Christmas wasn't a BUST

We had a Christmas budget, and we kept it!! How many people can say that?
When we set up out budget to be the smallest amount we could make Christmas happen at.
When all the final numbers were tallied and we came in 85 cents under budget! Yay for us!

Budget Christmas

We have always tried to keep our Christmas simple. I have no control over grandparents. But this year with the tightening of our belt we are forcing ourselves to have an even simpler Christmas.

How are we doing this?

• two gifts per child. Santa gift included. One toy and one other (in this case it is a clothing item), with a strict already saved limit on each child's total amount. If what they wanted wasn't in the budget they just aren't getting it.
• we rotate my siblings, this year we have my sister's family. I'm making their gifts.
• E-Christmas cards. With my digital scrapbooking business I made a beautiful card. We then emailed it, put it on facebook, sent it as personal message on facebook, and even sent as a picture text to a few people. With the exception of a few people exactly 6 that don't do the internet we printed and mailed to them. Spent, including stamps, $7.16 on our cards total. Even with the best deals you might get in printing out there. Once we started adding the stamps the cost of our Christmas cards was just taking a ton out of our Christmas budget.
• We decided to not do gifts outside our family this year. Normally I make some fun and cute baked good with cute packaging. Not this year. No cute packaging and no baked goods. A small part of this is that I had surgery and although I'm mostly healed I decided the stress of getting the few we were going to do was just too much. In the past we would put together about 50-70 plates ect. This year I was going to do a mash up all the left over packaging from previous years (and not buy anything this year). 
• No new Christmas decorations. In the past we've bought a few new things every year. New string of lights, replacement for broken items,  new ornaments, new cute item I thought was so fun. But we decided that we were going to buy nothing this year. No moments of weakness. No frivolous purchases, No replacing broken items. Not this year.

Here are some ideas of homemade gifts:

Jar treats
Pillowcases
pillowcase dresses
polar fleece knot blankets
aprons
artwork

Anyone of these can result in lots of options search them on pinterest.

Life will *always* be CRAZY

When Life happened before we started our financial revolution I saw it was life happens and I don't want to think about it. I would then hand whatever it is my credit card and not think about it.

So EVERY month there has been something or multiple somethings. Each time one of these things come up it has created two responses. First, getting upset at how this is delaying our ability to pay off the debt. Then second, as we change our budget around it shows us that we can take care of this, stay on track, and have managed to still pay off some debt.

Examples:

• Between August and October our family over $600 in dental work.
• End of September I chopped off the tip of my finger and we found ourselves at the ER. Between all the bills it cost us over the next couple months over $300
• In August and September everyone got sick at least once (some twice) and we had about $200 in medical bills (doctors and prescription).
• November brought us two blown tires. That was another almost $400 to fix everything connected with it.
• My doctors have been urging me for a year now to get my tonsils out. Since we've had sooo many medical expenses this year we decided that financial we'd get the best price for having them removed if we did it before the end of the year. We now added all the surgery expenses to all our crazy medical bills this year. 

But we have to remind ourselves that we are still staying afloat.

We are making progress. Since starting in June. We have paid off almost $8000 in debt. There is a small part of me that looks at all of our "life happens" expenses and think about how that is another $1500 we could have paid off. But I need to remind myself that no matter what "life happens" and will continue to happen, but as long was we are trying to do it right we'll survive. 

The month was long and I fudged it

So near the end of September we were talking about some upcoming things in October and how we wanted to budget it.
October is the LDS General Conference, and since we are Mormon that is a thing for us. Our family started what we wanted to be a tradition almost 2 years ago is to have Eggs Benedict for Conference morning breakfast (one of the two mornings). Now from my last post I ranted about the price of eggs. Plus the extra cost in the budget of buying English Muffins and the sauce mix package (I have never successfully make good tasting hollandaise sauce).
Conference is the first weekend in October, and once it was "October" I wasn't going to have time to run to the grocery store and do even a short trip. So since the money was "already" in the account for the first half of October I wanted to "borrow" from October to do purchase the items for Conference weekend. He wanted Eggs Benedict, but he was uncomfortable with me "borrow" from the next month. With considering some other upcoming events, my husband agreed to let me "borrow" to pick up what we need to cover us until our next "once a month" shopping trip.

