TRIAL RUNS: Part 3, A Spectacular Lunch

Today we dined in Dobyn’s Restaurant in the Keeter Center and to say the lunch was fine dining would be an understatement. 

We arrived a little early for our reservation, it is highly recommend you get a reservation, so we took advantage of the extra time to look around the lobby of the large log cabin that houses the restaurant. 

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This unique furniture was in the foyer of the building.

The furniture on in the waiting area was also rustic, but not as nearly ornate as the foyer furniture.  Chances are very good that the furnishings throughout the log cabin were made by various artisans living on campus.

If you don’t know anything about the College of the Ozarks here is a brief synopsis for you.  It is commonly called “Hard Work University” because that is how the students pay for their degrees.  Each student is required to work a minimum of 15 hours per week, with one 40 hour week per semester, on campus.  This is how they pay for their liberal arts degree.  

It is a four year need based Christian college and most students graduate with no student loan debt. If you have a student thinking about college you might really want to see if they meet all the criteria to attend this beautiful campus.

After returning home I learned two of my cousin’s grandchildren had received their degrees from the college.  They both loved the campus and hated to leave.

Back to our meal…

We were seated fairly close to our 12:15 pm reservation.  I was certainly glad we had decided to dress decently instead of shorts and a Disney t-shirt, our normal camping wardrobe.

The greeters were all dressed in nice navy blazers, skirts or slacks with white shirts and our servers were all white jacketed.  

The greeter escorted us into an immense dining room with more rustic furniture, but this furniture had an elegant feel to it.  The long tin tiled ceilinged room was well appointed, immaculate.  If you have ever stayed at the Wilderness Lodge at Walt Disney World, it reminded us of it in many ways, but more elegant.

The table was set with a complete service of all the proper silverware and a neatly pyramid folded cloth napkin.  Our beverages came in a nice piece of stemware. Each course was delivered in covered serving dishes.

Each course brought out the appropriate additional silverware for that course and all used dishes and silverware were quickly and quietly removed.

Our server was Hannah, if all servers were as attentive as she was we would go broke with the amount of tips we would pay.  We tip based on service, not price.  She deserved the maximum tip for certain.

She was attentive without being cloying.  Made excellent eye contact, never wrote anything down, but our orders came perfect.  She knew the ingredients of everything we and those around us ordered and could answer any allergy queries with no problem.   

She spoke clearly, and in a friendly professional way.  The way you would expect wait staff in a fine dining restaurant to speak.

While we waited on our meals to arrive she brought us a basket that contained two honey wheat rolls, and two cranberry biscuits.  She also brought a small cast iron skillet that contained real butter and some of the best apple butter I have ever eaten.

All these items had been made from products produced there on campus.  The flours were from the grain mill, the butter from their dairy, the apple butter from another part of the campus.  Then of course it was all handmade from scratch there in the restaurant. This was the story behind every item we consumed today.  Oh what a wonderful meal we had.

Dh’s meal was what he declared to be the best chicken and dumplings he had ever had. Unfortunately, I didn’t think to take a photo of it before he had consumed every drop of it.

I had the Pork Pomodoro. Thin medallions of pork loin resting on some of the finest tasting polenta I have ever eaten, topped with pesto and organic cherry tomatoes.  The taste was out of this world! 

It was also a huge portion.  So huge I took half of it back to the camper with me because I simply had to try their desserts. The photo below is what I took back to the camper.

For dessert Gary ordered their banana cream pie topped with a mountain of whipped cream and drizzled with a salted caramel sauce.

I do believe my dessert was the best I have ever had bar none.  Blueberries and cream bread pudding.  It had a sweetened cream cheese type layer, blueberries and raspberries baked into the bread pudding, then it was topped with a drizzle of lemon curd.  On the side was a mound of sweetened whipped cream in a circle of fresh blueberries and topped with a perfectly pink raspberry.  Truly a fine dining dessert.

This too was way too large a serving for me so half of that returned to the camper with me as well. 

To view their entire menu go here. 

All my leftovers were carefully packaged up by Hannah.  No trying to put it in a Styrofoam carryout box while juggling a plate awkwardly for me.  No Styrofoam at all in fact.  A very plain brown box was used. Very sturdy and environmental friendly.

Our total meal came to slightly over $50 including a very sizable tip and it was worth every penny of it! This is a statement you won’t hear me make often.

After the meal we located a brochure that had a map of the campus included and headed out the door thinking we would go to the Ralph Foster museum, Lookout Point and other sites on campus.  Instead we found ourselves wandering through a small park there at the log cabin. Taking several photos.

By the time we finished with our photos it was almost 2:30 pm.  The museum is three stories and closes at 4:30pm.  In fact all the various buildings on campus close at 4:30pm.

So instead we drove through the campus getting a lay of the land to go back another day.

The campus is gorgeous, swans and ducks in the lake and everywhere there were students PUSHING lawn mowers, no riding mowers were ever seen, pushing brooms to sweep the streets and sidewalks as well as other maintenance jobs.  Definitely Hardwork U.

We left the campus about 4:00 pm enjoying the fact that thanks to following the Total Money Makeover plan by Dave Ramsey we felt like this was the way we were meant to live.  Fine dining, a relaxing day and moving at our own pace without jumping through anyone’s hoops.

Truly a great middle to our day.  On to the next segment of Trial Runs.

PAYING FOR YOUR MAGICAL TRIP

January 31, 2012

So now you’ve got a rough idea of how much this trip will cost you and maybe a little bit of panic is setting in. Maybe the total was more than you thought it would be, but you REALLY want to take this trip, or a trip to anywhere, or maybe you just want to get debt free (just had to slip in a plug for that, because once you live debt free then you can travel all you want) but you don’t want to take out a loan or use charge cards for the dream trip (especially not if you want to live debt free). HOW in the world are you going to pay for this trip, because boy would it be fun to go!

The answer is simple. Two ways, cut the costs and save for it and pay cash for the entire trip. This post is about paying for it. The ideas here will work not only work for playing for a vacation, but for getting debt free, or buying any number of things. My next post(s) will be about ways to cut costs. There are hundreds of ways to do both ways, both on the trip and at home. First the cash, because the sooner you start on it the faster you will reach your goal.

You can start right now. Find a solid heavy jar, or that cutesy bank you picked up somewhere, a tin can whatever and put it where you can easily get to it. Maybe you would want to decorate it, or let the kids if you are letting them help you plan right now, Do something to remind you that any money that goes in this is for the trip (or debt reduction).

Now go to your purse, shake your pants pocket, dig in the sofa cushions, dump the coins out of the car ash tray, frisk the washing machine, look in your coat pockets, look everywhere you know you usually deposit pocket change and put it in the container. The clinking of those coins hitting the once empty container is Tinkerbell’s twinkle sound, do you hear Walt Disney World calling you?

While that doesn’t look like much right now it will grow and grow and you will soon be off on your trip of a lifetime. But just like those of us that are on the Dave Ramsey plan talk about feeding the gazelles, you need to feed Tinkerbell too.

You’ve done the first step, now start paying for everything you can in cash, dollar bills to be exact. No coins, because every coin is going to go into your vacation fund. I’ll call it Tink’s fund for now. Each night, drop all your coins into that bank and listen for Tink telling you thank you. You will be surprised how fast that fund is going to grow as time goes on.

