His Hers Money

We received a fantastic wedding gift in the mail today. It was from my Grandma and Grandpa and we received a Food Saver. I was so excited as I have wanted one of these for awhile now but could part with the close to $100 to buy one. Everyone has seen the ads where they claim you can save hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of food that other wise would have gone bad but with just the two of us I just wasn’t seeing the value in it.

Receiving one as a gift is perfect. No guilt over spending the money on it and I get my cool kitchen gadget. So, tonight we used it for the first time while preparing dinner. After opening a bag of salad and only using half of it I stuck the lettuce bag in the Food Saver and sealed away. It seemed to work just fine. Then there was the bag of croutons. After we took out what we were going to use on this evening’s salad I stuck the bag right into the Food Saver and again it worked like a charm.

So, will it save us money? I’m sure it will in the long run. We don’t have a ton of different foods in the house to have too much of a food going bad problem but there’s always a few items that I end up having to toss. The key seems to be in whether you use the “FoodSaver” bags. From what I understand they can be costly but you can use the plastic packaging that the food already comes in. I will be using it on a daily basis and will report back in about a month or so on it.

As I have previously posted, I am a foodie at heart. Everyone knows that dining out on a daily basis will have a shrinking effect on your wallet and an expanding effect on your waist line. Our goal is to avoid both of these side effects as much as possible while still enjoying non-ramen meals. His takes his breakfast and lunch with him to work each day and I (hers) take my coffee and lunch with me to work each day which really helps.

Weekly grocery bills: 3/15/08 $47.74 Grocery Store & 3/15/08 $13.64 Costco

Breakfast for the week is bagels and cream cheese, cereal & apples.

Lunch is left over lasagna, left over chili or tuna sandwich.

Dinner Menu:

Sun: Loaded Baked potatoes with bacon, sour cream, cheese & broccoli

Mon: BBQ Chicken

Tues: Lamb Chops

Wed: Tacos with ground beef

Thurs: Penne Pasta with pesto

Fri: sushi (eating out)

Sat: Salmon Burgers

Each night we always add vegetables or a salad and a small side starch. So, you can see how two people can eat pretty well on a reasonable amount of money. We usually get sushi on Friday nights and a couple glasses of wine out at a local restaurant. Our bill this week was about $60 so combined with out grocery bills we usually stay within our $125 budget.

Stayed tuned next week when I try out a new idea I saw over on Dimples’ Divine Domain to cook an entire chicken in the crock pot! I never would have thought of it but I’m looking forward to trying it.

Yes, this blog is supposed to be about saving money, not spending money and of course getting out of debt, but everyone knows it’s hard not to spend ANY money. For me it’s gourmet cooking items. I could justify it by saying that because I have cool kitchen/cooking gadgets I cook at home rather than eating out (which is true by the way) but it’s still money spent. Today I did get a little something for the kitchen. I got a small grater that can be used for zesting citruses or spices and also has a small slicer on it. A nifty tool that should really last forever and it wasn’t too expensive at $14.95 plus tax (no tip :)).

One different between her and him is what we like to spend our money on. I prefer gourmet chef gadgets, shoes and car. The car thing will be covered in a later post. Him is more the video games, golf stuff and computer things.

I have learned to limit my shoes greatly in the past year. Living in the Washington DC area we do a LOT of walking so comfortable shoes are really a must and the cute shoes have to be reserved for special occasions which don’t involve significant treks.