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Feb 6, 2015    |       27 comments

A New Budget + Stretching Food Budget

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Hi all! Hope your Friday is off to a good start! We’ve been battling colds over here (again!!! I swear, this cold/flu season has been the worst!!!!!) but we’re all finally on the mend, the girls are back in preschool (after being home sick on Wednesday), and life is good! ; )

I’ve already mentioned that I overspent January’s budget (particularly in our grocery budget). I’ll give you all the details on Monday with my January budget update post, but today I wanted to tell you a little bit about how I’m making our food dollars stretch to try to spend a lot less on groceries this month.

First, I’ve been really trying to eat from our pantry and freezer. Second, I’ve been trying to repurpose meals by making leftovers into a second (or even third) meal so that every single bite of food is eaten and not wasted. I HATE wasting money and food waste is always one of the biggest culprits! Whenever I have to throw away old lettuce or meat or whatever, I see dollar signs being tossed in the trash. It’s a HUGE pet peeve of mine! So I’ve really tried to re-focus on making sure all food gets eaten before it goes bad. Here’s a list of the things we’ve eaten lately, and how I’ve tried to re-purpose leftovers so meal time doesn’t get stale:

  • Sausage wraps with broccoli & shells with cheese (sausage from freezer, broccoli was on hand, and shells & cheese and tortillas were in the pantry).
  • Ham and potato cheese soup (ham chunks from freezer leftover from last time we ate ham, potatoes from pantry, cheese from fridge, homemade rolls on the side). Also ate leftover soup throughout the week for lunches!
  • Cheeseburgers with home fries (meat from freezer, sliced and baked fries from potatoes we had in pantry, cheese on hand in the fridge, and leftover homemade rolls for the buns).
  • BBQ chicken, corn, and shells & cheese (chicken from freezer, canned corn from pantry, leftover shells & cheese from a previous dinner).
  • Spaghetti and meat sauce with garlic bread (crumbled leftover burgers for meat, used sauce and noodles from pantry, sliced up leftover rolls that I buttered and sprinkled with garlic before broiling for the garlic bread)
  • BBQ chicken “pizzas” and corn (leftover BBQ chicken that I shredded, cheese from fridge, made on top of tortillas instead of traditional pizza crust; leftover corn…doesn’t really go with pizza, but it worked).

It takes a little forethought to make sure I can reuse and/or repurpose leftovers, but I’ve already noticed such a huge difference in my grocery spending. Not only does it cost less money this way (i.e., re-using leftovers in future meals), but its actually easier, too! It’s the whole “cook once, eat twice” mentality (not sure where I’ve heard that, so can’t credit a source but I think it’s a pretty well known phrase). It’s so, so much easier when parts of the meal are already cooked (especially when the meat is already done, as with the spaghetti and meat sauce and the bbq chicken pizzas). When the main protein is already pre-cooked all I have to do is just assemble, heat, and serve! Score!

So I’m really making an effort to try to get my spending back on track and, so far, I think I’ve been doing pretty well. Toward this end, I’ve also made the decision to do a new budget. Not just a new budget, but a  new budget software, too! Remember back when I’d tried to do YNAB (you need a budget), but I’d bailed less than a week into the month? I wasn’t ready at the time. But I gave it another shot a few weeks ago and have fallen for it hard. Once you get a hang of it, it’s really so superior to my old Excel spreadsheet. If there’s any interest I’d be happy to write a full review at some point.

In the meantime, if anyone is interested in purchasing the YNAB software, usually $60, I’ve got a link I can share that will get you a 10% savings. Note that if you purchase through this link, you get $6 off the price and I get a $6 referral credit. A win-win (plus you can share your personal link with friends to earn credits, too). Just wanted to be transparent on that (you can also try a free month-long trial by going to their website, too).

What are your favorite rollover meals or cheap meal ideas? 

Feb 5, 2015    |       11 comments

Update on Child Support

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Just a quick update on the loss of income in regards to my younger two child support that I wrote about in mid December. At the time, he was going to miss his car payment that is in my name and didn’t know when he’d be able to provide any support for our kids.  To be clear as I know this issue is dear to many people’s hearts due to their own history. Let me clarify a few points up front:

1. No, we do not have a formal child support agreement and no, I will not be pursuing one.  I chose this for two reasons, one, I wanted full legal and physical custody of the kids. Two, I didn’t ever want money to be a reason for him to bail on them or become just another issue in our already rocky relationship.  He has ALWAYS come through when they needed something and has voluntarily paid half of anything I asked, sometimes more.  From what I hear from other parents in my situation, the court ordered payments are 1) hard to get and 2) not close to the amount he has voluntarily provided through out the years since we split.

2. The car was purchased in my name for him while we were still living together. He has not been able to refinance it.  It IS in our divorce decree that he is solely responsible for the car financially, the debt, the maintenance, the insurance, the taxes, etc.  As soon as it is paid for, I will sign it over to him and be done.  Only one other time has he had trouble making payments on it, and then I asked for it back, sold my car (my dream car Honda Element that was paid off) and drove it and paid for it.  I did not want the car, and when he was able to take it back over, he did so.  If I had wanted to keep it, he would not have fought me on it.  But it was just too much car for me and the costs to drive it were high.  This was also a major bad decision area for me, because instead of buying a reasonable used car, I bought a new sedan (the twins were with us but supposed to be going home at this point.)  This is one lesson I have DEFINITIVELY learned now.

So now we are here, 6 weeks after the announcement that I would not have any support going forward while he got his new business off the ground.  He did catch up on the car payment, a week late, and I was able to refinance the loan to buy his a 6 week break from payments, get him a lower interest rate and a lower monthly payment.  All around a win in both our eyes.  The first payment on that loan was due yesterday…and he paid it on time!

So no, child support to date, but his new business is up and running and I know he’s working as hard as he can to catch up.  The kids call him regularly to see if he’s going to come see them…he hasn’t.  I took them to his new shop once and to hang out for a while with him.  (No, I don’t go out of my way to do this, but I had to be that way for the twins and then had a couple of hours to kill before picking them up and it wasn’t worth driving home, so this was a good compromise.)

Every one’s divorce, separation is different. I know mine is unusual but it works for us.  And I think for as unhealthy as our marriage was, our divorce is very healthy.  I am grateful for the tough love the last year.  As a result, I’m in a place that the missing funds don’t hurt so much.  I am now NOT dependent on the little kids child support.  Now to break that reliance on the twins adoption supplement.

 

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