Food Prep

This morning as I sat drinking coffee I felt relaxed. A feeling usually reserved for Sunday mornings.
I am sure I am not alone with feeling stress when I think about managing the work week and running kids around to various activities.
A few weeks ago I didn’t food prep for the week and I felt behind the whole week.
I placed an order with my friend Denise that sells Tupperware for 4 more Food Savers. They are well worth the money as they not only keep produce fresher for longer, but they make me want to prepare my produce and obtain my money’s worth.
Pineapple, grapes, strawberries, carrots and melons are all cut and ready for fast snacks.
My daughter has to bring a fruit tray to an activity tomorrow night.
  Pineapple was 1.99, $6 on 2 large bags of grapes I am sure less than half will be in this tray, 2.50 melon, strawberries were 2.50 and will put vanilla yogurt as the dip. I ball park the tray will have cost me about $9 and fruit my daughter will eat.  Saving money and no waste!

I also planned out my meals for the week:

Monday spaghetti and Caesar salad with garlic toast
Tuesday butter chicken and rice (vh sauce,highly recommend it) will make large batch in the rice cooker and save some for another meal
Wednesday corn chowder and fresh bread maker bread
Thursday fajitas and rice
Friday Last free Pizza Delight 12 inch pizza voucher (these expire at the end of the month)

I also can’t believe that I missed this game changer news: ground beef can be fried and then frozen for meals! I am definitely out of my comfort zone in the kitchen but this time saving advice sure made my day!

What are your go to recipes?

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More Money Back?!

I love my gift cards!  When we are out shopping, I tend to primarily pay for purchases with gift cards.  I find that shopping and paying with gift cards helps me stay within my shopping budget.  I only purchase the gift cards though when there is a promotion.  
Frequently Sobeys offers a promotion to earn 95 Air Miles with every $200 in Sobeys gift cards that are purchased.  After  I purchase the Sobeys gift cards, my second transaction I purchase gift cards to other stores.  I purchase Boston Pizza, Home Hardware, Irving, Amazon gift cards just to name a few and pay with my Sobeys Gift Cards.
I have just discovered that Ebates.ca all sells gift card with cash back options.  I just ordered some gift cards to use at No Frills, my favorite grocery store. I find the prices over all cheaper at No Frills, and the owner donates money and time back to the community. Ebates will credit 1.5% of the gift card value back in my account.  I know that is only $1.50 every $100. Hey, slow and steady wins the race to being Debt Free!
If you don't have ebates yet, check out the link below, we will each get a little kickback.
Guess Who's Cheap? ME!

Check out Ebates.ca! It's a great website that actually pays you Cash Back every time you shop online and it's free to join! Ebates.ca works with over 750 stores that ship to Canada including Indigo.ca, Amazon.ca, eBay, Sears, Old Navy, Forever21 and Groupon.

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Happy shopping!
Ebates Canada
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Do your Research

We have been debt free since July! And let me tell you, the habits formed to get us to this point have been hard to break.  Spending money has been a challenge for us, and we have been sticking to our monthly budget closely. We have been allotting the mortgage money to the car fund.
An envelope that has always been in our budget is a car fund. Having dreams of a car we want to have, has helped us remain focused on this envelope.  Well, we finally had the money saved up for the dream SUV.  We have been doing our research on the SUV for quite a while.  I test drove it on Friday, and negotiated the price to where we were somewhat comfortable.  But to be honest, any number makes us uncomfortable.
Today our mechanic took a look at it and said it has issues, and to pass.  This saved us quite a bit of money and future concerns.
Do your research.  Vehicles are a huge expense, and a purchase that goes down in value. Make sure that you don't get car fever, and do your research before you make the purchase. We sure are glad we did.

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Track your goals

 By now you have set up your goals for 2018.  Creating a monthly and annual budgets will help you achieve those goals.  For me, I also needed to visually see the progress that we were making.

When we were getting out of debt we had a chart with a picture of a dollar bill to represent every 1000 dollars we owed.  As we paid off money, we coloured one of the bills.

The same premise can be used when saving for a goal.  We are trying to save up for a dream, once in a lifetime trip.  To save for this we are doing a few things.

First, we calculated the price of the trip, from air fare, activities, hotels and dining.  This actually got me very excited to make this a reality. I haven't had a focus since July, and this has got me all fired up lol.

The kids and I found a pic of a sun online and cut it out to represent the amount of money we need to achieve the vacation goal.  I then broke the price down into small goals and assigned a dollar amount to each sun image.  Each time we reach a goal, we will colour the sun.

We opened up a bank account for this trip.  We will deposit money into it as we get money from selling things online and our spare change.  

Here's hoping we achieve it and take the trip.  Dreaming will help get us there. 

 

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Please get out of debt!

