Summer of Savings - Week 3

**AmyBoz** · 07-05-2008, 10:14 AM

So, as I had posted 3 weeks ago...summer is tight, as I don't get paid until mid-August.

So far, so good. Here's what I anticipate for this next week:

I don't plan on any eating out. I've been able to cook all of our meals, packed lunch for everyone every day, and we always have ShopRite cereal in the mornings. I'm making my meal plan for the week tonight.

As always, I'm washing all of my clothes in cold and hanging as much as possible.

I cut my fathers hair last night, and although I fought him on it, he insisted on paying me $14 for it. I put the $10 in a little box where I save $10's for our vacation, and the $4 went in my wallet. It's all I have in my wallet, and I'm hoping to keep it there for the whole week.

We continue to keep off any electrical things (lights, appliances, tvs, etc) in an room that we are not in.

We've been entertaining ourselves very well. When we get home from work/camp/daycare, the kids help me set the table and make dinner. Then, after we eat, we'll read or play games or play on the Wii as a family. It was rainy yesterday and according to weather.gov, it will be rainy for the next few days. So, no pool, which is no fun, but we'll have to stretch our creative minds a bit to stay busy. When it's not rainy, but just yucky and gray, we take walks, just to get outside for a bit.

This week, I plan on going through dd's books with her and seeing what we can donate. She's totally into her chapter books now, and we'll pass some on to her little brothers and donate the rest.

If there are any errands to run, I'll be combining them with picking everyone up at the end of the day. I'm really trying to save on gas, as the last time I had to fill up the van, it cost $70.

If I don't have to drive, I won't.

I'm also going to go through our dvd's again to see if there is anything that I can sell to Secondspin.com. I just sent it $162 worth of dvd's for my Dad, so I'm hoping to get rid of a few of mine as well and make some $$$.

I've been debating between just donating some clothes I have to get rid of or bringing them to the consignment shop. She just changed the rules and in addition to the $15 yearly fee, you have to pay $1 per item of clothing that you want her to sell. Not sure that it's worth it. So, I may just donate them. I'll decide by Sunday night.

So, that's what I see coming up this week. Still working at camp from 7:15-5:15 each day. Dd is loving it and the boys are really enjoying the camp that daycare is running.

So, as I said...so far, so good.

**iida** · 07-05-2008, 10:31 AM

Amy, here in Finland teachers get a normal salary during the summer months. Schools are out for 2½ months.
Now it has been a trend lately to hire teachers only for a couple of months so that they are unembloyed during the summer. New teachers complain about this and I think they are right. A good thing is that schools can´t do this forever and eventually they have to give those teachers a full time job and a paid summer vacation.

**emily_hope** · 07-05-2008, 10:42 AM

It sounds like you have a good plan going. There are so many things you can do with kids that doesn't cost anything. You just have to be creative. I've not heard of Secondspin.com, I'm going to check it out. Thanks and good luck!

**nodmicks** · 07-05-2008, 02:03 PM

Sounds like your doing terrific!

**AmyBoz** · 07-05-2008, 06:09 PM

Well, I was going to make an egg dish for dinner tonight, (probably omelettes or something) but when I opened the cheese drawer in the fridge, I found that I had two, half-full bags of shredded cheese and one, unopened bag of flour tortillas that were hidden underneath the cheese bags. I decided to save the eggs for baking (tomorrow dd and I are baking some snacks for the week) and make quesadillas instead.

Dh really likes quesadillas when I also brown some ground beef and fill them with the beef, but I'm saving that for meat sauce for the pasta that I'll make tomorrow, so we just had plain quesadillas, and since they didn't fill dh, he also had some leftover pierogies that were in the fridge.

So, I'm feeling happy that I was able to make a dinner that everyone enjoyed and that I won't have to buy more eggs tomorrow when I do the food shopping because I saved the ones we had. Also, I used up the two bags of shredded cheese before they went bad, and I found a nice surprise in the tortillas!

All in all, a nice, frugal dinner surprise!