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| Instead of getting frozen pizza, make this easy DELICIOUS homemade pizza. Find the recipe HERE. |
"We can begin ever so modestly. We can begin with a one week's food supply and gradually build it to a month, and then to three months. . . . I fear that so many feel that a long-term food supply is so far beyond their reach that they make no effort at all.
"Begin in a small way, . . . and gradually build toward a reasonable objective." (Pres. Gordon B. Hinckley, Oct 2002 and quoted again in April 2007)
Well the new year is here…ready or not! We talked about goals last week, are you off to a good start? Remember, slow and steady wins the race.
If you tried and failed at budgeting, don’t give up - try again!
http://www.wisebread.com/8-tips-for-improving-or-starting-a-budget
I will tell you that you don’t have to spend a dime setting this up. Grab a pencil and a scrap of paper when you set it up. If you want to go out and get fancy programs and ledgers, you can or you can put that money into the emergency fund.
Write at the top of the paper how much you make a month. It is easier to do it by month to start as our utility bills and housing bills will be on a monthly schedule.
So write the amount for the month. Then tithing, housing (if you do not have insurance and taxes in your payment for house you need to find the year amounts on those two, divide by twelve, and that is next one), then utilities, phone, gas, car payments and insurance, just what you have… then decide what you can afford for groceries etc.
It is a shock to see how fast that hard worked for money goes…
There are many ways to cut on your expenses.
Like cable bills. I do not miss those at all… we bought Roku a few years ago. Now mind you, if you are not serious about cutting the cost this could cost you lots. The initial outlay for the Roku box is around seventy dollars per box. We got two, one for the TV in living room and one in the bedroom. Now I am sure there are other things out there, this is just what we did. We have no cable, Roku offers channels, some free - even a news channel that has 24 hr news. But this is where you have to be serious about what you do as you can pay subscriptions for many channels.
I could see if you decided to get a lot of pay channels you could end up with a bill as high as cable. We chose to just pay eight dollars a month and get Netflix. That amount pays for the two TV’s you cannot go to the movies for that eight dollars a month.
We kept the internet bill because my husband's website has to be up to generate the odd job and church callings.
We chose to get rid of the phone bill and go with magic jack for one small payment a year so that we can have unlimited long distance to be able to call kids, grandkids and church callings.
So these are a few ways that we cut bills a few years ago and still do it this way.
Now mind you I am not advertising, it is just the products we went with. By now there are probably many others to choose from.
They say when you are dieting you write down all the things you eat. If you don’t want to write it down, you tend not to eat it. Same with budgeting. Keep track of everything you spend. This will help you to locate your leaks. If you're running to the store often and you find you are spending for more than you went in for, you are doing what the store is hoping you will do.
Try to make lists and menus, then limit trips. Grocery shopping once a month frees up so much time, especially when it takes an hour round trip - it also takes less gas. So this is what saves lots of money. I am sure the stores aren’t fond of how I do it but sticking to the list, I have food storage that allows me to be able to stock up on in-store specials by switching my menu around.
Making this menu and list is soooo important there is no wasted gas and with good planning you don’t forget things like when no list is used.
Look over the list… do you have convenience foods?? Like frozen pizzas? Box mixes, etc.?? Did you know you can make everything from scratch for way less? When I make bread it is about $0.25 a loaf, compare with what the store charges and not one brand tastes as good.
http://www.beckysbacktobasics.com/get_full_recipe.php?File=1269450236&search.x=23&search.y=19 this is the best pizza ever and look at the directions - so convenient! We love it best though our favorite topping is just mushroom and no meat, but whatever is your favorite is easy to do. You don’t need a pizza stone. Is the crust crispy? Yes, it is. Cutting it on a wood cutting board is key to keeping it crispy.
Whatever your family likes, try a scratch version. Look up a new recipe and try. You will only like some and some you will love. Start collecting the love ones and before you know it there is hardly anywhere else you will want to go eat. There is nothing like cooking and eating together with those you love most.
Yes, it may take a little more work but it makes up for it in taste and savings.
I suggest going to the library and checking out The Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn. My favorite are her first two books as not everything got put into book three, though it is good too. Some things you will want to do others might not hit it off with you. That is okay but anything we can do to save and stop our leaks.
Do you know everything your library offers? Ours, has the best movie selection I have ever seen. Check out movies, have real popcorn (not microwave), and that is a very very inexpensive date or movie day or snow day. Keep your eye on the weather and make a trip to the library before a big storm. Look in the Relief Society recipes from the last message to find my caramel corn recipe and watch movies, play games, or just have fun and make memories.
Building skills:
http://www.storageskills.com/?p=69 - this is a very good walk through. Before you start call 1-800-262-3804 and get the correct lbs of pressure and times for exactly where you live. Polk and Story counties will be different.
Why should you want to do this?? Well, if you had home canned chicken you would know it is considerably cheaper to do over cans in the store, but if you tasted both cans and home canned you would not settle for the tin cans of chicken again. The best of all reason though is when you have chicken on the shelf you have future meals. You can even open a jar, it can be eaten right then or you can make chicken salad sandwiches just by adding a few ingredients or you can have casseroles, gravy, hay stacks, soup, etc.
Even tho you see her putting raw chicken in the jars, the jars she takes out in the end are fully cooked. This, in my opinion, is the easiest thing of all to can….yep! This makes putting a meal together when you don’t feel well very easy.
Challenge yourself to make a skirt or dress for you or one of your girls. Easy to do and cost effective. Best of all you and you alone control the modesty. This is great a very worthwhile skill
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Free+Skirt+Patterns&view=detail&&mid=323B4BADE2205318AAEA323B4BADE2205318AAEA - make matching skirts, how fun :)
What skills are you working on for this great new year??
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