Going for Not Broke

I had a rather hectic Monday and Tuesday morning, so I took an unplanned break from blogging yesterday. Hopefully, I can keep up with it better from here on out. But that's not the only thing that I've fallen behind on. To help us stay aware of where we are debt-wise, my husband and I have a meeting every month in which we both look at what we still owe and see how much progress (and sometimes, I must admit, it is anti-progress) we've made toward our goal to be debt-free. The meeting is tentatively scheduled for the first of the month, though sometimes we have it on the 3rd, or 6th or whenever, based on when we're able to gather up everything and jot down the necessary numbers. Well, tomorrow is the date of our next "meeting," and we've yet to meet in October yet. Oh well. I guess next month's will be a double meeting. Happy Halloween, everyone!

I have a subscription to Reader's Digest, thanks to a gift card for Amazon I got for my birthday, that's delivered once a month to my Kindle. In the November issue, there is a list of things to buy this time of year because they're generally cheaper. Among them is frozen vegetables. I don't think I've ever noticed seasonal price fluctuations in frozen veggies, but I am going to keep my eyes open for really good sales.

Yesterday at lunch at work, I had taken one of my Rubbermaid containers with enchilada casserole , a dish I've taken several times and has always turned out fine. Yesterday, though, it burned. It smelled of burned food, and the plastic on the underside of the container melted. I tossed both dish and food into the garbage. Because I've taken it several times with no problems, I doubt the container was to blame, so for now, I think the microwave is at fault. I'm very annoyed that my container was ruined.

Today is a grocery shopping day, and as I looked through the refrigerator to see what we have and what we don't, I noticed that the veggies I bought on my last shopping trip still sit on the shelves. My plan was to cut them up, cook them and freeze them for use later, but two weeks later, I've yet to make the time. Based on past experience, I think the carrots are probably still OK, but not the green beans or the yellow squash. They're both on my grocery list again; hopefully, this time I get them cut up and stored early. Otherwise, it's all just money down the drain.

Late yesterday evening, our modem died. It had been coming for a while, because on more than one occasion, our Internet would stop and we'd have to restart the modem. I had hoped to limp it along for a little bit longer. I needed an Internet connection to complete a freelance project I was working on, so I ran out to the only store open at the time, Wal-Mart, which had only one option in DSL modems. Because it was late and I was tired, I bought it, shelling out $100 for a modem/wireless router combo unit. Had I waited until this morning, I could've bought a modem by itself at either Target or Best Buy for less. I know Target has them for less than $50 because just a few hours before our old one died, I had priced one there. I don't know why I didn't just wait. I chalk it up to being very tired. On the plus side, though, our Internet seems a lot faster than it had been. I didn't realize it would make such a difference.

Our plan has been to cut the cable, but we put it off until after the final season of "The Closer" was complete. Well, that show the season ended, along with "Major Crimes," the new show that TNT started to replace it, and our cable was still connected. Just this morning, though, my husband made the call to get our cable disconnected. There definitely will be shows we'll miss -- "Haven" and "The Walking Dead" are among them -- but we won't miss the monthly payment. Not even a little bit.

Balancing motherhood with an extra effort to pay down debt can take its toll on how much housework I can get done sometimes. I don't know how some women do it. I've yet to get up early to work on some freelance work like I had planned , but if I do get up early over the next couple of days, I think I'm going to spend the time cleaning. My house is not a sty, but I do have a lot of papers to go through, an inch of dust over everything and floors that could use a good vacuuming and/or mopping. After I get these things out of the way, perhaps then I can concentrate on earning a little extra. I have, however, done a little work toward earning money; I sorted through some of my freelance opportunities. Just sorting earns me nothing, though.