The eggs were costly. The hollandaise sauce was more than I remembered, I normally buy two packs for our family, and the English muffins just felt so costly... That all being said I decided to take some chances, I felt guilty that I was going to spend so much on one meal. I decided to try to get buy with only one pack of sauce, and to try making my own English Muffins from scratch. I have been watching a show that is new here in the States, but has been in Great Britian for a number of years now, The Great British Bake Off. I am in love with the show. It gives me hope that maybe one day I can be a baker too. I very much recommend watching it. It is fun and educational, and makes you so hungry. I have learned so much about baking and it has inspired me to try to make more things myself. It is available on PBS.org  To learn to make the English Muffins, I found this Youtube video from a Brit. She gives a nice step by step and you know what my muffins were so tasty. In addition, I love Alton Brown. He has an episode where he makes Eggs Benedict- I love Alton, but I have tried his recipes, and although they are not impossible, as a beginner I did not succeed.

So everything turned out great. Still used a ton of eggs. But I tried to stave and be creative in other ways- and my kids loved them! But now I start my month $60 down from what I normally have. 

Ugg the cost of EGGS!

With the cost of eggs going up I have really been feeling the pinch in my grocery budget. Just as my husband and I start talking about maybe getting 2 sets of 5 dozen eggs so that we can enjoy eggs more often for breakfast. It then becomes even more not realistic in the cost. The cost last year around this time for 5 dozen eggs was about $10, often $9.99 with on sale deals of $7.99. Right now at the same store 5 doz are now $15.99. Yes I know the reasons why, but lets get realistic here- are the cost of eggs actually going to go back down- I doubt it.

We slowly been eating less breakfasts that are giving each person their own egg or two. When we first started this path 3 times a week we had eggs with toast for breakfast. Each time my family has eggs and toast we went through 9 eggs sometimes 11 if the twins decided they wanted two eggs that morning. Almost a whole dozen eggs just for one meal. Considering that is a meal that is about $3.20 for the eggs and about a half of loaf of bread that I bought at .50, yes it isn't terrible, but for $3.20 I can do a box of cold cereal and some milk for my kids and they will be just as happy. But it isn't saving us any money. Nor is having to plan on once a week going through a whole dozen eggs just for breakfast fitting that many eggs into my fridge when I do once a month shopping.

So I have increased my search in finding less egg non cold cereal breakfasts:
as a review here are some we have been doing for a while now-

• Skillet Breakfast
• Fried Rice (using rice cooked from dinner earlier in the week)
• Waffles
• pancakes
• rice pudding (overnight in the crock pot)
• Oatmeal 

This was our rotation with cold cereal once a week and eggs and toast once a week.

New recipes I have found for breakfast-

• bread pudding (been saving all the heals and make it in the crockpot overnight), here is a suggested recipe, I don't make it exactly but until I figure the perfect one out and make a post out of it this one will do
• Muffins- how did I miss this one. You  go get coffee/cocoa at a shop and you pick up a muffin, easy to make, the thing that takes the longest is heating the oven, but can also be done the night before and stored.
  I recommend this recipe by Better Homes and Garden. The only cookbook my husband owned when we got married was their big "Cook Book", tons of basic recipes that is where you need to start. I use their muffin mix recipe and then experiment with my own add ins and such. The recipe even comes with a few variations suggestions. For my family of six I often double the recipe but only use one egg (recipe says one but would be two after doubling and either add extra milk for the missing egg or I use the flax seed substitute. )
• cream of wheat or crack wheat

It makes me sad that enjoying a fried egg for my breakfast has become such a luxury. Especially since when I was in college and first married it was a super cheap breakfast compared to cold cereal. 

We haven't Given Up!

The end of last month marked the end of 3 full month of us making over our money by making over how we deal with our money. When we realized that we celebrated by pulling out the bottle of Sparkling Cider we had saved for our anniversary but when we were both sick forgot that we had it. We celebrated that we had stuck with it, that it was getting easier, and that we were slowing changing our mindset and starting new habits.

