Financial Friday - Our October Cut Backs, Results!

Well…we made it to the end of October!

It took a lot of sacrificing, but we managed! I’m SO glad we cut down our expenses this month because I know we are going to want to spend a little bit more in November & December. And now – we can!

We got our water bill in today, and it is 16% LOWER than last month. I really think it's because I limited our laundry loads each week. Now I’m anxious to see what our TXU Energy bill will be in November for October. We definitely did not spend nearly as much eating out this month! We only went out a couple times. I spent less than $50 on grocery & staple items because I wanted to use up the food we had. I did have to buy chips & fruit, but that kept us from going out to eat for lunch. Now because our pantry is getting low, I have a long list of grocery items that we ran out of that I will need to stock up on again…which is fine with me! We ran out of peanut butter, ketchup, soups, syrup, baking mix (I use this for pot pies), and much more.

What I Learned:

- We dirty WAY too many clothes! My husband contributes mostly to that because his Kinesiology classes keep him active, then he comes home, showers and changes into clean clothes. Even though we dirty a lot of clothes, if I limit our laundry loads, we can still keep our expenses down.

- Keeping a window open at night makes me FREEZING COLD! There were some nights we turned the A/C off and opened a window, and I woke up FREEZING. Oh well! I would honestly rather be a little cold FOR FREE than spend money on electricity.

- We eat out WAY too much! Even though we eat a lot at home, I think we still eat out too much, especially on the weekends. We need to be more creative with our meals and better prepared. We saved so much money this month by not eating out as much.

- I am pretty creative! We had some random food items that were going to expire soon that I managed to use up.

** Tuna Casserole - FREE Tuna + $.40 Cream of Mushroom Soup + FREE Noodles + $.40 Peas = (4) $.20 Serving Size Meals for ME!! (My husband refused to eat this!) This actually didn’t taste that bad.

** Chicken Pot Pie – used up some frozen, mixed vegetables, left over chicken, Cream of Chicken soup and topped it off with the last bit of baking mix as a crust. SUPER CHEAP MEAL! (Brian said this tasted AWESOME!)

** Oatmeal Pancake Mix – This was already expired, so to be safe I wanted to use it up. I bought 17 lbs of EXTREMELY reduced bananas. So I made 2 dozen cinnamon, oatmeal, banana pancakes and froze them.

** BBQ Chicken – I had a ton of FREE BBQ sauce, plenty of $.20 cans of Green Beans, and FREE Betty Crocker potato pouches. ANOTHER SUPER CHEAP MEAL!

** Dressing Mix – Last year, I bought a FREE box of dressing mix and just never used it. All it required was some onion, celery, butter, etc., which I had all those on hand. We had a meal with a FREE side!

** We used up a LOT of our cereal, which was GREAT because Aldi still has their 1 gal Milk for $.99!!

** Hot Dogs – I had a package of hot dogs in the freezer I bought for $.38, and I had a package of buns on hand I bought at Aldi for $.30. That made each hot dog only $.09!!

** Homemade Pizza – Each pizza probably cost us $.50 to make. ANOTHER SUPER CHEAP, TASTY MEAL!!

Overall, this was a positive experience for us!

Did you cut anything down in October? How did you come out?

Enjoy the FREE savings?

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