Menu Mania

For this current week,  I made cauliflower soup for Saturday's dinner and Corned Beef and Cabbage as a birthday meal for Sunday.

Monday's dinner was spaghetti and sausage.  I used some vacuum sealed sausage from late 2013 and it was delicious - a big hit with the little boys.  Tuesday's dinner was meatloaf and mashed potatoes with beans, peas and leftover cabbage.  (We never have enough potatoes!)

Wednesday's (tonight's dinner) was a chef salad with turkey and kidney beans for protein.  I love the ribbons of red cabbage and I added some julienned red peppers.

Thursday's dinner will be pancakes, hashed browns, eggs and bacon.

Friday's dinner will probably be a BBQ sandwich or we'll eat out.

For the weekend, the weather is turning cold again.  I've been wanting to make a vegetable soup with alphabet noodles.  That's on tap for Saturday.  I will find something in the freezer for Sunday's dinner. 

Monday will either be leftover vegetable soup or chicken and dumplings.

Tuesday is potato bar with shredded cheese, broccoli and bacon.

Wednesday may be a fried rice with egg rolls or a frozen Chinese chicken dinner - optionally, we may have a salad that night.

Thursday a salad or alternative dinner

Friday, definitely out!

Of course, I may throw the whole plan out the window.

Score!

Success is the best revenge!  My attitude (at work) got a big boost yesterday when I sent a huge $2000 payment to American Express.  That reduced my balance by half.  HALF!

Because this was money directly from my bonus, it doesn't even count towards our monthly debt repayment plan.  I still need to send an additional amount to one of the other cards.   (Update on Thursday:  Done.  Another $500 sent to my highest dollar credit card balance.). My goal has been to payoff the credit cards and student loans by June.  The student loan and one credit card are both paid off in full.  A second credit card is paid down to $600.  The third card has about a $2800-3000 balance and then there was a $4500 Amex.  Wait, now that's a $2100 Amex. (Smile)

I letting that second card sit at $600 with a $100 monthly payment automatically applied.  Next, I hit the third card to bring that balance down. 

I'm thinking about applying all my paycheck so toward the debt for the next two months.  This will help us determine if we can really live on one salary AND it will help drive those debts away.  

After, the cards are paid, I will be moving along to the last remaining car payment.  We took out a small $12,000, 3 year loan and have a $347 monthly payment.  As a car payment goes, it's a reasonable payment for a short period of time.  We were able to pay off our last loan (a three year loan as well) in two years by doubling up on the payments in the second year.  With all our other debts paid, we should easily be able to triple the payments or more.

I have grand plans.  I think it can work.

A fully planned menu for the week

Saturday - hamburgers with baked beans

Sunday - Lemon chicken orzo soup and hot bread

Monday - roast beef, potatoes, carrots and gravy, green beans

Tuesday - tacos!  Ole!

Wednesday - leftover roast beef

Thursday - corned beef, cabbage and red potatoes

Friday -  Left overs 

I'm looking forward to trying this new soup recipe.  I'm always looking for new chicken recipes.  For this one, I'm using boneless skinless chicken breasts and upping the carrot content for the extra vegetables.  It's 11g of fat per serving with the thighs, so the substitution will bring that fat content down.

Next up, I want to try a vegetable alphabet soup.  Fun for all ages.

Money into savings

I remember many times that our monthly budget just didn't allow us to pay down on debt let alone put money aside for savings.  Little by little, we have changed that by limiting our spending and automating our savings.

It started out with allotting $25 a month to savings.  If I didn't miss this money, I would up the amount after a month or two by another $25 each month.  I repeated this plan many times and sometimes I did need to adjust it down temporarily.

Today, we have a comfortable, liquid emergency plan.  I often refer to this as our "stay off the streets fund."  It's enough to cover our mortgage/living expenses for a minimum of three months plus.  We've also put money into other saving areas, paying particular attention to having some cash outside of our main account/credit union.  This would give us spending money if we had a bank or fraud issue.

A new savings category is our HSA account.  I socked as bunch of money into this last year and we were very lucky.  Our medical expenses in 2014 were low and we covered most out of pocket.  I'm continuing to put money in this year as well until I leave.  This will be money we should have available for medical needs or general retirement money after 65.

The final savings categories include 401k and pension funds.  I've been fortunate enough to work at two companies that have pension funds in addition to 401k.  I always try to max out the 401k to take advantage of company match.

If there is one piece of advice I would offer anyone, it would be to set up some type of automatic transfer and start with just a small amount.  It could be just $5 a month.  Maybe you could go $5 two times next month, then three times, then four.  Before you know it, you can build a savings account, emergency fund or even just some cash for fun.

New Plan for 2015

I made a fairly comprehensive list of staples yesterday and my goal is to stock up six months of each while I'm still working.  I purchased napkins yesterday (I was at Aldi's and they have a quality paper napkin at a reasonable price).  I also picked up a 2-3 month supply of tp today.  I will buy more next time I'm at Walmart.

I also realized that I need to take care of some peripheral items as well: pre-purchase non-daily drugs, obtain new eyeglasses, dental appointments, hearing aids.  I refilled one prescription late last week and I'm hoping to get to the eye doctor next weekend.  Dental and hearing appointments will come later.

Publix routinely offers a gas card deal for $10 off a $50 gas card.  I hav one or two of these now but I would like to get at least two more.  $200 in prepaid gas cards would be very helpful in lean times.  A small cache of cash will also be helpful.

I keep trying to think of ways to lessen the impact of a job change/loss.

I have secured a years supply of tea bags at half price.  -score,

A tough few months

I've been struggling with my job for the past 8 months.  I overlooked an item last June that has caused significant problems - for me.

Maybe I should back up a bit.  I mail out deliverables to regulatory entities - about 3000 per year.  I've done this for 10 years and if you do the math, that's 30000 items.  One got missed.  One out of 30000.

I felt really bad about it but honestly, it was just an oversight.  At the time, (well really most of the time) I had no help, no support and typically pulling Hail Marys just to get stuff done.

Any regrets I had were swiftly replaced by the numerous references to it by others in management positions.  I faced people from audit and had to explain what happened.

My mid year review featured references to this and now, so does my year end review.  The end result is that I'm ranked one notch lower just because of that one error - one error in 30000 done since I arrived.

They have made me doubt myself for too long and I'm done.  Beginning today, the mind games are mine.  My exit plan is being implemented.  I'm in control.

Updated:  I suspect that I will be facing a constant challenge at my workplace.  Sometimes, the end game trumps the here and now.  Or, in other words, pick your battle.  I suspect that there is a war of wills at play.  

March Madness

I picked up 80 pounds of Zaycon chicken breasts today - 40 pounds for me and 40 pounds for DD.

After it was all trimmed and packaged, I took my 40 pounds to the freezer.   Oops!  I have as quite full freezer.  

To bring order back from chaos, I'm declaring a moratorium on freezer purchases for the month and we will be eating from the freezer - almost exclusively for the month.  I would also like to see us eat more chicken and more soup this month.  I want to try a lemon chicken orzo soup, cauliflower soup and a vegetable alphabet soup.