Cheap Eats - Meal Ideas Under $10
Posted by Debt Destroyer on July 2, 2009
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A while ago I wrote about how I blew my grocery budget on a $11 hunk of cheese, I ended that post by asking for some budget friendly recipes. Only Kristy from Master Your Card took me up, and I’m ever glad she did.
Her chicken dish was fantastic!
Here it is again for those of you who missed out the first time:
4 boneless chicken breasts
1 can cream of chicken (reg size is fine)
1 tablespoon of Season-All
Spaghetti noodles
butter
garlic saltFirst, you boil the chicken with salt and pepper until they’re just about done. This reduces overall cooking time and keeps the meat tender.
Transfer the chicken to a crock pot and cover with cream of chicken and about half a can of water. Add the Season-All and stir. Let simmer for about 25 minutes (less if you’re cooking on high…just make sure the chicken is completely done).
While the chicken is cooking, boil water for the spaghetti noodles. I’ve found that if you add a cap full of olive oil, it enhances the flavor of the noodles, so I recommend it, but it’s not necessary. Once the noodles are cooked, strain them and put them back in the pan. Add butter and garlic salt to taste.
Put noodles on a plate. Cut up chicken over the noodles. Ladle the cream of chicken sauce over the chicken and noodles.
Enjoy!
I changed it a little (like using a lot more Cream of Chicken soup) and didn’t use a crock-pot, but it still turned out rather tasty.
About the same time I was savoring “MasterYourCard Chicken”, my favorite radio station was doing a series of stories of meals for under $10.
- Chef Jose Andres started with a Moorish-Style Chickpea And Spinach Stew.
- Chef Ming Tsai then whipped up some Chicken-And-Corn Fried Rice With Lemon Spinach.
- Navy chef Michael Edwards made Sauteed Skate Meuniere with Potato Gnocchi.
- Pat and Gina Neely ended the series with Cheesy Corkscrews With Crunchy Bacon Topping.
The best part of the series were all the recipes that people left in the comment section, but they are gone now 
Obviously there are a lot of great meals out there that are cheaper than $10 (here’s a whole site of them for half that price).
And if $5 is too much for you, there are plenty of simple meals that get the job done. My personal favorites are:
- Spaghetti & Garlic Toast
- Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup
- Mac & Cheese with Hot dogs
Or my all time favorite meal(no joke)…Hamburger & Rice.
Mix some rice with hamburger, top it with butter, and your good to go.
As you can see whether you spend $800 a year on food or $800 a month, there are many, many, ways to get the best bang for your food buck.
So how about we try this sharing thing again?
What’s your favorite $10 meal, $5 meal, or super simple meal?
I’m getting hungry just thinking about this.
Until next time,
-DD
Frugal Fixes Around the House - Duct Tape, Foam and a Rubberband
Posted by Debt Destroyer on May 22, 2009
Back in September I wrote about how it took me two days to fix a screendoor.
Guess what? It’s broken again.
I bring this up to show that I’m no handy man. With all the Bob the Builder that my kids watch you’d think that something would rub off on me. But nothing does. In fact when the kids break something they always run to “Mommy” to get it fixed. But I don’t blame them.
I married a female Red Green.
Ok, that might be a bit of an overstatement. But sometimes I wonder. Take our refrigerator for example.
Our bottom rack broke on the inside of the door. I messed around for days trying to superglue the original rack back in. It would be fine for a bit, then fall apart and the jug of apple juice was always falling on our feet.
I repeated this a few times until one day I came home from lunch to find out my wife fixed it.
She fixed it with Duct Tape!
That same strip of tape has been protecting our toes for over a year.
Actually the most impressive aspect of the tape job, was that Mrs DD was actively lobbying for a new fridge even before the rack broke. It is on our Wish List after all. So I was glad that she was able to put aside her desire for a new one and realize that as long as it keeps things cold, we’ll be keeping our old fridge.
Speaking of things we’ll be keeping…
Remember when Christmas came early for us and we received a hand-me-down couch? Well after we got used to it, our “new” 20-year old couch started to feel like…a 20-year old couch. So My wife took it upon herself to fix it.
Can she fix it? Yes she can!
A couple of weeks ago she went to the local hardware store and got a couple of pieces of foam cut to fit under the couch cushions. The foam was spendy ($70+), but it made huge difference. We are once again very pleased with our “new” couch and are confident that it will last until we get a leather one…someday.
