Buying Convenience: Is It Really Worth It?

As you all know, I love saving money. The feeling you get when you see the extra money still in the account after grocery shopping is amazing. Money that can be used for something else or tucked away for a rainy day when it is needed. One thing I changed years ago was to stop buying convenience. Buying convenience, is it really worth it? For my family, no, it’s not worth the extra money.

When I grocery shop, I don’t normally buy convenience items, I buy ingredients. I’d rather spend a little extra money and have the ingredients on hand to make a variety of food items than to buy an item that will be eaten at one meal, or quickly snacked on and then be gone.

Buying Convenience: Is it worth it?

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I’m using Jell-O for this post because it is what I had on hand for pictures. I pack a cup of Jell-O in my husband’s lunch box every day. The added sugar helps get him through his day working to keep the roads and highways safe for drivers. It is one tiny splurge I spend very little money on that we all can enjoy if we choose to eat any.

A four-pack container of Jell-O is only a $1 at our Wal-Mart, but I would have to spend $3 on Jell-O cups to get the same amount of cups that I get out of a $1.36 box of Jell-O.

Investing in reusable cups was NOT expensive, but it was an expense that was up front and I was glad to make it; I only paid about $2.50 for an 8 count package. Once the cups were purchased, there was nothing else to spend money on except for the boxes of Jell-O.

I have two sets of cups that I use. The Betty Crocker  3oz cups are my favorite because they have flat lids for easy stacking; I have had these for several years. I bought these containers at the Dollar Tree and sadly, I can’t find them anywhere anymore. The Glad cups drive me crazy because they are not meant for stacking easily, but easy lid storage and honestly, I had rather have easy stacking than easy lid storage.

With us buying our water, I added the cost into my calculations. For twelve cups of Jell-O, I only spend $1.41, which is a savings of $1.59 if I were to buy premade Jell-O cups.

While buying convenience is not worth it for our budget. I understand not everyone is on the same level of saving money. Do you buy convenience, or do you avoid spending money on it?

Have you missed any of these posts on saving money? They may be of help if you are looking for ways to save on groceries.

• 7 Tips On Buying In Bulk


• A Savings


• Shopping With A Price Book

Mediterranean Chicken and Pasta

Pasta is a weakness for my family. At one time we ate spaghetti every two weeks with one other pasta dish included in the list of foods. I came across a recipe while searching for another pasta option for my Master Meal Planner. With a few little tweaks I made my version of Mediterranean Chicken and Pasta that suits my family's tastes.

Mediterranean Chicken and Pasta

The changes I made from the original recipe are I left out the olives for my non olive eaters. I used Italian seasoning instead of just oregano. I used 2 cans of diced tomatoes instead of a can of tomato sauce. I think my sauce had more of an Italian flare than I had wanted, boy that Feta cheese took care of it when I topped the dish with it. Another thing, we only eat whole wheat pasta.

The only negative thing I heard about the dish, my son said the zucchini should have been left out because no pasta dish should have a green vegetable in it. This is coming from someone who will eat his weight in fried zucchini during the summer months.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups pasta
• water for cooking pasta
• 1 Tablespoon oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 small zucchini cut in slices
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 cups chicken breast, cooked in bite size pieces
• 2 cans diced tomatoes
• 1 ½ Tablespoon Italian seasoning
• 1 teaspoon basil
•  ¾ cup crumbled Feta cheese

 Directions:

Cook pasta according to package.

In a skillet, heat oil over medium heat. Add onion and cook about 3 minutes, add zucchini and garlic and cook for about 3 minutes. Stir in chicken, tomatoes, and seasoning. Simmer on low for about 10 minutes.

Mix chicken mixture and pasta together and top with cheese.



What's your favorite pasta dish?

Five Cheap Alternatives to High Priced Paid Services

I love sharing frugal ideas that we do to save us money because just like you, I love learning new ways to pocket extra money.   Many of us are more frugal than others because we simply sacrifice things others have not been brave enough to do, yet. Becoming more frugal is not an overnight process, Lord help us if it was. Being frugal is a lifestyle, it is something you decide to do and work to achieve a little at a time. Today, I want to share with you Five Cheap Alternatives to High Priced Paid Services. Making a change in one of these areas is a step closer to being more frugal with extra money in your pocket.