Our first trip to Walt Disney World we paid cash for the trip for four of us, so have a few of the trips between then and the one we are currently saving for now using the methods I’ll be telling you. It took us exactly 9 months to save for the trip just out of pocket change and coupon money for the four of us. The more you do to feed Tink the faster you can get there.

So where are you going to get the cash to feed Tink? Let’s start with a simple one. Coupons. Don’t go running screaming into the woods at the sound of that. I’m not telling you to become an extreme couponer , although that wouldn’t hurt, I’m saying just incorporate a few coupons and discounts into your life. It doesn’t have to be a major production like you see on tv, it can be just one or two here or there. The volume you do is up to you.

Think outside the box, need an oil change, check the yellow pages of your phone book, often there is a coupon there for oil changes. Do you eat out often (we’ll discuss this more later)? Check to see if your favorite places you eat at have a free online club or a loyalty card. Because if they do you should sign up for them, and net the benefits from them.

If you read my Week #1 post on menus you will see we went to Ghengis Mongolian Grill for my birthday meal. I belong to both their online club and have a loyalty card. As a result the three of us ate for 1/3 of what the bill would have been normally. I got a free meal because it was my birthday, and we’d eaten there enough that we’d earned another free meal. So our nearly $50 meal cost us $16 including the tip (we paid our server a tip based on the $50 because we had extremely good service). The difference went into the trip bank that night.

Every way you can save with a coupon OR a discount of any type, use the money you saved to “feed Tink”. Save $.10 with a grocery coupon, put it in that bank. Get a discount because of a loyalty card, a student or senior citizen discount, put it in that bank. You will be amazed at how fast that money will add up.

Then once a month, or when you mystery shop your personal bank (I’ll explain this in a minute) deposit all but a few coins from your Tink fund into a regular bank into an interest bearing account. Even if it’s just $10 put it in the real bank. Because the sooner you do the more you will earn in interest and every penny interest is that much closer to your dream trip. The reason I say leave a few coins in the Tink fund bank is because I consider it “seed money” If it’s empty it’s too easy to leave it empty, but if you see coins in there it’s a lot easier to add a few. It’s a mental thing.

Now let’s look at cutting expenses. You saw how much we saved on that birthday meal, but what if we’d all drank water with lemon, which is free, instead of three $2 each drinks? At that one meal it would have been a savings of $6 plus tax for the three of us. That’s roughly $6.50 more to feed Tink with. Or if we hadn’t eaten out at all that night…you get the idea.

Do you REALLY need that double low fat whatever latte on the way to/from work? Could you make it yourself at home, or skip it one day a week even?

Of course coupons are a big saver on groceries too. So is the menu planning I write about in other posts. Don’t forget to mail in your rebates. All that cash goes into the fund. As the fund grows you will find more and more ways to save because you WANT that trip!

Around here when we are saving for a big trip we often equate what we are saving by either not buying something, using a coupon or getting a discount with what it will buy at WDW. One of us will often say “that’s a coke at Disney World.” Or if it’s a bigger savings “That’s a burger, a one day ticket, a night’s stay etc at Disney World.” And it all adds up.

My granny always said “mind your pennies and your dollars will mind themselves.” You see a penny in a parking lot, pick it up and feed it to Tink, it only takes 10 pennies to make a dime and 10 dimes to make a dollar. So don’t pass up that penny.

While we no longer use charge cards due to our personal decision to follow Dave Ramsey’s path to Financial Freedom, when we did we had one that paid a cash back bonus. We paid this card off pretty religiously so using it was another way we earned cash for our trips. We paid for everything with that card and then as soon as we had enough “cash back” built up we could withdraw it that money went into the Tink fund as well.

When it came time to take the trip we made certain we had enough money in the savings account to pay off the charge card when the bills from the trip started rolling in and then used that card exclusively for the trip-so we earned cash back for those expenses as well, for the next trip. The Tink’s fund stayed in the bank earning interest until the bill hit, but the minute the bill hit we withdrew from the bank enough to cover the bill in full and paid it off.

This plan works well as long as you don’t get a Murphy hit and can’t pay off the charge card. Then the interest will eat your lunch and you will have the stress of an additional bill. We made the conscious decision to do without the charge card at all. Because we learned the hard way that Murphy is just one knock at the door away at all times. But if you choose to use charge cards that is your personal decision and you can use it to your advantage to pay for the trip IF you pay the bill off in full each month.

A note about using a charge or debit card while at WDW or any out of town trip. Notify the company the card is issued from ahead of time when you are traveling, because if you don’t you might find your purchases denied, even when you have the cash there to cover it.

In this day and age of identity theft many companies will shut a card down if they see it being used outside its normal travel area. We had that happen once while at WDW and it was VERY embarrassing. A simple phone call straightened it out, but that was time away from our vacation and a bit of embarrassment we could do without.

Also, one of my bank debit cards will not let purchases from certain states go through on the debit card because of identity theft period. It’s a small local bank and there is no discussing it with them. Certain states are on their no go list. Another debit card has a daily limit of $1,000 they will let go through, unless you make prior arrangements before your trip or large purchase. So it’s better to find out BEFORE you go if you have a similar situation rather than get several states away and find you don’t have access to your cash. Be sure and check on that daily limit because when staying at the WDW resorts you will be issued a “room key” that will be used like a credit/debit card in the park and resort area and they will run a large total through on your account at once. You can tell them ahead of time how much you to allow at a time and then they will need to notify you of when they are running the amount through.

Due to the problems of identity theft and theft in general we actually have an electronic use only free checking account with a Visa debit at a bank other than our main bank set up. We use this account strictly for our online purchases and travel. Only the exact amount of money we need for the purchase/trip is put in this account prior to the purchase/trip. That way if theft does happened our main accounts are safe and our liability is limited. We keep the account open with just a required small amount in there at other times.

Another big fund raiser is sell stuff. Run a garage sale, list on ebay, sell media items on half.com or amazon.com, Craig’s list, upillar.com, your local cheap cycle the list goes on and on of places to sell things. Someone recently said they “only got $.75” for a book they had purchased years ago. I responded “that’s $.75 more than you would have had otherwise and now your bookshelf is cleaner and you aren’t paying to heat/cool that book. “ If I’d been talking to a family member I would have said “That’s almost half of a Mickey Ears ice cream bar at WDW.” I always have things listed on half. com http://shops.half.ebay.com/ladydressmaker_W0QQ_trksidZp2919QQmZbooks as an ongoing fund raiser for whatever our current goal is.

Older kids often can earn their own vacation souvenir/spending money by babysitting, doing yard work and similar jobs for others. Whatever you do the more you do the more you can save.

Consider mystery shopping and saving all of the income from that, above your expenses of doing so, for your trip. For more on mystery shopping check out my previously posted articles on the subject.

WHAT DO YOU NEED TO BECOME A MYSTERY SHOPPER, FURTHER EXPLANATION ON MERCHANDISING, ARE REINBURSEMENT SHOPS WORTH THE INVESTMENT?

 

. Remember me saying that I put the Tink Fund money in a bank I mystery shop at. Well I make that deposit when I do a teller shop and use their coin counting machine to count the Tink Fund then make the deposit, as required by the mystery shop. File my paperwork and I make anywhere from $5 to $25 depending on the bank and the time of the month for making that deposit. Then the money I make from that shop goes directly into the bank via direct deposit when I get paid for the shop.

Because I schedule my mystery shops to coincide with my errands I’m not out any extra expenses for fuel to do the shop so the whole amount goes into the Tink Fund. If it was a mystery shop that I had to make a reimbursable purchase, like a nice meal out, for I deduct how much I spent for that meal from the check and only the profit goes into the Tink fund.

