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Posts tagged with: Budget
Feb 11, 2020    |       6 comments

A Reason Not to Buy a House

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I believe it was last fall or late summer I mentioned that my landlord would like to sell the house we are living in. Not necessarily, that he wants to sell it out from under us, but he has asked me to purchase it on several occasions.

As anyone who has read me here knows, I am no where close to the position to buy a house. But that’s not to say, the idea hasn’t tempted me off and on throughout the years. We’ve now lived in this house for 3 years (come April.) That’s almost the longest we have lived anywhere. In fact, when Princess graduates next year, we will have lived in this house longer then we/I have ever lived in one place. (I had moved 18 times before I graduated from college. And Princess, Gymnast and I have moved 11 times since their dad and I split 13 years ago.)

But as often as I’ve thought it would be nice to own a home. Even considered owning the home we are in now. I realize the still precarious financial position. Know the benefits of renting…no maintenance or major upkeep costs. And more importantly, am well aware that I may not want to stay in this tiny town forever, ie after Princess graduates.

Sink Hole Anyone?

With all that being said, I have another very good reason for not buying this particular house…

It has been raining like crazy the last week or so. Roads around us have been washed out. School was delayed and closed because of flooding and so on. But in our own yard, we now have a raging underground river running.

And the yard fell in…we have known about this hole (as has the landlord) since we moved in. We covered it with these two concrete water drainage things. But they are now falling in…can you say Sink Hole?

No, really I don’t know if this is how sink holes are created. But I do know that digging up the yard, dealing with the drainage issues and so on will be very expensive and way outside of my area of expertise.

I’ve always said that sometimes I need a “frying pan” to the head to learn my lesson sometimes. This time it just took a large hole in the ground. (We actually filmed the hole and you can see the fast moving water inside.)

But this alone makes is really easy to dismiss any wandering thoughts I have about buying this house. So just praying he doesn’t decided to sell for at least the next year and a half. Then we are good!

 

Feb 7, 2020    |       5 comments

How Diabetes Affected my Grocery Budget

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Someone asked about how eating better or rather to suit my diabetic needs had affected my grocery budget. To be honest, I haven’t really tracked that. But I thought I would share the biggest changes I made and how I kept the costs under control.

Changes in My Food

  1. Bread – eliminated all bread for the most part. I tried some of the “keto” bread and recipes, including a cauliflower type bread and frankly, yuck! And the effort to make and keep it fresh and available when I wanted a quick sandwich was just too labor intense. So for the most part, I have eliminated the need for bread. I make sandwiches with a lettuce wrap or just roll up turkey and cheese and call it a sandwich.
  2. Lunch side items – my go to lunch since I work from home has always been a sandwich (see above,) chips and pickled okra and a couple of slices of cheese. Thankfully, the pickles and cheese are fine, but the chips had to go. I have replaced them with pork rinds. I definitely don’t get the variety that I had with chips, but there are a few different flavors and they satisfy the desire and are a wash cost wise.
  3. Potatoes and pasta – these two were not especially hard for me to give up EXCEPT that it made it harder to cook quick meals. I could throw together loaded baked or mashed potatoes or chicken fettuccine alfredo in less than half an hour most of the time. But since then, I have tried the cauliflower substitutes to make mac and cheese (delicous!) and a “potato” base and it works great. With enough cheese, sour cream and salt and pepper, I don’t even notice the difference. As long as I buy the heads of cauliflower versus the already cut  pieces, it’s fairly economical. I’ve even found some brands in the freezer section that have been pretty economical and make it easier to keep on hand. But again, this isn’t something I do alot.
  4. Rice – this has been hard. Really hard!!! So hard, that I have mostly failed. The only way this works is that I don’t eat it very often. But I LOVE rice and gravy, especially my grandmother’s. But at home, I have cut back on how often I include it in recipes, switched from white to brown or even more recently to wild rice. Again, a cheap food to begin with and while the wild rice is a bit more expensive, the quantity I use makes it a wash.
  5. Fruit – at first I gave up ALL fruit. And that was hard. But actually helped my budget quite a bit. As I’ve gotten better about my numbers and being careful about what I eat, I have added some fruits back in. I love Honeycrisp apples and will sometimes have one with peanut butter for lunch or a snack. But no more than once every couple of weeks because this definitely blows my numbers. But I do regularly eat berries of all types. They are a low carb fruit. And while they are a bit pricey, I don’t have to share them…Gymnast was the only child who ate berries, so now I get them all to myself. I buy some fresh every grocery trip, but mostly rely on frozen for smoothies and garnishes so that helps keep the cost down. Again, if the kids ate them, this could be an issue, but they don’t. So more for me!

I think that about sums up the changes I made as far as groceries.

Food Staples

We have always been big meat eaters, and I keep the freezer stocked with a variety either from Sams Club (in the days when all kids were home and buying in bulk made sense) and more recently from the quarterly truck sale at the local Quality Foods. Cheese and bacon are also big staples around our house. Otherwise, it’s mostly fresh or canned veggies. I can literally just sit and eat a can of green beans. I tried switching from canned to frozen, but just haven’t stuck to it.

So I buy cans in bulk of different veggies. Princess favorite are peas, History Buff loves greens and I will eat them all but love green beans. And then buy fresh options for steaming and roasting like zucchini and squash, carrots and spinach, peppers of all colors and cucumbers, can’t forget the cukes. A little olive oil, salt and pepper and yum!

So overall, diabetes has not really affected my grocery budget. It’s just really helped me make better choices on how I spend my money.

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