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Five Cheap Alternatives to
High Priced Paid Services

• Cable/Satellite: Roku Box (highly recommend). If buying a Roku is not in the budget at the moment. Hulu Plus and Netflix can be played on your laptop and game consoles. Purchasing an HDMI wire and connecting your computer to your TV is an awesome way to go until the budget allows for a Roku box or some other device. (we did this before we bought our box)

• Movie Subscriptions: Amazon – you have a choice to either rent or purchase movies. We recently purchased a movie because after watching it three times it was paid for and we don’t have to store any Blue Ray or DVD discs. Of course, if you are Prime Member then you have access to many free movies. Crackle(free), Hulu Plus, and Netflix – we dropped Netflix because we had rather watch newer tv programs. Many new shows are aired the very next day, we like that! The Public Library – has many movies and family shows just waiting to be checked out.

• Haircuts: Learn to cut your own hair. There are tons of Youtube videos on how to cut hair. Find a friend who cuts their family’s hair and have them cut your hair. My husband and son have a friend cut their hair. As soon as I have the money put aside for clippers, he is going to teach me how to cut their hair. Before we moved, I always went to our local cosmetology school for haircuts and always very happy with the outcome. My hair has been professionally cut one time since we moved here. I finally found where a cosmetology school is located and I can’t wait to give them a try.

• Phone Service: Paying for both landline and cell phone is crazy! If you’re not comfortable with letting go of the landline altogether, cancel your long distance and use your cell phone. My parents have done this to save money and they are very happy. Verizon Wireless Home is an inexpensive option that has unlimited local and long distance. Three months in and we are still happy with this choice.

• Magazines: I’m not a big buyer on magazines, although, I do have one favorite. Shopping around for the best deal can be a drag, I normally go through EBATES to buy magazines. I get a good deal on the subscription and I get money back for making a purchase. It’s a win-win!

While these are just 5 areas to help you in becoming more frugal and saving money, there are tons of ways to pocket a little more money every day.

What are some ways you save money?

Homemade Peanut Butter

Peanut butter, there’s something yummy about the peanutty taste (especially with apples). YUM! Homemade Peanut Butter is even tastier than you can imagine and it only contains healthy things. While the convenience of grabbing a jar of our favorite brand maybe something that is a cheaper to do, it’s what’s inside that makes me go “hmm”. We’ve cut out almost all hydrogenated oil products - yep, it’s in peanut butter - one step at a time.

Homemade peanut butter is easy to make.

When I began researching homemade peanut butter, I found several articles stating you need a certain peanut or there were several steps that I didn’t want to take to make my own. Shelling peanuts was out of the question, dealing with the papery skins I didn’t want to deal with, oven roasting – it’s summer time for goodness sake, I wasn’t heating up my kitchen. I even found one where the raw peanuts were boiled before roasting - one step I didn't want to deal with.

I bought my peanuts HERE. Talk about super fast shipping! It was well worth the $14 to have my box of peanuts delivered to my doorstep by the FedEx man within four days.

After doing some reading on the perfect type of peanut for making peanut butter, I went with THESE since they were labeled for peanut butter and I didn’t have to do anything with them other than pouring them into the food processor bowl.

Depending on how big your bowl is, you may be able to process the whole pound of peanuts, if not (like me) you can chop them up in batches. Just chop them until they become coarse, crumbly little pieces. If you have two batches, you can add all the peanuts in at this time, depending on your bowl.

Drizzle the oil in the peanuts while processing. The peanuts will begin to ball up, but keep processing, they will become smoother. My peanut butter did not become as smooth as store bought, but we like it just the same. At this time, I also added the honey and salt. It did take a couple of times of tasting to get the sweetness we like. If needed add more oil/ salt/ honey at this time.

Storage - I’ve read different things about storing the homemade peanut butter in the refrigerator. I put my jar in the cabinet for a week and did not see a difference. I then put it in the refrigerator and it became thicker and harder to spread, so back to the cabinet it went.

You may find the oil will separate from the peanut butter, just give a good stir before using.