Make gift giving time part of preparing for the trip time. It might be the perfect way to tell family members about the trip. Disney or other gift cards, Disney cash, tickets for the parks (you can buy them ahead of time because the time on them doesn’t start until you actually use them). Special clothing for the trip, stuffed animals, Disney movies (often have rebates on them) reservations etc all make good gifts. Plus they are part of your trip budget so you kill two birds with one stone.

Speaking of gift cards it’s time to speak about mypoints and similar programs. These are programs where you click on emails or ads and you get points. These points are saved until you have enough to redeem them. While mypoints does not have Disney gift cards that you can redeem for they do have Wal-Mart cards, fuel cards, restaurant gift cards and various other gift cards that you could use while vacationing OR to use at home and put the cash you saved by using them in your Tink Fund. They are basically free money you can earn in just a few clicks. I personally use the mypoints tool bar and get bonus points every month by using it to do the numerous google searches I do each month anyway. No extra effort on my part once I installed the tool bar (which I got bonus points for doing) and it’s free money. Oh if you shop online you can also get bonus points from the various places by doing the shopping through the mypoints (or similar websites). Not a member of mypoints? I’d love to refer you, I get points for referrals too. Just e me privately and I’ll refer you.

Another bit of info on gift cards is to purchase ones from Sam's Club or Costco.  Their cards are sold at a discount.  Often $5 off of every $50 purchased.  I purchase gift cards there not only as gifts, placing the saved money in the Tink Fund, but to purchase Disney Gift cards and Southwest Airlines gift cards when flying.  These cards are used to pay for air fare, meals and accommodations at WDW.

WARNING #1:  Southwest airlines will only let you use a certain number of payment divisions to pay for each ticket.  They count each gift card as a division.  We did not know this when we made our first flight using gift cards for the flight.  Our cards were in $50 denominations, the limit was four forms of payment.  So we could only use 3 cards and a debit/credit card for the ticket.  In order to use all the gift cards we had we had to book each direction of the flight for each person separately.

This means for our party of two I had to book four separate tickets.  The cost was still the same, but it meant on SWA our boarding groups were sometimes different.  How we handled this was the person with the first boarding group took both our carry-ons, boarded and saved a seat for the second person.

WARNING #2: This one is not that big of deal, but it is something you should be aware of.  Disney will not let you pay ahead or use the gift cards for automatic payment of charging to your room key.  You can charge to your room and then pay on your bill with the gift card, but if you are set up for an auto payment via your debit/credit card when you reach a certain limit before you go pay on your bill with the gift cards the amount will go to your debit/credit card.

We handled this by keeping track of our charges and going to the front desk to pay on the bill with the gift cards before we hit the automatic debit/credit card charge.

This required a little extra time on our part, but because we had so many of the gift cards it was well worth the effort.

Blogging is another way to earn bits of cash here and there. See the ads in and around my blogs? Every time you or anyone else clicks on one I get a penny. (all clicks appreciated) and that goes into my Tink Fund.

The whole idea is to save for the trip, so every penny you save or earn it goes into your Tink Fund. Our first trip cost right at $3,000 and that was when there were four of us going, now I only pay for two as my son always pays for his own expenses if he joins us. We still pay right around $3,000 thirty years later for our first trip of the year from OK when we purchase our annual pass, and then far less for the remaining 1-3 trips for the year.

That first trip there was one park, the Magic Kingdom, there are now 4 parks, 2 water parks and a large shopping complex. Plus to us the campground, called Ft. Wilderness, is an adventure in itself. There is a lot to do at each of the resorts as well. You can spend a whole day easily just going from resort to resort to see the differences and enjoy the ambiance of each resort. While pool hopping is frowned upon there is a lot to see as each resort is done in a different theme. We particularly like doing this during the various holiday seasons to enjoy the decorations on a “crash and burn” day.

One other thing to consider is what we did one trip we went down. A dear friend had moved from Oklahoma to Mississippi and had left a lot of their stuff in storage here. They paid for our fuel and the trailer rental for us to bring a trailer load of their items from OK to Gulfport, MS. This gave us not only fuel for those first several miles, but a place to stay one night and a nice home cooked meal. This was of course a big savings for all involved. So if you have a similar situation, or you do animal rescue transports on a regular basis you might try to schedule one for part of your journey to help cover the transportation costs. Or plan your trip when a family member has to travel that direction for business and just journey on from their first destination to WDW at a discounted rate.

We did this last one a few years ago when my husband was sent to AutoCad University in Las Vegas, NV in December. We combined the travel time with vacation time and used his travel expense account for paying for the part to and from Las Vegas, as well as lodging and meals while we were there. That left the rest of our nearly four week trip to travel parts of the western US on our private money. Since Vegas was our furthest point west on that trip it covered a good deal of our fuel consumption. If we’d had the time we would have gone on over to Disneyland from there, but alas we didn’t have the time.

Other ideas for saving money, or earning additional income can be found in the Tightwad Gazette books (I, II &; III) by Amy Dacyzn, The Total Money Makeover book by Dave Ramsey, various yahoogroups, and various frugal websites. For legit work at home jobs consider checking out ratracerebellion.com and volition.com websites as well.  You might also considering linking over to my other blogs.  Each one has a frugal theme.  Mind Your Pennies, is how to save money in day to day living without feeling deprived. Patterson's Princess Plan is how to go about decluttering all aspects of your life, including financial matters. At Patterson's Pantry I am planning out a year's worth of basic home cooking menus with the recipes for those menus at Patterson's Pantry Recipes.  At the last one you will find a lot of recipes for making your own conveniences mixes.

Whatever you do save your profits and you will have a vacation that you can be proud of without going into debt. Speaking of debt, consider all these ideas and more for becoming debt free because then as Dave Ramsey says if you “Live like no one else now, later you can LIVE like no one else.”

Jan who is using all these ideas and more to not only become debt free, but to take a celebration vacation trip to Walt Disney World when she is debt free in OK

A YEAR’S WORTH OF MENUS

January 26, 2012

Some folks think I’m certifiably crazy. I announced at the first of the year I was going to do a year’s worth of menus all three meals a day and in doing so I would save hundreds if not thousands of dollars out of our grocery budget doing so. The idea grew out of my success with going without a freezer in December.

Learning to plan my menu without depending on a free standing freezer has made it where I can see the big picture of the value of long term menu planning not only for money savings, but for nutrition and food storage.

I’ve been doing it since the first of the year and it is really working out nicely for us. It has pretty well done away with the annoying nightly “What’s for dinner” discussion. A huge plus.

I’ve mentioned on various yahoogroups I’m on that I am doing this and there have naturally been a lot of questions about how to do it. I’ve also been asked to post my year’s worth of menus. After much thinking I’ve decided rather than clog those lists up to post the journey through the year here, along with the how to’s and recipes to do it.

So this first post is about the “HOW TO”, “HOW IT WILL SAVE YOU MONEY” and. “HOW ABOUT WHEN LIFE HAPPENS?”

HOW TO

I have to admit that when I first decided to do a year’s worth of weekly menus for three meals a day, plus snacks I thought it was a huge mountain to try to climb. Then I remembered the old joke “How do you eat an elephant?” The answer of course is “One bite at a time.” So that’s the way I moved forward.