While I’m busy exhorting my wife’s handiness, I do have one success story that I should share.
We were having a plumbing problem in our upstairs bathroom. Our tub spout is rather old and corroded, so water would somehow flow backwards along the bottom of the spout, get in the wall, and leak on the floor. This made giving the kids a bath more messy than it normally would be.
It took me a while to figure out exactly what was causing the water to get on the floor. But when I did, I used a rubber band to redirect the leak. Now instead of getting all the way to the wall, the water leaks down into the tub when it hits the rubber band.
I also could just put some caulk around the tub surround, but that seemed too conventional of a fix. Plus I don’t have much luck with those type of projects.
The screen door is testament to that.
So what have been some of your proudest moments fixing things yourself? Or better yet, how about some stories of home projects going awry. I don’t know about you, but I can relate to those kind of stories much better.
Until next time,
-DD
» Filed Under Frugality, Money Savers
Cheaper Than Cheap Tip Of The Week #8 : Don’t Flush The Tiolet
Posted by The Happy Rock on May 1, 2009
“Cheaper Than Cheap” is a recurring tip series about frugality. The idea is to provide potentially helpful frugality tips that border on fanatical or fictitious to the point of becoming humorous. Love them or hate them, let’s hear what you think. Tip #7 was Sleep When It is Dark.
If it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down
That old adage isn’t just funny and gross, it can really save you money. The point it is wait to flush your urine but always flush the poop. I know it sounds kind of gross, but let’s take a look at the numbers to see if it is really worth it. Let’s estimate that a family of 4 flushes 20 times a day, 16 of which are just liquid waste. They own a somewhat dated toilet that uses 3.5 gallons a flush which is a good average because some older toilets can use up to 5 gallons or more while newer tanks can use as low as 0.8 gallons for pee flushes and 1.6 gallons for solid waste flushes.
If they follow the saying to the literal letter that would save 16 flushes a day or 56 gallons of water. In a year they will save 20,440 gallons of water a year, which at a cost of 0.005 cents a galloon taken from my current bill would save $102 a year.
To put it in a broader perspective, the US as a whole uses 5.8 billion gallons of fresh water a day for flushing and could reduce that amount by over 4.3 billion gallons just by following “if it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down”.
If you aren’t hardcore enough for the mellow yellow route, you could consider using an empty half gallon or gallon milk jug to convert you toilet into a lower flow toilet.
Cheaper Than Cheap Tip Of The Week Poll:
*Sources:
Low cost ways to conserve water at home @Yahoo
» Filed Under Frugality
Necessity vs Luxury: Research Shows That The Economy Shapes Our Perspective
Posted by Debt Destroyer on April 28, 2009
Quick question: Do you think a microwave is a necessity or a luxury?
I ask because the other day NPR ran a story about a Pew Research Center study that asked these types of questions.
According to the findings Americans are paring down on what they consider necessities. For example, in 2006 68% of people called the microwave a “necessity”. In 2009 only 47% now feel that way.
Here is a chart showing how some other items fared as well.
It’s interesting to see that a shaky economy has people viewing less items as necessities. But it totally makes sense. When money is a little tight, it’s amazing what you can make do with.
I was curious how the DD household would compare with the survey’s findings, so I quizzed my wife tonight at dinner and here are our results:
Necessity Survey (Item, nationwide Yes%, DD, Mrs. DD)
Is this item a necessity?
- Car - 88% - Yes - Yes
- Landline phone - 68% - Yes - Yes
- Clothes Dryer - 66% - Yes - Yes
- Home air conditioning - 54% - Yes - No
- TV set - 52% - No - No
- Home Computer 50% - No - Yes
- Cell Phone - 49% - No - No
- Microwave - 47% - Yes - No
- High Speed Internet - 31% - No - Yes
- Cable/Satellite TV - 23% - No - No
- Dishwasher - 21% - No - No
- Flat Screen TV - 8% - No - No
- iPod - 4% - No - No
The only ones my wife & I really disagreed on were Home AC and the Microwave. I said yes to both. I get miserably hot really easy, so I feel I “need” AC. Upon reflection, I guess I could go without a microwave, but when I first thought about it I instantly said yes.
**My wife said “yes” to Computer & High Speed Internet because she works from home and uses these for her job. She said if it wasn’t for that, she’d had said “no”**
So what about you? Do you think any of those items are necessities?