Homemade Peanut Butter

Ingredients:

• 1 lb peanuts
• 2 Tablespoons oil
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 Tablespoons honey

Directions:

Place the peanuts in food processor bowl and chop until coarse. Drizzle the oil while processing until peanuts began to come together. Add salt and honey and continue processing until tastes and smoothness is acquired. Store in an airtight container.

Saving Money with Roku {an update}

Better late than never I say since this post is two weeks late. Today, I’m updating about our Roku box. I love the fact we can choose what channels we want to watch that are GEARED TO WHAT WE LIKE. There are no forcing channels on us and we are NOT tied to a certain time to watch a show. Best of all, we are not under a contract to watch up to date TV shows and movies. We're saving money with Roku and I LOVE IT!

Saving Money with Roku {an update}

When we Ditched the Satellite Dish for a Roku box last year, honestly, I was a little skeptical because I didn’t realize there was so much to choose from with Roku (some of those channels have changed). While we lived without broadcast TV for years in the past, there was the large collection of DVDs being bought and rented and I knew the minor hassle we went through of hooking up the computer to the TV to watch shows we enjoyed. Over the years, many channels closed their viewing to only subscribers of cable and satellite. Without being a paying subscriber to a company, there is no watching a favorite show.

This past year, I noticed more and more cable channels coming to Roku. Many allow viewing of some of their shows and movies, but to get the whole ball of wax, they require a subscription to either a satellite or cable company. Others don’t give away any of their productions and require either a fee or a subscription.

In January, we decided to switch from Netflix over to Hulu Plus which is $7.99 a month. The reason behind this was because we liked the idea of having more TV shows to watch. With Hulu Plus, we get to watch the latest shows on demand as early as the next day. The only “local” channel that is not up to date with Hulu Plus is CBS. But, CBS does allow some open viewing on their website and they now have their  CBS AllAccess which is a pay subscription. Depending on where you live, this channel plays live. We live too far out from civilization to have the live feature, but we’re okay with that and we are happy with $5.99 a month.

Since I have caught up with all the latest season of our favorite CBS shows, I find myself watching many of their classic shows like Jag, Nash Bridges, I Love Lucy, and Perry Mason to name just a few.

As we all know, television and movie providers are all about making money, but you don't have to stay trapped in forking out the big bucks to watch recent televised shows. I love the freedom we have with this little box and we’re only spending $13.98 a month to watch television.

How We Save Money on Our Home Phone Service

There is nothing like the opportunity to SAVE MONEY. Last year, I wrote about our move to Roku boxes, and we are still happy with them. Not long after we moved here and had the home phone turned on, we turned it off because of craziness with the phone company. Today, I’m going to share with you how we save money on our home phone/cell phone service.

How We Save Money On Home Phone Service

Seriously, living in this area is like living in the 1980’s when it comes to phone service. We are 13 miles from the next town and it is LONG DISTANCE to call there. For an extra $10 a month, we could get 1,000 minutes to call other customers of that phone company. Then we would have to find a long distance company to deal with out of state and InterLata (outside our calling area ) calls. I don’t know about you, I don’t have time to deal with a separate long distance company and my goodness, I’m not paying between 10-20 cents per minute to make a long distance phone call. Calls to my sister would break the bank and I’d have to learn how to send smoke signals.

In January 2013, I signed us up with Vonage. We paid $20 for the box and $15 a month for our service and we were under a contract for one year. For two years, the monthly bill climbed up over $35 a month. We had unlimited phone calls –local and long distance. While $35 is relatively a good price for the service we had, there were also some drawbacks to using Vonage. Dropped calls and calls not going through – I lost count on how many times I had to call or log into the Vonage website to get help for calls not going through or being dropped. Sometimes, it took several days for them to get all of their thing-a-ma-bobs straightened out. Their service relies on the internet – if the internet goes down or the power goes out – there is NO phone service. I will give them credit for their customer service – it rocked! If you needed help, they were more than willing and knowledgeable in helping with the problem.