I started with planning my dinner menu for the first week of the year. I did this because then I could schedule leftovers for breakfasts and lunches for the same week.

I also decided with our grocery budget I could only afford to purchase one meat a week. That was a scary realization. As the regular readers of my blog and list posts know we are on the Dave Ramsey Financial Freedom plan and that means we have a zero dollar based budget with a set in stone amount for groceries each week.

Unfortunately we’d got away from our established $100 a week for our family of three over the last few months of the year and in November I spent over $1,000 rather than the scheduled $400. This was a serious lack of control on my part. A mistake that slowed our gazelle way down on its race to avoid the debt cheetahs.

So with the beginning of the new year I was determined to stay at or below that $100. This meant one bulk meat purchase a week, and a lot of planning to keep variety in our meals, especially as grocery prices are escalating.

The idea was a follow up on my previous post of living without a freezer. Buy one meat, use it for 2-3 meals during the week and then can the rest for future menus. This would build up my food storage, while feeding us well on a small budget.

We eat a LOT of ground beef, so I determined that doing a ground beef menu every other week would be the best pattern for us, at least in the beginning. That first week we started with ground beef and our favorite Many Way Meatballs Master Mix.

I put the menu together for dinners first. Then in my Master Cook program I entered the recipes for EVERYTHING we’d need to eat that menu for the week. This gave me the exact measurements I’d need of each ingredient.

I then constructed my grocery list, including the exact measurements needed, from those menus. From that grocery list I then put the same measurements in a spread sheet to be totaled to show how much I will need for the entire year for each ingredient. This is important for the “How It will save you money” segment.

I then repeated these steps with the breakfast and lunch menus. I now had a complete grocery list for the week and it was time to “shop”. I started with my food storage. I checked every single item, not trusting my memory for anything. I verified that I had the required amounts for the week on hand. If not then it went on the “to buy” list.

Once the “to buy” list was built I checked the sales ads and my price book to find where it would be best to purchase those items AND anything that was a true loss leader that I would need for future menus that I could afford in my weekly budget. (more on this later.)

Next stop was my coupon box. Where I pulled the coupons I needed for those purchases.

Armed with the list and my coupons I did all my grocery shopping for the week, my ONLY visit to the grocery store for the week.

Once home things were prepped and stored properly. It was nice to know I had everything I needed on hand for well planned out meals for a week.

HOW IT WILL SAVE YOU MONEY

First of all if you have a menu plan you KNOW what is for dinner and there is no rushing out for fast foods. You can cook far better burgers and pizza at home for less than half the price and with pre-planning you can actually get the meal faster than loading the family up, driving to the restaurant, waiting for them to cook it, listening to other people’s kids screaming and then driving home. Oh and you aren’t tempted to stop and shop somewhere along the way. This can add up to huge savings right there.

By hitting the grocery store only once a week you save fuel, time and money. Yes money because you aren’t tempted to do impulse buying if you aren’t in the store.

Because the meal plan is there for the entire week you can also “bulk cook” a lot and save money and time. Because if you need browned ground beef for three meals, or for canning, you can brown it in one pan all at once. It will take the same amount of energy to do it all at once as it would to do a single meal of it. So you save by not having to heat the stove up for that browning the rest of the time.

You also only have to clean up once, thus you save on water, energy to heat the water, wear and tear on your dishwasher, dish soap, and your time. And we all need more time.

With creating your annual grocery list you can clearly see how many of non-perishable foods you need for the year. So if there is a great sale on that item and your food budget has room in it, grab your coupons and stock up at the lower price, so your overall grocery expenditure for the year goes down and your food storage goes up.

A friend gave a good example of this with a purchase she recently made. She serves Hamburger Helper one day a month to her family of nine. She recently found a loss leader sale that when combined with her coupons made it $.49 a box. This is versus the normal $1.50 to $2.00 per box. She verified the “best if used by date” and then picked up enough boxes for the year. This made her savings huge.

At this point there is usually someone that says “but I don’t have room for food storage.” Having lived in a one room efficiency apartment for a long period of time I can tell you there is ALWAYS storage room, you just need to know where to find it. I’ll do another post later on about where to find the room to store and tips on making sure nothing gets forgotten.

A side note on nutrition. I have found that by writing down a complete daily menu for a week at a time it has allowed me to incorporate more fruits and vegetables into our daily diet. This is a very good thing.

Let’s be truthful, when you eat out a lot, be it fast food or a sit down restaurant or you slap something together at the last minute you tend to eat less than healthy. By taking the few extra steps at first to plan your meals you will find that good for you foods will filter more and more into your diet.

This can lead to future savings on medical and clothing bills.

The same friend who purchased the Hamburger Helper decided it was best for her to do a month’s worth of menu plans for her family and then multiply that times 12 to get her annual menu. This works well for her. We like trying different foods too much to be this limited, but for many families this is the best way for them to plan their menus.

She then followed the steps to figure her grocery lists and when consulting her price book for the best sale prices (which generally rotate about every six weeks) she discovered that by doing the annual grocery list and shopping accordingly she would save 75% on her annual grocery bill based on current grocery prices. That folks is a HUGE savings. What could you do with that 75% savings? How many debts could you pay off? She’s using the savings to pay her house off early. Who wouldn’t want to own their home?

HOW ABOUT WHEN LIFE HAPPENS?

One of the most popular questions is “Do you allow for diverting from the menu plan?” The answer is a resounding YES!

Life happens, Suzy has a school play, it’s Joey’s birthday, Mama is sick, Great Aunt Ethel dies, Dad is going out of town on business for a week, the garden produced a million more zucchini this week than planned on or the loss leader of the week is a great buy for a meat that is not on that week’s menu. These and many other things happen, including your hubby just flat does NOT want turkey this week.

In fact I’m not dead on schedule with my menus right now because I sometimes re-arrange the meals to fit what is going on in our life on any given day. The menu is a guide not a dictate. All meals from the menu eventually get eaten, they just might be done in a different order or on a different week. But they all get used as close to the schedule as possible to help keep the domino action of the pre-planning going.

An example: On a recent week we had a ground beef week scheduled and the next week was scheduled to be whole chicken. Only my husband, who really doesn’t care for chicken, was going to be gone for a week for work on the ground beef week. My son and I love chicken, so I moved the chicken forward a week and we’ll have two ground beef weeks in a row. It took moving leftovers around a bit, and doing a little extra canning to keep meats fresh from the previous week, but it worked out well. We stayed on budget and all were happy with their meals.

Speaking of leftovers, this is another way you can save big. There is currently a series of commercials running where it shows the people throwing away half of the foods they purchase because the leftovers go bad, or the meat isn’t stored properly.

With the menu planning you incorporate the leftovers into your meal plan each week, or you can/dry/freeze them for future meals. By cutting that 50% waste from your grocery budget you save big time. Unfortunately little Suzy won’t have science experiments in your fridge for the annual science fair as a result. But then is food mold REALLY that good of a science fair project?

So that is the plan. Posts on the implementing of it, including recipes, storage tips and much more will follow.

Jan who thinks this is going to be a challenge for her family but can really see the long term benefits in OK

WORKING ON THE FOOD BUDGET

December 22, 2010

I’ve previously posted about how I am on the Dave_Ramsey_Debt_Beaters@yahoogroups.com email list. Recently a discussion was brought up by Ashley that she would like to try working her food budget and meals for the year, while laying in a year’s supply of non-perishables based entirely on loss leaders.