Looking forward to your answers.
Until next time,
-DD
» Filed Under Frugality, Materialism
Little Things Part 3 - Budget Practice And Correcting Mistakes
Posted by Debt Destroyer on February 24, 2009
This is the 3rd chapter is a series of posts showing how the little things can add up.
You might have missed it, but I dropped some subtle hints in my recent snowblower post that I can from time to time, be a pretty big baby.
Well one night after a frigid shoveling adventure, my wife took pity on me (FINALLY!).
I told her that I’d like nothing more than to have that night’s hot chocolate to be accompanied with some nachos. But you need chips for nachos and we had none. Luckily for me, my beautiful loving bride volunteered to venture out in the freezing cold to get some (which was nice because I already had my pajamas on).
She returned (quite a while later) with not only chips but with a few other items as well. She told me that she was shocked at the total of $20 for 5 things and that was with her taking advantage of a 2 bags of chips for $5 offer.
So we checked the receipt.
She ended up paying $5 each for the chips instead of getting both bags for $5. The deal was for two small bags, and she got two big bags (a mistake I might add, that she’s made before). I suggested that before she takes her coat off, she should take them back.
She gave me a rather perplexing look, but then agreed that we didn’t have $5 to waste on chips.
To make it up for her, I was the one who made the hot chocolate that night (a little groveling might have also took place, hard to say for sure).
While we were savoring our beverage watching Letterman, I rubbed some salt in her wounds by reminding her to take money out of the “grocery” envelope before going shopping. Otherwise it defeated the purpose of the envelope system (This too might have been followed by some groveling, again it’s hard to say for sure).
Now I know some out there would scoff at a going through such an ordeal for only a $5 savings, but if you add up a few of them together, you can start to see some significant savings.
And who out there couldn’t use an extra $15?
You can buy your wife some nice flowers with $15 
Until next time,
-DD
» Filed Under Food, Frugality, Marriage(Communication)
Deep Freeze - Freezing Sale Items To Help Stretch Your Grocery Dollars
Posted by Debt Destroyer on February 18, 2009
Now that I’m trying to limit my family’s Grocery spending to $450 a month, I’m looking for ways to get the most for my money. I’ve already mentioned a few ways I’m doing this in a couple of previous posts (here & here).
But earlier today I realized that I had another tool at my disposal that I probably haven’t been using effectively enough.
Our Deep Freeze!
At lunch time today my daughter informed us that she wanted burritos. My wife looked in the fridge and said we were out. But that triggered my memory of buying a bunch of burrito packs when they were on sale a month ago. Sure enough we had a couple of more packages ready to go. In no time at all my kids were eating burritos (well one was the other one was feeding it to the dog).
This got me wondering, what else is in there? I knew it was full of Hot Pockets (whenever my store puts them on sale for less than $2, I stock up.) And just last week, my in-laws gave some some free mystery meat (I’m never sure what they are handing out).
But when I took a deeper look I found many forgotten treasures.
- Tator Tots - These must have been on sale a while ago, because I have 3 bags of them. This is good because they are one of our favorite side dishes.
- Broccoli - There was a time when my daughter ate broccoli like it was going out of style. I must have stocked, because now she won’t touch it. It’s still a popular side.
- Roasts (mostly pork) - I’m just guessing but I think these came from my Mother-in-law. As mentioned above she frequently gives us random frozen meat.
- Random stuff - There’s a boxed lasagna, ice cream, desserts, corn, apple sauce, chicken breasts, and breast milk.
After surveying our new found booty, the Mrs & I have decided that we’re going to try to mine at least two meals a week out of the freezer. So before sitting down to type this I cut up some potatoes, carrots, and onions, and combined them all together in our crock-pot.
Hopefully it will taste as good as it smells.
After a few weeks we should be ready to fill ‘er up once again. Hopefully this time we’ll remember to keep better track of what’s in there and plan our meals accordingly.
For example this upcoming week we’ll have:
- Monday - Tator Tot Hot Dish
- Tuesday - Chicken & broccoli
- Wednesday - Lasagna with some sort of Breast Milk dessert
On second thought maybe we’ll just have a nice side salad.
Now that you know how I use my freezer, how about you share some of your favorite itms to stock up on?
Until next time,
-DD
Runaway Electric Bill - Looking For Electricity Savings Tips
Posted by Debt Destroyer on February 10, 2009
I thought I was prepared for winter.
