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Saving $50 a week July Challenge (Week 4)

Well we have come to the end of a cold July and our month of save $50 a week challenge Simple Savings – Free Newsletters. Looking this morning at our overall monthly expenditure summary it has been the lowest spending month since February and the lowest food bill category since September 2009. So thank you Simple Savings for the inspiration. Our savings for Week 4 were:

• Only doing a small shop for vital items – saving $80.

• Having a takeaway free week – saving at least $20.

• Going to our local Farmer’s Market to find free range bacon for half the price of what we pay at the supermarket – saving $7.40.

• Growing our own lettuce seedlings rather than buying seedlings (about 4 punnets worth) – saving $12.

• Getting free lemons from the in-laws tree.

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Grow Your Own Food Pesticide Free

Reading this today Pesticide Residue inspired me to keep going with growing some of my own vegetables. Arriving home from work today I found my two lettuce seedlings that I had re-potted and brought inside at the weekend had tripled in size just in three days! I have about another twenty seedlings outside that have started growing in last season’s pots that I never emptied out. I let my last lettuce of the season bolt and obviously it bolted all over the place and I now get to reap the results pretty much free of charge other than some potting mix and weekly feeding and some labour. The frost has been pretty severe the last few weeks involving lots of cold mornings defrosting the van windows but the lettuces seem fine with it all. Now that my lettuces have inspired me I think I might start sowing some pea seeds this weekend as well to plant out at some point in August.

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Gorgeous Stewed Apple

Part of picking up food for cheap is making sure you use it. My 3kg of granny smith apples last week for 99c a kg were destined to become stewed apple which I normally make by putting the apples and a bit of sugar in the saucepan and cooking until they soften. For a change I thought I would try the recipe from the Saturday Dominion Post a few weeks ago. The apple comes out with a lovely buttery, lemon taste. I have just used some of the stewed apple to make an apple pie which is presently baking in the oven for dessert.

800 – 900g eating apples (I used a bit more), 40g butter (I used less), about 2Tbsp sugar, 1 lemon.

Peel the apples, core, cut into quarters, then chunks. Melt the butter in the saucepan over a medium heat.

Add the apple and sugar to saucepan, cover with lid and cook on a gentle heat for about 10 minutes. During that time, lift the lid a couple of times to stir the mixture.

When the apple is soft, remove from heat. Taste to see if it is sweet enough, if not stir in a little more sugar. Grate some lemon rind from about half the lemon and stir into the apple. Taste to see if lemony enough.

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Saving $50 a week July Challenge (Week 3)

Challenges like the $50 a week challenges Simple Savings – Free Newsletters are good opportunities to not only extend ourselves to save more if we can (not everyone can given their present financial situation) but also to reflect on things we already do on a day to day basis but don’t normally attach a monetary amount to. It can make tasks more rewarding when you realise how much money is saved.

  • Last night was left over meat night. Took the left over frozen bolgnese from the week before and bulked it up with grated carrot (hubby never even noticed!) and red capsicum. Had it with tacos. Saving $5?    
  • Picked up 3Kg granny smith apples at 99c a kilo rather than other apple brands which were all at least $2.95 a kilo. Stewed them all – put away in the freezer – saving $6.
  • De-cluttered wardrobe – old t shirts cut into rags to build up rag supply again so we don’t go and buy paper towels – saving $2.80.
  • Picked up new rechargeable batteries for our camera on 20% off sale, saving – $3.
  • Cats together at the vet $10.80 discount both going together (plus avoiding evening surcharge – not sure how much that is).  
  • Hubby gave me a hair cut – no idea how much hairdressers charge for a cut anymore –  saving 25 – 35?
  • Putting all our errands into one trip last weekend – saving of about $11.
  • Checking our supermarket dockets from the last 2 weeks – two items overcharged  – saving $4.58
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Cat Discount

Around our household it’s that time of the year for the cats to have their annual vaccination & health check up. Having pets is not cheap but they do make up for it with their unconditional love. Yesterday we saved by taking both cats up together which saves 10% ($10.80). On top of that I found out that there is also an evening surcharge which I didn’t previously know about, we always take them up in the evening after work – I thought the surcharge was only for the weekend. So by taking the cats up at 5:30pm yesterday rather than 6pm onwards we avoided the surcharge – something we will be doing from now on. Moral of the story – always ask businesses how you can save money by using their services.