I asked if she would like a partner in this challenge. She thought it a great idea not only because things go better if you have a partner, but because we live on the opposite sides of the US and each has a family of 3 to feed. While living in two different areas with different stores to deal with and different economic basis to work with in our areas.

We have agreed to write about our journey through 2011 in building our one year’s worth of food storage by purchasing loss leaders as they become available, while maintaining a very, very strict budget.

Ashley posted her first blog entry this morning, with her challenges to herself at: http://dateam365.blogspot.com/

This, of course, is my first entry on this challenge. With the cost of groceries going up the $1 a day may be a mite stringent for us, but I am definitely going to do all I can to try and meet her challenge.

The first thing to do, as Ashley pointed out, is to educate yourself. I too am reading various blogs by people who have done this. I’m also checking online information for all types of good basic information to aid me in the challenge.

My first stop on the information train was: http://frugalliving.about.com/od/bargainshopping/tp/Best_Time_To_Buy_Everything.htm

This website lists month by month what items are normally on sale, not just food, but various things. Of course for the task at hand the food items are what I am most interested in. Knowing ahead of time what “loss leaders” will be coming can be a real help in planning the menu.

Meeting the challenge at $1 a day with two meat and potato men in my household is going to be a HUGE challenge. I can get them to eat meatless occasionally, but not all the time. My husband, is NOT a huge fan of vegetables.

Doing so healthily is another challenge, especially when you include my son’s allergies to deal with and our true love of food.

So the first menu planning basic step for me was figuring out the entrées and dealing with them while also maintaining my busy schedule as a merchandiser and mystery shopper. All too often it is too tempting to eat out.

This means not only do I need to plan my meals on the $1 a day budget, but I need to plan on refilling my freezer with homemade “convenience” meals. Knowing we have foods in the freezer we could quickly thaw and eat will eliminate the temptation to stop and grab a calorie laden fast food item or six.

So following Ashley’s theme here is what I want to accomplish this next year:

1. Bring our food budget down to as low as it can possibly go.

2. Lay in one year’s supply of non-perishable food

3. Make up ALL of my Master Mixes, this in itself is a HUGE challenge.

4. Fill the freezer with homemade “convenience” foods

5. Raise a large organic garden and go to year round gardening.

Going back to the entrées listings. I started out trying to figure out an exact order of what types of entrees I’d serve and in what order for a month alternating meatless meals and leftovers in as often as I thought I could get away with it. That became hugely complicated and failed miserably.

So then I tried to do it for every two weeks, same results, I wasn’t getting the rotation I wanted. Plus when you do a very set in stone menu plan it does not allow for spontaneity and this family doesn’t do well with that. We want the foods we want when we want them.

So I finally decided on the following seven categories:

1. Beef

2. Chicken

3. Pork

4. Variety meats (hot dogs, smoked sausage etc)

5. Meatless

6. Leftovers

7. Fish

Gee look at that seven days worth of entrées with one meatless and one leftovers day built in simple, simple.

So I now can plan a week’s worth of meals with those items as the main ingredients, prepare what I can ahead of time and we can eat them in the order we want each week. One week must be completed BEFORE we start the rotation for the next week. That way if we score a free meal out with the mystery shopping (read free meals—great for the budget) then I still have a meal in the roatation to eat before moving on to the next rotation.

So then I started making a list of the various family favorites for each of those seven. An example of this is below.

Meatless:

1. Biscuits and gravy

2. Vegetable soups (I have a bunch of recipes for these)

3. Pancake suppers

4. Salad suppers

5. Macaroni and cheese

6. Cheese and/or veggie pizzas

7. Bean meals

My list included a lot more than this, but you get the idea. I did this for each of the seven categories. Guess what I came up with a year’s worth of meals without duplication quite simply.

Using the same example of the meatless meals I can also prepare a lot of this ahead of time.

1. Biscuits and gravy

a. Make up biscuit Master Mix (recipe is listed in my search engine on the left) while flour is on sale this month. Then for a quick dinner I only need to add oil and water and bake.

b. Make up gravy butter balls ahead of time and freeze. I’ll post this recipe when I do this.

2. If we do well in the garden the fresh produce will be used for this as it grows and the dried produce will be used when it is out of season.

3. Pancake suppers

a. Pancake Master Mix (recipe is listed in the search engine at the left as well), add oil, our home grown eggs and water as needed.

4. Salad suppers can be the green leafy type, or made with homemade pasta, or a combination of the two.

a. Make up pastas ahead of time

b. Homemade salad dressing Master Mixes (which will be added to the blog as time goes on)

5. Macaroni and Cheese

a. Homemade pasta

b. Freezer cheese sauce mix, recipe will be added at a later date

6. Cheese and/or veggie pizzas

a. Pizza dough Master Mix (recipe to be added later)

b. In season veggies from the garden, frozen or dried veggies from the garden off season

c. Loss leader cheese (April purchase according to link listed above) purchased and frozen.

7. Bean Meals

a. I have a bean cookbook, and there are numerous recipes for beans of all sorts on the web. Beans freeze tremendously well. So this is an item that will be cooked in bulk and frozen for quick meals as time goes on.

Add to these entrées loss leader fruits and vegetables, and keeping portions at a reasonable size should enable us to eat cheaply and healthy. Homemade breads will also add to the meals.

I’m now in the process of listing those various meal ideas on color coded 3X5 cards. Ie: pink for beef, white for chicken, green for meatless etc. This will allow me to mix and match menus each week without having to figure it out each week.

The 3 x 5 cards will also list the ingredients for that entrée so I can watch closely for the loss leaders for it. As I lay in a supply of the loss leaders I will then mark each one as I have it in inventory.

Having the menus all figured out in this manner will also let me see how much of what I need to lay in a supply of.

Can I do it on $1 a day like Ashley, in truth it seems pretty hard, but I’m going to do it as closely as I possibly can. Even if I spend slightly over that, I am definitely going to come out the financial winner on the grocery budget.

So will you join us to eat our way to a better state of health both physically and financially?

Jan who thinks the plan will work in OK

LONG TIME NO TYPE—WORK AT HOME JOBS

November 10, 2010

I haven’t forgot you all, we’ve just been super busy. Life is good right now, but then it generally is, you just need to know how to look at any given situation.

I thought once Gary went back to work life would slow down, but instead it has kicked into a higher gear. Something that I didn’t think was possible prior to this last couple of months..

Sean has become my mystery shopping/merchandising partner. We planned on doing mystery shopping on Mondays and Thursdays for just a few hours each day until the mystery shops died their normal death this time of year. Remembering this time last year when we had trouble finding mystery shops to do we figured we’d probably be down to one day a week by late November.

We started working on an idea for a small home based business and doing all the business plans and such required to make a knowledgeable decision on whether or not to do the business has been very time consuming—WHEN we have had time to work on that. More on the new business another time.

Because even though the mystery shopping has slowed down, it has not ceased like we thought it would and the merchandising has quadrupled in volume. We have been putting in 9-10 hour days 5-6 days a week for nearly two months now. NOT complaining Lord! Even better it doesn’t look like it’s going to let up between now and the end of the year.

Gary has not only gone back to work, but has been on overtime for three weeks now and it looks like that too may last through the end of the year.

We are so gazelle intense around here it is crazy! For those of you who are not followers of Dave Ramsey that means we are running from the debt cheetah at gazelle speed to become totally debt free. Every spare penny we make is going on our debt snowball. It has become fun to pay bills! No I am NOT crazy, I said fun.

