 mincemeat(for Hubs).  I bought 2 cream type pies at Weis(PMITA)Markets last week for $3 each.  One pie was for the BF and the other for the Nephew and me(Key Lime).

I also moved some stuff in the family room and found this.....

...a bag of items that were supposedly taken up to the food bank last month.
sigh.

On Friday, at least I think it was Friday, I made a quick shopping run to 4 different stores at the ass crack of dawn while the weather was good.  I was still in search of something for Hubs for Xmas(a style of shirt he likes that NOBODY makes anymore), plus some odds and ends for stockings and such.
The shirts were found at Kohl's and I used gift cards to pay plus got $10 in Kohl's Cash for later.
I also saw this sweet Xmas decoration........

A Xmas tree made from a plunger. 8-P

I found a Sara Lee pumpkin pie on clearance at Walmart(in there looking for Hub's shirts).  The pie was $3.50 for which I had a $1 off Q and there was a $1.50 rebate so for $1.00 OOP I didn't need to make College Boy his pie of choice for Christmas. Woohoo!
I also saw this at Walmart.......

I picked up 2 containers of 18 count eggs at Dollar Tree for $2 but my trip to Family Dollar netted me nothing.
A run to Weis later that day for a bottled water stock up and Christmas candy for 50% off and using coupons may have also been purchased. ;-)
I found this at Weis.....

Zitner's  is a Philly area candymaker.  I knew they made Easter confections but I'd never seen a Christmas one.  Ok, so it's just a peanut butter Easter egg in a red box. lolz

Saturday was pretty uneventful here thankfully.  I didn't need to go anywhere, just fill stockings and do some last minute wrapping.
My cookbook from the giveaway I won did arrived Christmas eve...........

I haven't had a chance to do anything but glance into it but something Anne didn't tell anybody about this book is that she was one of the editors for it!  It looks to be interesting and chocked full of recipes from famous chefs and/or restaurants throughout the country.
Thanks Anne!

Sunday....oh Sunday!!!

Santa came!

The kids arose about 10 am....finally!  Daughter made Sausage Gravy and Biscuits for breakfast.
The biscuit took twice as long to bake.  The oven just wasn't heating up for some reason.  Come to think of it, my cookies were all baking "weird" the other day....taking longer to bake and spreading out like crazy due to that.
After the oven cooled off I took a close look in there with a flashlight and noticed that there were a couple of places on the lower element that were deformed, like they had super heated and melted a bit.
Sigh.

But onward to the gift opening, which commenced around noon.

Daughter not thrilled with having to play Santa first.

Cinnamon hugging her new toy from her other grandparents in Louisiana.

Who invited this lumberjack to Christmas? lolz

My new slippers, purple of course!

The BF grinning about his Teletubbies wrapped gift.

If you haven't guessed by now, we have OLD wrapping paper we still use, that has been collected over many, many years.
The Daughter excited for her Justin Beiber paper.....

We had a new Santa's elf this Christmas.  Everyone takes a turn in the Santa hat.

My "Precious" giftie.  A robotic vacuum built specifically for pet hair.  Hmmm, I wonder why I now need this? lolz

The BF confounded by massive amounts of tape.  The tape monster(aka me)strikes again!

Daughter loved this tie-dyed psychedelic kitty head shirt that was a last minute purchase at Walmart on Friday.

The doggy chilling out.

College Boy with his obligatory AXE gift set.

The BF seemed to like his lined work pants we got him.

Even Hubs got festive and decorated his "boot".

And he really liked the authentic Viking chain and pendant Daughter gave him.

And likewise, Daughter was thrilled by her WOW(aka World of Warcraft)wallet and Firefly hat that the BF gave her.

WE followed gift opening with stocking emptying.  I think everyone was well taken care of by Santa this year.

I think the doggy sums up my morning on Christmas.  Happy but tired.  8-)

So I warned Hubs that our oven may be shot and our Roast Beef and Mac & Cheese Xmas dinner may be in jeopardy.  I had him call his brother to let him know we may be bringing a hunk of meat, mac and cheese and pans of rolls to his house to cook off.  I had done the Green Beans in a crock pot so that was one thing I didn't have to worry about.
After punching down the dough and making it into rolls at 1 pm I tried the oven again.
Nothing.
It barely got warm.

So Hubs called his brother to have him preheat his oven and Daughter and I headed out to brother in-law's house to cook the food.
When the food came out and hour and 15 minutes later, we called home to have College Boy bring over the pans of rolls and take the roast and mac back home.
20 minutes after that all 4 of us heading to our house with the rolls and got dinner on the table.

The hungry diners.  We ate about 3 hours later than planned.

And me, silly with hunger trying another failed selfie.  8-)

After dinner we exchanged gifts with brother in-law and the nephew.

Afterwards the youngin's sat and checked phones, vaped and checked out their gifts.