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Financial literacy for children

Even though we don’t have any children of our own we do have discussions regarding the teaching of financial literacy to kids as we reflect on our own childhoods and what we learnt about money. Nations everywhere are introducing financial literacy into the school curriculum in the hope that it will change the financial habits of generations to come. I’m not that convinced though – I think that the biggest lesson that children learn about financial literacy is from what they see their parents doing on a day to day basis with their finances. For financial literacy programmes to really work they need to involve the whole family but how do you achieve that?  Not sure at the moment.  At the moment I’m reading an American blog by Susan Beacham – Helping Kids Get Smart About Money – worth a look at.

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Saving $50 a week July Challenge (Week 2)

Yesterday we did our shopping at Pak n Save getting a 21 c a litre voucher for fuel, saving – at least $10. Today our godson had his 1st birthday – we bought his present last year on sale and kept below our gift budget limit – saving $12. Not buying any wrapping paper for his gift (did up a cardboard box with wrapping paper we recycled) – saving $6 (price of the roll I had in my hand at Pak n Save but didn’t buy thanks to the power of our shopping list). Making a big plate of meringues for the party from ingredients already in the house instead of buying food for a plate  – saving $11. At the store today I resisted buying a turquoise plastic container that I wanted for holding my niece’s colouring felts. Instead I went home, found an ice cream container, turquoise card and pictures of Thomas the Tank Engine and created a container – saving $5.25.  Took a 2 min detour to the Mad Butcher – bought schnitzel there for $9.95/ kg instead of at the supermarket – saving $6. Hubby picked up second hand kitchen cupboards free from a kitchen renovation job he was doing and set them up in the garage today for shelving – saving $100 plus. So far a good week of reducing expenses.

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Carrageenan E407

A few hours ago I accidentally stumbled across this thickener again and am just getting over the very unpleasant and painful side effects. Funnily enough when I checked my last blog entry on this substance it was almost a year ago (give a few days) that I first discovered I had an allergy to carrageenan – the only allergy that I have to anything. Hubby bought some ‘strawberry smash’ yoghurt pottles last week when our little niece was staying with us.

It’s a very nice tasting product with jelly on top of quite thick yoghurt. It came in a pack of six and as niece only was allowed one of them we had leftovers – one of which I sampled today.  After a few hours the allergic effects made themselves felt and sure enough when I checked the container there it was amongst the three thickeners that are in it – 1442, 407 and 415. I guess it goes to show the dangers of letting hubby shop without me!

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Lettuce Surprise

I came home last week to find a nice surprise – one of my pots that I hadn’t emptied out from last season had sprouted two lettuce seedlings.

Today I went out and now every pot has little lettuce seedlings sprouting everywhere. Only problem is that I don’t know what to do now! I will obviously have to re pot them as they won’t grow that well in old potting mix and there are far too many per pot. But I’m not sure about growing them outside given the amount of frost we get – I don’t know what type of lettuce they are and whether they will grow well in winter given they might not be winter cultivars. I wonder if I can take them inside and grow them and try to capture the little amounts of sun that we get over the rest of winter.  Sometimes growing your own food is a very hit and miss affair when you are a novice.

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Saving $50 a week July Challenge

The Simple Saving website has the July challenge of saving $50 a week off your expenses Simple Savings – Free Newsletters. I don’t belong to the simple savings club but I keep in touch with the website every now and then – I thought it sounded like a good challenge.  For the first week of July I’ve cut the money off our food expenses by avoiding takeaways and only grocery shopping for the very essentials. There are enough ingredients in the freezer and cupboards to make meatballs and spaghetti for dinner tonight and a chicken and rice dish with roti for dinner tomorrow. Hubby didn’t buy his lunch yesterday so that will help save $10 this week also. Baking wise for nibbles I’ve tried the coconut loaf again this morning adding jam swirled in the middle of it this time to see what that turns out like (only had a small amount of jam left – more next time!).  All up cutting back on food spending should save us at least $100 this week (which of course goes to show in our house hold that normally we spent far too much on food).