The three of us now have our Step 1 Baby Emergency Funds fully funded and are now working on our Baby Step 2—the debt snowball (see Dave Ramsey’s book “The Total Money Makeover”) and are making great progress on it.

Sean has paid off a medical bill that was eating him alive and nearly has his only credit card paid off as well. The credit card of course is long gone as we no longer use credit cards in our household. That will leave him with a few truck payments and his student loans and then he will be debt free. I’m so happy for him.

I am still paying on our first installment of the debt snowball, but it will be completed by this time next week. It was a $2,400 medical debt and we are paying it off over three years early based on the scheduled payments. Next will be a credit card that we hope to shave three years or more off the scheduled payoff on. It is truly exciting to see our debt spiral downward for a change. I am so glad we found the Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover. By staying on this plan we should be totally debt free in 3 years or less including the house! Not bad for a family that was maxed out credit wise and unemployed this time two years ago.

If you are a user of yahoogroups, you should visit with the knowledgeable people at Dave_Ramsey_Debt_Beaters@yahoogroups.com it’s a free to join list and I’ve learned so much from these people!

Now back to merchandising. I’ve never really covered merchandising when talking about mystery shopping so I thought I’d expound a little more on it today.

Most of us walk into a place like Wal-Mart, Target or any number of stores and take for granted the sparkling displays were all placed there by the store’s employees. NOPE! While the employees do re-stock and are responsible for certain merchandise many of those displays and what’s on them is placed there by merchandisers. Here’s how it works.

The store will receive a certain set of merchandise. For this scenario let’s use gift cards. The store will receive the materials to build the actual display case, along with the materials needed to set the display up and stock it. Sometimes they will set up the display themselves other times a merchandising company will send out a merchandiser—or two to set it up. That’s where we come in.

We go in, unbox the display case, assemble it, add the hanging pegs and then set the cards to a planogram and are paid for our services. Then either the store will keep the display stocked OR they will send the merchandiser back once every 1-4 weeks to restock it. Depending on the company the merchandiser gets paid anywhere from $8 to $15 an hour to do the job.

We have each acquired several repetitive weekly jobs. That means guaranteed income weekly until the project runs out. Once the project is set-up often times the hourly rate will drop slightly because it will simply be a short walk in to verify the display is still in good shape and the move onto another project. We’ve been blessed enough on some of our merchandising shops that we have been able to “stack” jobs. Meaning that Sean or I will have a job from one company in a certain store. The other of us (or sometimes the same person) will have 1-2 more jobs in that certain store from other companies. That makes the gas usage is far less and the possible income for each of us greater on a single stop.

I once spoke with a person who did nothing but merchandising and she said she cleared after taxes and expenses over $4,000 per month. We would like to achieve that goal. That could really speed our gazelle along! We aren’t there yet, but we are working toward it. Be aware though merchandising has to be done between certain hours, like a regular job, but generally you have 1-5 days to get the project done. So it is a great “part time” job if you are going to be staying home. We didn’t do these the last two years because we were traveling, but now that we are home for at least 2-3 years it is the best plan for us.

Don’t get me wrong, some of these merchandising jobs are HARD and tiring. Some sound simple to do—repackaging a product and do an inventory of said product—13 hours later you are worn out and the job still isn’t finished. So if you decide to do merchandising READ the instructions closely BEFORE you accept the work, including the fine print. Also be prepared to stand for LONG periods of time.

Another possible source of income is demonstrations. You know the people you see at Sam’s Club handing out samples. This is also contract labor work and can be applied for through several companies at volition.com as well. All three types of work are listed at volition.com.

If none of the above is for you check out the legit jobs at ratracerebellion.com Most of them are work at home jobs. There are all sorts of jobs for all sorts of talents. So if you want to become a earn a little extra money to survive unemployment, earn extra money for the holidays or become gazelle intense volition.com and ratracerebellion.com may have the answer for you.

As always if you need more info or a referral to certain companies feel free to leave me a message and I’ll answer as soon as time allows.

Jan who has no affiliation with any of the websites she mentioned in OK.

CUTTING BACK ON LIFE’S LITTLE EXPENSES

April 23, 2010


As many of you already know I am a huge fan of Dave Ramsey. While I am, what Dave calls, a math nerd I can see the logic in his system and truly feel that we will be totally debt free in six years or less, even with our current state of income.

That being said it needs to also stated that sometimes that means giving a whole new meaning to Dave’s statement of living on“rice and beans, beans and rice.” When people make that much desired phone call to Dave’s radio talk show to shout ‘WE’RE DEBT FREE!” he often asks them what was the hardest thing for them about getting debt free.

For many it’s giving up vacations, or a favorite vehicle or something similar. Up until recently I would have said it was not being able to run into the grocery store and just shop to my heart’s content. This last three weeks have changed my feelings on the hard to give up however. Now I would have to say it is not using the internet any time I please.

We aren’t sure exactly what is going on that suddenly we went from having plenty room on our 5G broadband card with Sprint to constantly worrying about every time we turn the internet on , but we are finding ourselves going over the 5 g limit with amazing speed on our Sprint card. This month Gary realized we were down to one G just one week into the month. That was nearly 3 weeks ago and life without my immediate access to the internet has been very frustrating and eye opening.

Before the sudden spike in our usage we did our mystery shops, read email, played Farm Town, Farmville, Barn Buddy and Country Life (cj’s farm) on facebook and NEVER went over. Now things have changed. Again I’m not sure why. But the internet is MANDATORY for mystery shopping so everything other than mystery shops and even most of that needs to be done another way, other than the air card. Even Sean, our son, has found that while job hunting at home he went hugely over this month to the tune of $125 extra on his monthly bill—and the month isn’t over yet! How he used over 7 G by himself when he’s been out doing yard work we’ve not figured out yet. Luckily his card is separate from ours.

To figure out what was happening we started monitoring everything VERY closely and what we found was surprising. None of were the least bit surprised the facebook games and streaming videos were mb eaters. So we cut them out on the computer, but still our 1 g started going down quickly. More cuts needed made and fast!

We both trimmed the number of emails we were receiving daily by going “no mail” on most of our yahoogroups. These first three steps slowed the downward spiral, but with three weeks to go it wasn’t going to be enough. Especially not when the majority of the jobs we had required mega photo uploads.

Next went leaving webpages open in the background. All those flashing designs, music and such are mb eaters as well. Even the rolling total of my mypoints tool bar was now considered costly. Weatherbug bit the dust as well. We now checked it twice a day. Once with breakfast and once before retiring for the evening. The rest of the time it is disabled.

Our news side bars were trimmed, as well as the automatic opening to webpages when we first started internet explorer. Updates were taken off of automatic and placed on manual. MORE needed to go, the usage was still too high.

We then started watching how many mb were used when a webpage loads. Some companies we work for require a four webpage load to get logged in. Each webpage is numerous kbs that add up to mb quickly. MORE needed to go. We put direct links to the log in screen for our main employers websites on our icon screens. We now only check for new jobs twice a day instead of repeatedly throughout the day.

What emails we answered get trimmed of every excess thing in them. Friends and family were told to not sent cutesy photos and definitely not videos any more. Links were great(we’d view them at a later time when we had room on the card to use the space), but attachments were no longer welcome.

We started reading as many work related emails as possible on Gary’s phone.

The usage slowed down finally, but there was now less than half a gig and we had 40+ of those big photo shops to deal with.