I have been asked many, many times why paying off our house was so important to us. People told me all the time that I needed to relax and live and enjoy life.  Trust me, we enjoyed life. In the five years it took us to pay off our house, we did a family trip to Disney World and put in a pool.  But guess what? We found other ways to have fun. Fun that cost money went into the monthly budget. And we put every penny extra on our house.  Now, the things we are planning to do amaze us. Friends, the hard work really does pay off.
Today I noticed a few things that validate our beliefs that paying off debt is very important.
BMO Master card sent out a letter today that interest rates are increasing if two months in a row of minimum payments are missed.  You may think that it won't affect you, but making charges on your credit card that you know you can't pay off for a while is a dangerous slippery slope.
Bank of Canada is increasing their interest rates this week, according to an article on Yahoo today.  1/3 of Canadians may not be able to make their monthly minimum  payments and debt reduction. The link is here for a good read.  15 years ago, this was us. I graduated with massive university debt, leased a car, and didn't land the job I went to university for for a few years.
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/canada-debt-survey-third-canadians-131500350.html
On my walk today, 5 minutes from my house, a house had a new sign on the window, Mortgage Foreclosure.  4 streets away there are 2 houses on one street with the same sign.  Mortgage rates are on the rise.
I know that getting out of debt isn't fun. Trust me, I know. It is boring, and there is absolutely no glamour in it.  But I want all of you to know that it is worth it. Don't think of it as overwhelming, it is, that's reality.
Write down all your debts. Make minimum payments on all of them but the smallest. Put all your extra money on it, and knock it out fast and move on to the next debt. This is Dave Ramsey's snowball method.
I repeat, this isn't glamorous. Your friends aren't going to be wanting to hear all your Guess Who's Cheap tricks. 1/3 of Canadians are close to big financial trouble. That's 3 of your 10 friends.  I care about my friends, and I know you do too.
Let's change the stats. Still have fun, take a trip, buy a sweater, JUST STICK IT IN YOUR MONTHLY BUDGET.
PS I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS!  AFTER I HIT POST, MY BANK JUST CALLED ME TO OFFER ME A LINE OF CREDIT 

Eat the Fridge

We often have a meal that we call Eat the Fridge.  This meal is essentially eating all the leftovers that we can find, and calling it supper.
This week we are trying to eat the food that we have in the fridge, freezer and in the pantry.  For groceries this week I only bought produce and milk. 
Here is the menu:
Monday: bacon (frozen found in freezer) hashbrowns (found in freezer) eggs fresh, toast (bread in freezer) fruit
Tuesday: turkey soup (freezer) caesar salad
Wednesday: hamburgers, french fries (found in freezer) and caesar salad and carrot sticks (fresh)
Thursday: macaroni and cheese from last week when I made a double batch
Friday: pizza (freezer from pink sticker sale)

I bought carrots and celery this week as my produce. It is all cut up and in Tupperware containers in the fridge to use as snacks and sides. 
I plan to make up a batch of bits and bites tonight as they were a big hit at Christmas. 

Mail In Rebates and Cleaning Supplies Stockpile

MAIL IN REBATES

Today I got a cheque in the mail for $17.24 from purchasing Finish Power Ball Tabs at the end of November. I paid for them using a Sobeys Gift card that I purchased for the bonus air miles when they had their promotion buy $200 in gift cards earn 95 air miles. It gets better...then I earned air miles on this purchase, and now have a cheque for cash! My stockpile also grew through this. You can do it too, read along.

Mail In Rebates are a great way to build up your stock pile. I have not paid for Finish dishwasher tabs or the Jet Dry and cleaning agents in years.  These are the most popular Mail In Rebate Offers.   You can do it too, it just takes some patience.

Most of the time I find the Mail in Rebates in inserts within the local newspaper and at times inside the flyers.  I ask people to save me their inserts, and my father gathers them from his friends. It is important to remember that you can only receive one Mail In Rebate per address.  I use my address, my father's address, and my in-law's address.

Mail In Rebates require you to send in the original cash register receipt. You need to circle the item on your cash register receipt, and write at the top the numbers as they appear on the UPC (THIS IS THE BARCODE).

I purchase my items for Mail In Rebates at stores where I can get the most points.  On days when Shoppers Drug Mart has 20x the points day when you spend $50 I try to use a Mail In Rebate to help get to that total.   Remember if you are at Shoppers Drug Mart and paying, purchase a Shoppers Drug Mart gift card in a separate transaction to receive your Optimum points.

My other favorite store to purchase Mail In Rebate Offers is Sobeys, so I can collect Air miles on the total price. At Sobeys pay with your gift card that you have from buying them during their promotions. Then you get your cash back when your cheque arrives.  I buy my stamps at Costco. They are the cheapest place to purchase them. A cheque is mailed out to you within 4-6 weeks.

For the price of a stamp, Mail In Rebates help build up your stockpile and loyalty points.  Items that I will not use I still do the Mail In Rebate to donate them.  Some examples are I used some of the items to give to a local refugee family, and my daughters' Girl Guides Penny Auction.  Random times I fill up a bag of things that I have gotten for free that I don't use and when people visit I tell my friends to take a few things.

I used coupons for the soft soap 4 years ago, $1 off each bottle. I waited until they were on sale and asked the manager of the store to order me in some cases. I had gathered up coupons for the soap for a month, they had a long expiration date, and I am still using them. They only cost the tax.  If I have A LOT of coupons, more then a dozen for a product, I ask store managers, or stock people if they have them in boxes. This was they don't need to continue to restock. Try to be a respectful couponer.

Mr Clean Magic Erasers are always free in the Smart Source boxes. These come up a few times a year, watch Guess Who's Cheap we always post when they are live.

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