HisHersMoney

Being a frugal family buying new “toys” isn’t something that is front and foremost in our minds, but sometimes it just happens. Our new gadget is a Breville Juicer. I shopped around online for it to compare capabilities, reviews and prices. We ended up choosing this model which had a larger motor, more speeds and the fact that all the pieces were dishwasher safe!   

When we had narrowed it down to a few models we then turned to price. The Breville Ikon model seemed to be at a good price point in the market and the cost didn’t vary too much depended on where we bought it. We bought ours from SurLaTable which had a good price and had a store locally which meant we could drive right over and pick it up. No shipping costs and no waiting because they had it in stock.

So far for fruit juices we have made fresh orange juice which was so delicious, orange and strawberry juice and mixed fruit juice with oranges, apples and strawberries. FOr vegetable juices I made a carrot juice yesterday which was surprisingly yummy and we have also made a celery, cilantro and lime juice which I put too much lime in and a tomato, celery and carrot juice which I put too much tomato in.

A few adjustments are ongoing as to the balance between the fruits a vegetables but so far most everything has been really good. I foresee a future with lots of fresh fruits and veggies making their way to my home from costco!

For those of you who use coupons you can imagine how nice it would be if your grocery store tripled them. Well that’s exactly what our store did this past weekend. Every once in awhile, maybe every two months or so, our grocery store will offer triple coupons for all coupons under $1.00. They limit each customer to 20 coupons so sometimes Him and I have to each go through the line separately. This was the case this past weekend.

Every week when I go through the coupons I cut out those coupons that are for things that we buy all the time but I also snag the ones that are for things that I would buy during triple coupon weekend because I can get the items dirt cheap. The best deal is when we find the $.75 coupons on things like granola bars, salad dressings and condiments, etc.

Things we got:

Chex Granola Bars, on sale 2/$5 with $.75 off coupons on each of them so they were $0.25 each.

Regular mustard and honey mustards for about $0.09 each. We don’t need more than one of these items so we will drop the extras in the next food donation bin that we are asked to donate to.

Barilla pasta and sauce, the pasta was about $0.10 each and the sauce was about $0.75 each and we got three of each.

We also got a couple things of cat litter, dishwasher detergent, Zip Stream Bags, Mayo, salad dressing, Pepperidge Farms snack crackers, deli cheese, snacks, rolls, coffee creamer, beer, four different kinds of rice mixes, and the list goes on. Our pantry is definitely stocked now!

We ended up with receipts that exceeded two and a half feet long! Here’s the break down:

Receipt #1 Total owed: $46.74, coupons savings of $41.94 and sales savings of $16.55

Receipt #2 Total owed: $32.59, coupon savings of $46.18 and sales savings of $22.64

That’s a savings of $127.31!!!

Let me tell you, being strapped for cash totally bites the big one! The whole goal of living our frugal lifestyle is so that we won’t have to live paycheck to paycheck and yet, here we are, looking forward to pay day like the day will never get here quick enough.

We recently posted that we were buying a ski condo share in Colorado, Steamboat to be exact. Well we are actually buying a portion of a ski condo for $18,500 plus a few hundred in closing costs. We are paying cash for the condo which means we had to raid every account we owned to come up with the money. Not only our joint accounts but the individual savings accounts that we had from before we got married this past fall.

Well, we scraped together the cash. We were able to hold off on cashing in the savings bonds and scraping the bottom of all the barrels thanks to a $2700 tax refund which arrived prior to the closing date which was today.

We finalized the offer about three weeks ago and knew the amount we had to come up with so we have been in a cash is King mode ever since. Every time we even spend a dollar on groceries it required thought as to how it affected our bottom line and our ability to pay for the condo.

Once we were under contract we had our $2500 earnest payment on the line and we weren’t walking away from that. We also weren’t going to run up our credit card or get a loan so cash was the only way to go.

So, how did we do? The cash was wired to the title company yesterday in full and closing went through today without a hitch. Condo done.

Our living expenses while we pulled together the cash on the other hand were tight and I have to say we really didn’t do a very good job at “cutting back” during this time. In fact, our effort lacked all commitment on both of our parts! We ended up with about $550 put on the credit card this month. There are a couple grocery charges, a few eating out and social bills as well as a $200 Breville Juicer that I had to have (post to come).

We plan on paying off the bill before any interest is charged but it just means when we get back on our feet with our paychecks it will be another month before we get back ahead of the game and stop living paycheck to paycheck. Our lesson learned here is that we wish we had a bit more in savings because now our savings is cleaned out and we are starting from scratch but it’s also another opportunity to do the right thing.

The best part: we own a ski condo free and clear!!!

Well we finally received a payment we have been waiting for from His past-past employer paying his unused vacation time. After taxes the amount is about $3700. We instantly put $3400 towards the stupid credit card bill bringing it down to just under $1300.

We kept the other $300 in the checking account. His just started a new job and his last paycheck is not quite a full paycheck so this kind of evens everything out.

Keep an eye peeled for an upcoming “we’ve payed it off” email which we hope will be arriving soon!