So last month's grocery budget:
It was blown. I can't find all the receipts so I can't give you exact numbers (hence I didn't report at the time), but we decided to support a school fund raiser, that ended up costing us a lot more than we initially thought. Just about everyone in our family got sick, needed a doctor visit and a prescription, initially we budgeted that the random prescription would come out of the grocery/household budget, but this experience changed our minds. After everyone got their unexpected prescriptions we were down out of grocery a little over $20. That hurts when you're only doing $200 a month. Add to that our fund raising budget fiasco and our grocery budget was left to $140. Early in the month my parents stopped at Costco for me and we ended up having them pick up more than we should have given the big picture. Opps. I had gone shopping early in the month to pick up a couple "stock up" items we use constantly, store well, and were the best price I've seen in years. Oh and each trip to the pharmacy, also ensued an item or two to make life easier for all the sickies or on me making food for sickies. When all was said and done and I went to the store for my once a month shopping I had only $75. We upped the grocery budget for the month, taking from our snowball (and a few other places in our budget to give us $110, so I could get everything we needed for a full month. But I felt like a failure. How did it get so out of hand. How it all those things add up so fast? Why does living feel like it costs so much?
But we made it through the month. We've made it through 3 months. We've paid off my student loan and my mini van. We have made progress!

Squaring the Lean Process, Food Storage, and my Life

My dad, for a living, teaches companies about the Lean process. Specifically with manufacturing but also helps non-manufacturing companies apply it to their output.
I don't claim to know a whole lot about it. I know he is good at what he does and is passionate about it.
Now one principle I do feel I understand and felt it could help everyone is the idea of eliminating waste through excess inventory. For example you always have one extra on hand. For example, I will use peanut butter- if you have one you are using, you then have one in your cupboard or if you don't have that one more extra you have one on order or on your shopping list. With this process you never run out of what you need and you never waste things just sitting there.
I am sharing this because I felt it is a great method, an easy method, for running our kitchens. I have been using it to help rotate items in my kitchen.
Once you get to this point of having the one in reserve, it is easy to think about, each time you pull a new one out of storage, you add it to your shopping list.
This works well when you start to stock up for a "year supply" or a "prepper" storage.
Sometime when there is a sale price you add another to your rotation. So then you have the one being used, the one in the cupboard, and now one extra. In order to build up an actual year supply of things you are rotating you then continue to add it to your shopping list every time you pull one out of storage. With items you use a lot- like cans of soup, you can keep a tally of how many you need to replace.
I am not perfect at this method, and it is really easy to do when you have only one item in your storage. It is still easy to keep tract of when you have two items in the storage. But it is harder to rotate perfectly when you have lots of items. The more of one item I have I use a pallet rotation (a box that holds about 12 or whatever a bulk purchase came in), I use that at a time, and when it is used up and I start a new one then I add x (the set) to my shopping list. This helps with items that I go through a whole set each month.
The real key to having a food storage is having items that you actually use and can rotate. Sure having dehydrated food in your storage is a great way to fill out your year supply, but they only have a 10 year shelf life and if you don't use it ever in your cooking then it will go bad and eventually become unusable. Yes it is still food, and if it came down to it you're going to use it (see post on Lessons learned from using 30+ years old Wheat). But there is a point where it is no longer usable and no amount of "it is food" is going to change the fact you can't eat it because it isn't safe to eat anymore.
So if you're trying to get started with a year supply- start building a supply with things you'll use. Then start learning how to use more traditional items in your storage. Start buy purchasing the smaller amounts at the store. Then when you've learned how to make meals with those items, buy them in the bulk storage items. Plan meals that incorporate items from your food storage so that you can start to rotate it. Make sure to use the Lean process of knowing when to order more so you are keeping a storage and not just depleting. Yes in times of plenty you don't have to use a lot of your food storage. But at least one meal a week should incorporate food from your long term food storage. Here is a great list from BYU's website that lists what is the minimum you should have for each person in your family.
Lately I have been learning how to use beans- pinto, black, kidney, chick...
Beans are a great long term food storage item, but up until recently I have not been successful in using dry beans to cook with. They never seem to taste right, and always seem to be too hard still. It hasn't seemed to matter how long I actually pre-soaked the beans for. Using dry beans isn't only a good way to rotate your supply but is also a great way to save money too. Dry beans are so cheap compared to the cans. I recently have been trying "re-fried beans" made in the crockpot. I am learning and the more I learn, the more I incorporate less can beans into our food storage and more dry beans.