The last couple of recipes I've featured here were both dishes I had not yet tried. Since then, though, I have, and I think they're both very good. Pizza Bake Post with recipe here . I didn't make this one exactly according to recipe because I thought I had the ingredients on hand but I did not. I was missing the egg noodles and the pizza sauce. I made do with 10 ounces of elbow macaroni instead, but I had no substitute for the pizza sauce so I ran to Dollar General to get some. DG didn't have any, though, so I bought the stuff to make my own. (One 15-ounce can of tomato sauce, one 6-ounce can of tomato paste, a dash of paprika and and a teaspoon of garlic. I had the garlic and paprika at home, so I needed to buy only the tomato stuff.) The pizza sauce recipe makes more than a jar of sauce holds, but what was leftover didn't seem to be worth saving, so I dumped it all in the recipe. Bottom line, I really liked it. It reheated well as a frozen dinner, and i...

On a recent trip to the grocery store, I reached for a package of shredded cheese, but then I wondered, "Can I save money by shredding it myself?" So I walked over to the bricks of cheese and noticed that yes, the price was better, so I loaded up because I had a lot of dishes that called for cheese on the menu for the next two weeks. The last time I went to the grocery store, though, I noticed that I didn't look closely enough. Sure, the price for a brick of cheese is less than buying a bag of cheese that is already shredded, but the price per ounce is better when you buy the shredded stuff. I don't understand the hows and whys of that, but at least I know to look a little more closely when I'm shopping next time.

I took a couple of days off from blogging, thanks to a hectic schedule and hopes of earning a little extra money for debt repayment. I did earn a little, which is nice. $16 and change so far, but I'm hoping to add to that. My plan to get up early before my daughter hasn't worked out so far, though. When she has a bad night, my husband and I do, too, and it's just too easy to stay in bed longer. It's something I need to do, though, not just to get work done, but to have time for exercising, too. (I really need to get in shape.)

My husband and I are both trying to lose weight, and in looking over the foods I've made so far for frozen dinners, I see we're eating a little too high carb. Therefore, for future meals, I'd like to make relatively low-carb foods only. If I do make an entree that is high carb, I plan to pair it with veggies and fruit. I am open to any ideas for low-carb freezable meals, too, so if any readers have a favorite recipe they'd like to pass along, feel free. You can either use the comment field below or email it here , and I'll share it with others.

I think that in some ways, paying off your debt can be like losing weight. For me, when I had 100 pounds to lose, losing just one or two didn't feel like a big deal. It took my losing at least 10 pounds before I felt like I could really accomplish my goal. Similarly, paying an extra $20 toward tens of thousands of dollars' worth in debt feels like too little to make much difference too. Seeing a big drop of say, $5,000, might help me feel like I can do this and therefore spur me on to do what's necessary each and every day. However, it's tough to make the kind of "go-get 'em" effort on my current income. So, I'd like to make more. Since early this year when one of my sources for freelance work dried up, I've been focusing a little more on my hobbies, writing and beading. Both can be sources of extra income if I could just find the time to work on either one steadily. It's tough when you have a baby. I am amazed that there are so many mothers ...

This week is another grocery shopping week, and I'm dreading it. I had at one point managed to get my grocery spending under $175 every two weeks, the last few trips have not gone that well. They've all totaled more than $200, not including any supplementary trips I needed to make later. I'm not really sure what I can do to cut it more at this point beyond rethink what we've been eating. Over the past few months, the price of ground beef has gone up quite a bit, and much of what we eat has ground beef in it. I had been buying the leanest beef available, but on my last grocery trip, I bought 90/10 meat. Perhaps we'll need to eat more chicken.

After a few months of year-over-year declines in our electric bill, it went up again. Once again, I've fallen out of the habit of cutting power to the home computers when we're not using them. I don't know what to do to make it routine, just like turning off the light at night or getting a cup of water for my bedside table. Hopefully, I can. I don't know how much doing so really trims from our power bill, but I know it's still better to cut where I can.

I spent much of last week working on beadwork to take to an arts and crafts festival. I didn't get as much done as I had hoped, but it didn't matter anyway. The unseasonably cold weather kept festival attendees from the event, and I sold nothing. *sigh* The good news is that I can still list them on Etsy and hopefully sell them that way. I intend to keep working on more this week but to also work on freelance writing projects. My husband and I have had one of those weeks in which it seems like at every turn, we have to spend money on something. Therefore, I hope to make some money in freelance work this week.