HELLO MCDONALD’S, Panera, Burger King, Taco Bell and anywhere else we can get free wi-fi! We have worked out a system that while Gary is doing his shops, I am at a place that offers free wi-fi for our use and while I’m shopping he’s reporting. It’s really made for some VERY long days. We have gotten spoiled to me entering jobs as we fly down the highway, which means only Gary needs to use it at the camper.

We have found some very negative things out. While McDonald’s is now offering their wi-fi for free it is iffy at best and they seem to have either done completely away with all electrical outlets OR the outlets don’t work. That’s so TACKY McDonald’s. Yes, your corporate headquarters will be receiving a letter from me about it. Yes, you have lost numerous sales over it this last three weeks, and you will continue to lose them as I take my single item purchase to another establishment that does offer not only free wi-fi, but also the ability to plug in our laptops. Panera is the big winner in this game.

On the other hand KUDOS to Branson, MO where on their Country Music Blvd (or whatever that street is named) they have if4e which equals free wi-fi for everyone. We have found wonderful connections at numerous places all up and down that main street.

Another thing we have learned is you can google (or search engine of your choice) the words “free wi-fi” along with the city and state you are in and find various places to get the service for free.

For the last 2.5 weeks we have uploaded all we can at these free locations. We also download anything we need/want there whenever possible. It’s four more days until our next month rollover and our5 g starts again

After all the long hours I have spent in fast food joints or the front seat of the truck in their parking lots I can guarantee you we will be still very much the tightwad with our usage once we are back up to 5 g. Sean says he won’t be using his again for quite awhile with that whopping bill he now has to pay.

So if you email me, be aware that I download my emails while at a free wi-fi place, then read them when I don’t have wi-fi, type the replies and queue them to send the next time I’m at free wi-fi. So it might take a day or two for you to hear back from me.

As for my farms and critters on facebook. I’m getting pretty good at working my way around with those too. I plant 3 day or longer crops, put as much as I can on auto pilot and only play when I’m at a free wi-fi location and AFTER all my work is done. I can still use neighbors on all my games and I do gift well when I get to play. So those of you that aren’t already my neighbor feel free to put in a neighbor request. LOL!

Jan who admits she’s hooked on the facebook games in and away from OK

LIKE FALLING DOMINOES, MURPHY KEEPS ON KEEPING ON

Part 2 of the hot water tank saga.

November 8, 2009

It’s now 8 days later and visits from Murphy keep popping up, bless his little pea pickin’ heart.

Prior to the discovery of the wet carpet I had been working my way back into my Princess Plan. For those of you who aren’t on de-cluttering lists with me I’ll give you a quick explanation of the Princes Plan.

It’s a system I’m developing to help people come from being paupers enslaved by clutter and debt in their all aspects of their life to being the royalty they truly are. I plan on finally being the princess my Papa always called me.

I had started the plan on January 1, 2009 and was doing pretty good on it with the help of Dave Ramsey and with working out a system that was greatly improving the look and feel of my home and ranch.

Then the surprise unemployment hit and I hit the road, things not only backslid as far as the clutter department went they had worsened. Only our basic finances had continued to improve, albeit slowly and not the gazelle intense like I had planned, but we were current on all our bills and had even paid off four small ones in the last eight months.

Then this series of Murphy’s visits started hitting and things went from bad to worse real quick.

When last I left you it was Halloween and the day after. We were starting to empty the utility room. Now what comes out of a room in any home has to go into another one somewhere in the house.

Remember the “Uninvited Guest” story, well we still have all the dining room stuff in the living room. Now the utility room items needed a place to park. Some went to the overstuffed sunroom, more went to the living room and some went to my bedroom. The clutter was deepening. Small paths were starting to form through the lower level.

My kitchen cabinets are now covered in small appliances, which in turn makes it FUN to try and cook in there.

So let’s flash back to last Saturday.

As soon as he could Gary turned off the hot water tank because the leaking was pretty bad. Not only was it making a mess it was the hot water that was leaking so the electric meter was doing a boogie dance on the back porch while the water meter readers were rubbing their hands together with glee as the meter spun gallon by gallon.

This meant no hot water in the house until the floor dried. You know the one that was absolutely sodden. As Gary labored to get the tank drained I continued to fold the laundry I had done earlier that day.

Sean has a lot of allergies, dust and mold being two biggies so pulling up wet starting to mildew carpet was something he could not do without risking a severe asthma attack, so he took over farm chores when it came to that job and Gary pulled the carpet up by himself Sean helped drag the dripping carpet and pad to the “non-burn” area for things that will go to the dump on the next run there. He of course started wheezing.

While they did this I cooked dinner.

This brought up a slight problem. Dishes, no hot water—oops! Gary cheerfully loaded the dishes in the dishwasher and assured me by the next afternoon the hot water would be back on and we’d be fine. Does that man live here? Has anything ever gone as planned on this ranch?

The next morning I went to the camper and brought in a large supply of paper plates, plastic cups and silverware. I am the more realistic of the two of us on things like this. I KNOW how things happen around here. It’s called life and it happens to everyone.

We seldom use paper and plastic when camping so this was an unusual thing for the guys and I so we periodically forgot and still grabbed dishes out of the cupboards and drawers out of habit. So we added a Murphy expense by using paper and plastic instead of the usual wash and reuse.

All day Sunday Gary and Sean worked on getting the floor dried out, while I ran and did a single mystery shop and picked up more supplies for the project.

When I got back home I discovered the two of them had used every single towel in the house trying to soak up water so the floor would dry quicker. EVERY single one, including my cream colored ones!!! I was not amused, but hollering would not have solved anything. They were trying to fix the problem. They had drug the dripping towels across the carpet that was still down in the bathroom and placed them in the shower stall. Gary promised he’d put them on the line the next day while I was gone so they’d at least dry and not sour.

They had made some progress, there was no longer standing water from the hot water tank, and the mildewed sheet rock no longer existed. A large hole in the wall, with a small one a now nearly 10 week old kitten could have easily gone down under the house through had taken its place. Thankfully Gypsy was locked securely in my bedroom.

I pointed out that Lizzie B was only slightly bigger and she might just take a trip (or an opossum come in) through that gaping wound so they blocked it temporarily at night with heavy plywood to prevent this. During the day there was always someone in there working so the board was removed to aid in the drying out of the lower wall studs and insulation. Yep all my interior walls are insulated, luckily the mildew had been limited to the outside of the sheet rock, there was none on the interior of the walls. .

I suggested fans and a small heater to speed up the drying process as Sunday passed into Monday, still no hot water.

Gary had already winterized the camper since we knew we’d be home for a month or two and now he had to un-winterize it because for some strange reason Sean and I thought we might need showers before going to work on Monday. Luckily they had forgot the towels in the camper when they were mopping water up. So we were all blessed with nice hot showers and the world was a safer place for it.

Dishes were starting to be more than the dishwasher would hold. Enter the boiling teapot into the daily scenario. I’ve done many a dish by heating water on a campfire at rendezvous (pre-1840 Fur Trade Era re-enactments), so this was no biggie.

Monday I mystery shopped, picked up more materials, did a few returns while Gary stayed home and took things down off the wall to prepare to paint the room. Sean went to work of course.

While I was out I picked up paint chips for both the utility room walls and the dining room wall that would need painted when we got back to it

Tuesday, still no hot water, but the wall studs were finally dry so Gary put up the new piece of sheet rock, and then had to take it back down because he forgot to put the mouse/rat poison down the conveniently open wall and under the house. Luckily I reminded him before he taped and mudded the wall or Murphy would have gotten a giggle I’m certain.