On Monday I didn't go out and hit any after Christmas sales.  I was too busy with Hubs and digging out from Christmas(cleaning out, dishes, etc.)and getting the garbage ready for Tuesday morning's pick-up and locating a heating element for our oven.

I think I can just replace the element and get the oven up and running again and not have to go buy a new appliance. Spending $16 as opposed to $500+ would be much better, right? ;-)

And those are the highlights of our week here at Chez Sluggy.

So what's up in your world lately?

Sluggy

This Week on the Dining Table

The "Well This Christmas was Different!" Edition--

Sorry to be MIA the last few days.  It's been stressful around here what with nothing going as planned.
I haven't had time to do much online nor any inclination to.
I am just so tired.  Gee, like I haven't said that before? lolz

I haven't even tallied my grocery receipts for this past week until now.....throwing them in my receipt book is all I could manage.
Let's just say that I thought my December Grocery Challenge was bust due to not being able to cook like I usually do because of demands on me and Hubs accident causing me to buy stuff I usually don't just to get through the day.  I had no clue what I had spent especially this last week.

Wednesday evening I had a mini meltdown here.  The kids kept coming downstairs asking about when dinner was going to be served while I was trying to deal with doing things for Hubs(who's been a bit demanding)and trying to prepare a home cooked meal that was a bit complicated.(Not a good combination for future reference.)
Not once did they offer to help me make dinner or help out in some other way and I just went off on them.

Right now I am taking everything one day at a time.  If we can get through the day with everyone being warm, fed and clothed, I call it a win.  The budget is just an afterthought for me at the moment.  This is why I have been avoiding sitting down and calculating receipts.

Moving on......

Onward to the meal planning!

Here's what was planned last week--

1. Sunday--Flounder, Cauliflower, au gratin Taters

2. Monday--Soup Night or Fend for Yourself

3. Tuesday--Hot Dogs or Kielbasa, Potato Salad, Beans

4. Wednesday--Chicken Marsala, Mashed Potatoes, Broccoli

5. Thursday--Tacos

6. Friday--Leftovers or ?

7. Saturday--Xmas Eve Chinese Meal Out(Take-Out this year as Hubs can't go)

And this is what actually happened--

1. Sunday--Flounder, Cauliflower, au gratin Taters

2. Monday--Soup Night or Fend for Yourself

3. Tuesday--Homemade Pizza

4. Wednesday--Chicken Marsala, Mixed Veggie, Alfredo Noodles

5. Thursday--Hot Dogs, Beans, Potato Salad

6. Friday--Fend for Yourself(I had a salad, Hubs had soup)

7. Saturday--Xmas Eve Chinese Meal(Take-out)

6 meals cooked at home, 2 of them nights of leftovers, and 1 night of Take-Out/Eating-Out.

The Dec. Buddget update--

$10 more in rolled coins, $10.75 in Ibotta and $6 in SavingStar, making my totals as follows-- 
Gift Cards.....$64.36

Cash Rebates--

 Savingstar...$148.03

 Checkout51..$42.25

 Ibotta..........$44.25

Rolled Coins...$97.50

Other Cash(post coupons)...$42.00

Total.....$435.39

As for the grocery spending.....3 trips to Weis, 1 trip to the Bread Outlet since I was out taking Hubs to a dr. appt., and 1 trip to the Shursave Market for mushrooms only brought the week's spending to $137.89 and brings my December food spending Total to $404.69 so far this month. 4 Days left to spend in December and $30.70 left in my December budget.

I am amazingly still under budget(I am shocked really!)and I may squeak by on this food challenge.  8-)

My savings percentages this week was 55.04%.

Leftovers going into this week.......potato salad, ravioli in sauce, some Chinese take-out.

Here is this week's "food plan".
Due to circumstances out of my control(no oven-details coming later), meals will be a bit different if not easier and quicker.

1. Sunday--Beef Eye Round Roast, Yeast Rolls, Green Bean Casserole, Mac & Cheese
2. Monday--Leftovers
3. Tuesday--Chicken Enchiladas(premade Stouffer's)
4. Wednesday--Tacos
5. Thursday--Xmas Dinner 2.0
6. Friday--Clam Chowder and Biscuits
7. Saturday--NYE tapas(aka appetizers)

This week will see 5 new meals cooked, 0 nights of Take-Out/Eating-Out and 2 night of Leftovers.

What I need to buy for this menu? Lettuce, milk.

And for the record I'll NOT have to buy anything dessert related or needed to make dessert type foods for at least 3 weeks.(6 pies, 7 types of cookies plus candy and cookies gifted to us & nephew made whipped cream on Sunday here.  It's a sugar wonderland!)

What is getting fixed and served at your house this week?

Was last week's plan successful, did you go off plan or did you not even plan what was going to be eaten last week?

Any great deals on food at your stores this week?


Sluggy

Merry Christmas from Sluggy

Here's something I like to share at Christmas.
It's sort of a tradition here at Chez Sluggy now.

I'd like to dedicate this song to Cousin Sonya this year.  ;-)


Sluggy