Here is another recipe I have not yet tried but will in the coming week. Like last week's recipe , this one comes from the Taste of Home Freezer Meals mini-magazine. I'll update with a photo and information on how well it reheats as a frozen dinner once I can. Pizza Noodle Bake 10 ounces uncooked egg noodles 1 1/2 pounds ground beef 1/2 cup finely chopped onion 1/4 cup chopped green pepper 1 jar (14 ounces) pizza sauce 4 ounces shredded cheddar cheese 4 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese 1 package (3 1/2 ounces) sliced pepperoni 1. Cook noodles according to package directions. Meanwhile, in a large skillet, cook the beef, onion and green pepper over medium heat until meat is no longer pink; drain. 2. Add pizza sauce. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, for 2-3 minutes or until heated through. Drain noodles. 3. In a greased 13-by-9-inch baking dish, layer half of the noodles, beef mixture, cheeses and pepperoni. Repeat layers. Cover and bake at 350 degr...

Being parents now, my husband and I have given some consideration to creating a college fund for our daughter. The numbers a friend of ours came up with stopped us in our tracks because it required making a $200 monthly payment into an account for our daughter. While we'd love to be able to do that for her, it's just not feasible, especially as we try to pay off our debt. What we had in mind was something we can contribute to on an irregular basis as we get extra money, such as if/when we get a tax refund or get some overtime. We've been hanging on to our initial investment for her college account for getting close to a year now. It's time to move on to something else, because the 0.1 percent annual rate it's earning in our regular savings account isn't going to help. All of the options out there are just so overwhelming.

For a few years now, I've had an idea for a small business. The idea is for a personal grocery shopper. For a fee, I would go to the grocery store for people, select items on their shopping list and deliver them right to their door. Normally when I'm kicking around this idea, I only get as far as thinking, "I wonder if it would work." I know similar businesses exist in other cities, so in some communities, it probably would work. I just don't know whether it would where I live. Yesterday though, I thought a little more of the logistics: Should I pay for the groceries upfront then have my clients reimburse me when I drop of their bags? If I do it that way, how can I guarantee that I'm not going to be stuck with a boatload of groceries I don't need because I get to their door and they don't have any money? How much would people around here pay for such a service? How would I charge, by the number of items they request? Would it be feasible to get two...

On Thursday last week, I made a hasty trip through Walmart to pick up items I can't buy at Aldi when I noticed a sign that said using a Walmart card at the Murphy Oil gas stations could net a 15 cents a gallon savings. Because I was breezing through the store on my way to drop my daughter off at daycare before I had to head to work, I just made a mental note to do a little more looking into it later. Well, I finally had the chance. The 15 cents a gallon saving lasts through Christmas Eve, and it's good only on a Walmart prepaid debit card or credit card. If the 15 cents a gallon were permanent, I'd consider getting the prepaid debit card. Because it's only temporary though, I've decided to try loading up Walmart gift cards instead, which gives a 10 cents a gallon savings at Murphy stations through Dec. 24. Hopefully, I'll make the time to fit it into my schedule because my car doesn't get the greatest gas mileage, and 10 cents a gallon could come in ha...

Back in the early 1990s, I landed my first full-time job at a newspaper. I used a Macintosh computer to build ads, and from there, my preference for Macs grew. I've owned PCs, mostly because they're easier on my pocketbook, but they get the job done too. I just like Macs better, so back in 2006, I bought one to use while I do freelance work. Now, it's 6 years old, a dinosaur in the tech world, so every now and then, I have to talk myself out of buying a new one; the old one does just fine -- for now. On Saturday, Woot had a good deal on a Macintosh computer -- roughly $250 cheaper than it would've been if it were being sold through Apple. It might've been refurbished -- I didn't hang around the site enough to see because the temptation to buy one for myself was pretty strong. It had the Lion operating system (mine has Snow Leopard) and more RAM than my current one. I told myself I'd go back to Woot at 10 p.m., and if the site wasn't sold out, I'd ...