A little about how we settled on the Verizon Wireless Home. We are a one cell phone family and just recently upgraded to a smartphone for my husband’s business. I never go anywhere without my husband, so spending money on a cell phone for me is throwing money out the window. When he attended two weeks of training in Helena, we knew I needed access to a cell phone because I had errands to run while he was away. When we visited our local Verizon store, we told the salesman what I needed and asked about a prepaid phone. He suggested the Wireless Home line since it can TRAVEL with me, all I would need is a cheap wired phone to plug into it. After hearing the box would be FREE, the service a guaranteed $20 a month for unlimited phone calls (local/long distance), with only a $40 activation fee, which was billed, and no depending on the internet, we decided to give it a try. Sadly, there is a two-year contract, but with the guarantee of not spending more than $20 a month + tax,  two years is not that hard to swallow. The taxes for this line are only $3.92 (in our area) a LOT less than all the fees we were paying on top of the taxes with the other company. You can pay for the box up front if you’d rather not have a lengthy contract, we choose to save money by signing a contract.

The one thing I really like about the wireless home box is that it HAS a battery backup when the power is out and if you are traveling with it. Although, you will need a corded phone as a backup if you use a cordless phone like we do. As you can see in the picture above, it doesn’t take up a lot of space; our box is sitting on the edge of my dresser. I can’t remember the length of the battery life, but if you have a plugin converter for your vehicle, then you’ll be all set for traveling with your home phone.

With the wireless home box, you have the Verizon voice mail. I’m not too crazy about this one thing since I have to call into the voicemail to get any messages that I may miss while I’m out in the yard. But, it is just a minor detail I can get used to doing.

The sound and clarity is amazing!  In every corner of our house, basement included, the sound is AMAZING - no scratches, no dead air sounds, nothing but whomever you are talking to. We are able to walk out into the yard with the range of the wireless without any problems. No more having to be chained to a 5-foot range. :)

The only thing wrong with going wireless, if you live in an area like we do where Verizon bounces from another company’s tower, you might find yourself without service. A contractor cut a fiber optic line not too long ago, causing cell phone, cable, internet – everything to be out in this area, and we were left with no service for a couple of hours. Just another little hiccup to deal with.

I’m not a salesperson, so I’m not going to try and sell you one this product, but you can check it out if you’re interested.  This is just another option to help save you money like we are doing.

I’ll be posting again about this new way of saving money on our home phone after we’ve had it awhile, and I have a follow-up post on our Roku box coming up in the next week, so be watching for it.

Saving $750 And Still Enjoying TV

In January, we decided to cut the cash flow to paying for television. It has been the best thing we’ve done in a l-o-n-g time. The main reason for this decision was to save money, but we also did not enjoy worrying about crude advertisements while watching TV. We're saving $750 and still enjoying TV very much.

Saving $750 and Still Enjoying TV

After being hounded by Nielsen for several weeks at the end of last year, I finally decided to fill out the diary booklet. After seeing what we watched on TV for a week, it was time for some decision making.  We watch less than 35 hours of TV a week, in fact, some days the power button is never pushed on the remote control.

I mentioned before, this was a decision we made together after trying to stretch pay checks.  We talked about a Roku box a couple of years ago and the whole idea went out the window. It took my husband sitting down with the bills and the check book to realize paying to watch the few shows we were interested in, was stupid. He even went as far as asking some of his friends who have mentioned on Facebook using Roku in their home. Everyone told him to go for it, he wouldn’t be disappointed.

When we bought our Roku box in January, I was a little skeptical of how long my excitement would last. Well, I’m still excited about it because we have more than enough programs to keep us happy. We have 24 hours of weather, ESPN, CBS Sports, and a plethora of outdoor and hunting channels for my husband along with many other favorite channels. I’m still trying to get through the old western channels and mystery movie channels. So far, the only thing we are paying to watch is Netflix.

Since January, we have saved right at $700 and we have cut a bill that was hanging over our heads every month. That gross feeling we had when we went to the post office box and saw the Direct TV envelope, yep it’s gone.  I even kept the last copy of the satellite bill that read NO PAYMENT DUE.

Yes, there are TV shows we miss, but we are willing to sacrifice those few shows until they hit Netflix.  If some of the shows are on a channel that still allows viewing on their website, we hook up the laptop to the TV to watch them. While we’ve added a few DVDs to our collection, we have also found some of our favorite shows on DVD at the library.

It’s nice knowing we will have saved $750 this year by cutting one thing out of our lives. It’s even better knowing there is no bill hanging over our heads every month.

Do you not pay for TV? If you use other methods than a Roku box, leave me a comment, I'd love to hear about what you're using.