I took some steps to winterize my house, we’ve added insulated curtains, and have been wearing our smart wool socks we got for Christmas. But now I hear that according to Punxsutawney Phil, we’ll have 6 more weeks of winter.
Thank goodness!
I can’t wait for Spring to get here. I’ve already mentioned how my back is tired from all the shoveling, now my wallet is ailing from the high electric bills.
I don’t know what the first thing you would do if you got a $485 electric bill, but the first thing I did was turn down the furnace. It was set at 68 degrees, so I lowered it to 67 (Kept it at 63 overnights). The next thing I did was turn off all the lights.
My precious daughter is on kick about turning on lights. I think she likes this so much because she is finally tall enough to flip the switch herself. But her new found hobby leaves us with a bunch of lights on. It’s cute, but not that cute.
So for the past month I’ve been pretty adamant about “when not in use turn off the juice.” Lights have been off, heat slightly lower. I was actually looking forward to getting our next bill to see how much all our hard work has paid off.
$468…Ugh.
While January was just as cold as December, I still hoped there would be a bigger drop off in our bill. I guess I could lower the thermoset some more, but it’s already pretty chilly and it didn’t really do all that much last month(but I probably will go down to 66).
In addition to being able to see our breath in our house and reading by candle light, I think it may be time to make an action plan for reducing electric costs. Luckily I didn’t have to go very far to find some great resources.
In fact I didn’t have to leave The Happy Rock:
- Spartan Saving - I found this site listed under “Top Commentators.” This site has lots of great tips for saving money around the house.
- Vampire Power - Frugal Dad (listed under “Personal Finance”) wrote about how our household electric devises are sucking energy even when they are turned off.
- Switch our light bulbs - The Simple Dollar (also listed under ”Personal Finance”) broke down the cost benefits of using different types of bulbs (A side note, a local lighting store talked me out of buying 5 CFLs last year telling me that I’d be crazy to spend $45 on CFLs when I could get old fashion lights for $2).
I think these are all great ideas/tips that I will adding to the mix to help lower my monthly electric bills. I’ll probably also sign up for the “budget plan” so I can spread the pain of the winter bills to the other months.
That way there won’t be any huge surprises next winter.
Now it’s time for me to turn to you. Did I miss anything? What are some of your favorite energy saving tricks? As always, thanks for sharing.
Until next time,
-DD
» Filed Under Energy, Frugality, Money Savers
Sacrifice and Save Money with Store Brands
Posted by Debt Destroyer on January 22, 2009
I used to think “generic” was a derogatory term. It probably stems from a childhood visit from my snobbish cousin who called everything I had or liked “generic” and everything he had or liked “special.”
Kids can be cruel.
But that was a long time ago. I’d like to think I moved on as soon as I hit adulthood, but I didn’t. All during college I held on to my trusty name brands. Perhaps buying them was like having a little piece of home in my dorm/apartment. Or maybe I was just a sucker for the clever marketing.
Who knows?
I think I finally let my guard down after I started to acquire some bills. Like a lot of graduates, I lived with roommates for the first couple of years after graduating. This really helped cut down on expenses. In fact I don’t think I had any real “bills” until I bought a new car. No, No, that is incorrect. I started to accumulate real bills a little before then…when I met my future wife.
Girlfriends are expensive.
So I think it was around this time that I started to shy away from the name brands that I was loyal to until that point to these new mysterious brands that I never heard of. They were familiar yet different. Some didn’t measure up to the original, and some were better. But one thing was for sure.
They were cheaper!
I remember an early episode after I found out a buddy of mine was taking a daily multi-vitamin, I figured it was time that I too start taking one. So there I was at the store trying to figure out which one to take, so I asked the pharmacist what the difference was between a couple of choices?
“About $2.00.”
That was the tipping point. Right after that I started buying practically every store brand that was offered. Some things didn’t take, like toilet paper. Others did, like mac’n’cheese.
Now generic mac’n’cheese is a sore subject in our house. That’s because it didn’t take for my wife, but I do the shopping, so when I pass by the 5 for a $1 rack, I can’t help but load up. I am sympathetic to her cause because I too had a holdout.
Orange juice.
For years I couldn’t get used to the taste of the “cheaper” juice. I grew up on Minute Maid, but switched to Simply Orange a couple of years ago (let me tell you…Good stuff). But I’m proud to announce that since we’ve started using the envelope system, which limits our grocery budget, I’ve finally acquired the taste for “Land-O-Lakes” O.J.