When you live in the country you take all the precautions you can to head off rodents. I cannot tell you how much money we’ve spent due to rodents over the years everything from fifth wheel and vehicle repairs to a whole new re-wiring of the landlines in our home, so we are very cautious about them. We have mousers inside and out of the house. We put Just One Bite (a vet recommended mouse and rat poison) any where we can that we know for CERTAIN our animals can’t get to it and if we notice a mouse dropping we set traps. Again where the pets can’t get to them.

That evening the guys thankfully slid the new hot water tank into its place. Only the connectors and plumbing didn’t match! Murphy snickered.

While I was out the next day doing mystery I picked up the right parts. That night we all did a jig, and then the water line started leaking!! Dang it Murphy I needed to do dishes!

While I was doing the mystery shops I checked the discounted returns and mis-mixed paints at all the stores. At the very last one I found the exact colors I wanted at half price!!! That’s one for the good guys, finally.

Jan who will post this and move on to part three of the saga in OK

BEING TRICKED AND THEN TREATED BY MURPHY

BEING TRICKED AND THEN TREATED BY MURPHY


October 31, 2009

I’m a follower of the Dave Ramsey plan for financial security. We started the baby steps of his program in January this year and were making great progress right up to the day the guys lost their jobs. Through the following months we put the “snowball” in the freezer for a while until we got things worked out on how to meet our monthly obligations. I’m proud to say we have actually paid off four small bills and are back to snowballing a small amount despite the unemployment.

Two weeks ago the wiring harness and the U joints went out on our truck. I had an emergency fund put back and we covered it. I was very proud.

As the old saying goes, pride goes before a fall. On the Dave Ramsey group they call little extra expenses that pop up as Murphy, as in Murphy’s Law. Today is Halloween and Murphy started early for the holiday he crept through our back door into the utility room and snickered as he knocked the bottom out of our 22 year old hot water tank. We didn’t find until the utility room carpet was well soaked. It had apparently been leaking slightly for a while because mildew was already starting to form on a nearby wall.

I am not a fan of carpeting in any room that you cook or use a lot of water in. We had been planning on replacing the dark blue indoor/outdoor carpeting that was in there from the day we moved in 12 years ago. We’d already pulled up a piece of it in the kitchen and replaced it with floating vinyl flooring two years ago. It had been one continuous piece from the narrow kitchen through the utility and into the little 4’ X 3’ bathroom just off the utility. This is our heaviest traffic area in the house, we come in and out that door from tending to the ranch critters several times a day.

As I sniffed the air and smelled mildew, and looked at the mess I made an executive decision. The carpet was going NOW! Drying it out would take days and the idea of a moldy carpet just did not please me at all. Only there was the cost and how to cover it. We had very little emergency fund left to do it with and the hot water tank would not be cheap.

Then I picked up the mail and an unexpected small royalty check was there, would it be enough? I checked the price of the flooring we’d put in the kitchen online we had a small amount of it left—nope not even half enough.

Then I thought “How about linoleum?” The more I thought about it the more I thought linoleum made the most sense. It would be a continuous sheet and this is the room where the litter boxes are, Miss Amy is missing the boxes more in and more as she ages. I love her too much to get rid of her, but I won’t tolerate the smell either. Linoleum would definitely be better for that problem.

So I went back online and found for less than $100 (far less than the check) We could in fact do the utility room AND that tiny bathroom in matching linoleum, plus have enough money left over to take care of the mildew on the wall and paint it. So off to the local Lowe’s we went. They had a great paving stone look linoleum that I really liked so we are spending Halloween fixing Murphy’s Trick.

The “treat?” Hey, after 12 years I’m getting rid of that dark nasty carpet and making my utility room and bathroom will look great and be a LOT easier to keep clean in all circumstances. Plus I finally get to paint the wall some color than the basic white that’s on it.

Sounds simple right? Anyone that has ever read my stories knows there is NOTHING simple about life here on the Rock ‘n Tree Ranch. This two small room project ideally should be able to be done in a week end right? Again, have you read my posts?

We started “preparing” last night. Gary made a list of all the “parts” we’d need. When we went to check on the fittings on the hot water tank the lights wouldn’t work in the utility room—Thanks Murphy. We added fluorescent bulbs to the list—no biggie other than we would now have two long tubes to get rid of safely. We headed for Lowe’s so we could get an early start on the project first thing in the morning.

At Lowe’s I found the linoleum I liked immediately, the hot water tank was a no brainer. It had to be a 50 gallon electric one (we are total electric) and it had to fit through the 24 inch door opening of the hot water tank closet. There was only one choice. Of course we didn’t know all the measurements and such right off so we had to call Sean at home numerous times to get various measurements—including the length of the bulbs before we finished our shopping trip.

Lowe’s was closing as we left, they locked the door as we went out. A few minutes later Gary remembered he needed a hacksaw blade. We stopped at Wal-Mart where I picked up a couple of things we needed for the weekend and out of the sale ad.

Once home Murphy snickered again. We had purchased hoses with the male ends on them because that is what the box said. Turns out we needed female ones. The new bulbs didn’t fix the light. It needed something called a starter to do the repair. Then he had only got one compression fitting and we needed two.

Sean needed to go pay his car tag so they left had to go back to town this morning after all. While they were gone I did morning chores, laundered three loads of clothes, ran the dishwasher, and started emptying the utility room. How can such a little room hold so much. I also removed items from the bathroom and started clearing an area in the sunroom for the appliances.

After several “paper or plastic” calls from the guys they called to say they were on their way home so I started lunch, tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. Finally at 2:30 pm our early start happened.

Donning the shoulder dolly harnesses the guys moved the soggy footed washer and dryer into the sunroom. Jolie, the Aussie Collie mix gave an exasperated sigh as if to say “What MORE of YOUR junk in MY room.” We assured it would short lived. Yeah right!

A quick word about Shoulder Dollies. They are one of the best things I've ever purchased for the ranch.There are various brands and such out there.  The truly do work as well as the commercials say they do.  The guys use ours a lot to move heavy awkward appliances and other items all the time.  I can even help with big things like upright freezers using them and I'm only 5'1". Back to my story.

When Gary went to drain the hot water tank so it could be moved the valve was plugged, Murphy grinned. When Gary started talking about just poking a screw driver up the faucet to remove the sludge that was blocking the opening I mentioned the water coming out would be 120 degrees and then made my fast exit to go try and fold laundry with a hyper-active kitten pinging around the room and the bed that I was folding the laundry on.

Gypsy Skeeter is a huge help in such chores.  She lets me get a lot of practice in folding, by unfolding things for me and then racing off with loose socks and wash cloths.  She's a mess and Lizzie Borden still gives her 18 whacks whenever she can.

At one point I heard Sean say “Warm up the truck, Dad’s got an idea, St. Francis here we come”. I just folded faster, St. Francis is the ER we use and I wanted no part of going there tonight, I hollered back “We can’t afford it, I’ve not paid off the tree limb idea yet, RE-THINK!”

They did and Gary realized if he released the pressure on the tank the thing might drain. He did and it did. Take that Murphy!

Next blog, the saga continues in “Like Falling Dominoes, Murphy keeps on keeping on.”

Jan who says “Nothing is ever simple on the Rock ‘n Tree Ranch” in OK