Hey I figure if my wife can suffer through Flavorite mac’n’cheese, then I can sacrifice something too.
So how about you? Do you utilize store brands? What were the hardest things to let go of? What is off limits?
Remember, we’re all in this together.
Until next time,
-DD
» Filed Under Frugality, Materialism, Money Savers
Extravagence - It’s What To Teach Our Kids
Posted by The Happy Rock on January 19, 2009
Set a good example of extravagance for all the world to see, that is what Laura Bush did as one of her final acts as First Lady. She unveiled the White House china that most 2 term first ladies are privileged to design. It cost $485,000! “The White House worried that general wear and tear had taken a toll on its fragile China collections and Perino says the Bushes took some time to decide on a new design.” I am sure that the 8 year old china the Hilary Clinton designed in 2000 that cost $250,000 must have been falling apart. The White House China first got critical acclaim when Nancy Reagan unveiled her $200,000 design paid for by tax money amidst her husband’s slashing of the federal budget.
It isn’t quite as bad as you think though. A private foundation, the White House Historical Association, was founded after Nancy Reagan’s debacle to try and avoid the political backlash. Even though none of our tax money was used, it still seems ludicrous to spent that kind of money on plates and even more ridiculous given the financial turmoil the country was in. I am not so much worried about teaching our kids, we parents can handle that, but who is going to teach the politicians?
Here is the link to the Good Morning America video segment and the GMA text article if you want to see a few pictures.
What do you think? Chime in on the poll below :
» Filed Under Frugality, Spending
Out with the Old, In with the New - Switching Phone Companies
Posted by Debt Destroyer on January 9, 2009
As most of you know, I list my monthly expenses ( here is last month’s) to help track where my family is spending our money. Not only is it good for us to see where improvements can be made, but posting them online has also allowed me to gather money saving tips from all of you.
THANK YOU!
One of the most common areas where readers say we could lower our expense was our “Phone & Internet” bill. We’ve been paying $115.75 a month to Qwest for quite some time now. This included unlimited local and long distance calling, a bunch of features such as caller ID & voicemail, and high speed internet (DSL).
Deep down I’ve felt that this was too much, but I was content to not “mix things up”. Remember, I was the guy who held onto Netflix way longer than I should, so clearly I’m hesitant to change.
Well, you will be glad to know that a couple of weeks ago I did “mix things up.” But it wasn’t the motivation of saving money that got me to make the switch, it was that I was tired of our super slow “high speed” internet. For the past few months surfing the web turned into an exercise of our patience.
There were many days where I longed for dial-up speeds.
My excuse for not switching sooner was that I didn’t want to mess up things for my wife’s at-home business. We are not the most tech-friendly household and miraculously our little network has been running fairly smoothly and I didn’t want to go through the hassle of setting anything up again. Plus we have a nice phone number and I didn’t want to lose it.
Naturally I was relieved when I called the cable company’s sales dept and found out I shouldn’t have to change anything around, including our number. The news got even better when they told me that they had a six month promotion for Phone & Internet for only $6o (plus fees & taxes, which were estimated to be $15).
So I’ll be saving $40 for the next six months.
Which is nice because I had to buy a new modem and pay for installation. But the real good news is that even after the promotion ends I should still end up saving $10-$15 a month.
It took two weeks for them to come, but we’ve had our new service for about a week now and so far I really like it. The internet is much faster! MUCH FASTER!!!
I have some issues with the phone service; voice quality is one, but I’ll just pretend we’re on a cell phone. And no multiple voicemail boxes is the other. We used to have our message set up as “If you want to speak to the DD family stay on the line, if you want the world’s greatest wedding photographer please press 1.” Now we had to combine them.
No biggie, but I guess you get what you pay for. Which makes me wonder what I was paying for all those months of crawling around the internet.
Speaking of paying for things, I’ve been told my first bill will be brutal but by February things should settle down. So I got that to look forward to. I’m not big on resolutions, but it’ll be nice to ring in the New Year with some savings.
How about you, what do you pay for phone & internet? Are there any other areas where you will be looking to save money in 2009?
Until next time,
-DD
» Filed Under Frugality, Money Savers
The Happy Rock is a dual writer personal finance and personal development community dedicated to creating positive change that propels us towards success.
