Cooking the Frugal Way

As we have gone to a more frugal life and really implement the changes we wanted to make our biggest issue was our food budget. Before we would make meals that were elaborate and super yummy, but really expensive if you did it too often (and that is what we did). We have learned how to stock up on meat and it not cost too much money (read this post I wrote a few months ago.), but we were still spending so much money on food. I am learning how to use coupons to stock up on things we use all the time like deodorant and toilet paper, but other things that cost money and we use often like mayonnaise, ketchup, and mustard. I don’t want a stock pile of 45 ketchup bottles because I don’t even think I would use that in my life, but a few bottles here and there at a great price would be nice.

The last few weeks we have been getting back to frugal cooking and I LOVE IT. I did not grow up with a lot of money and I remember always having yummy meals on the table and I never knew how much it cost to put on our table. Now as an adult I knew they were meals that were filling but less expensive to make.  Here are a few of the recipes I LOVE and have been go to meals the last few weeks.

I have a family of 5 so my recipes are set for approx. 8 helpings. You can cut it in half if you would like, or add to it if you know you need more to feed your family.

Hamburger Rice

2.5lbs ground hamburger

2 cans Cream of Mushroom Soup

1 cup milk

3 cups of uncooked rice

Brown the hamburger and add seasoning if you want. Once your hamburger is cooked add the cream of mushroom soup and milk and mix it all together. While you are browning the hamburger you will want to cook your rice per the directions for your rice. We use a rice cooker so that makes things easier for us. When rice is done you will scoop the hamburger over the rice and your dinner is served. This is one my children’s favorite meals and they go back for seconds each time.

Poor Man’s Pie (Sheppard’s Pie)

2.5lbs ground Hamburger

2 can Cream of Mushroom Soup

1 Cup Milk

2 cans Corn

5 cups mashed potatoes.

2 cups shredded cheese. We use Colby Jack or Cheddar Cheese

Brown the hamburger and add seasoning if you want. Once your hamburger is cooked add the cream of mushroom soup and milk and mix it all together. Layer this on the bottom of a casserole (baking) dish.  Drain the corn and layer this over the hamburger mixture. We use instant mashed potatoes in our house for meals like this, but you can make “real” mashed potatoes if you want. When you have your mashed potatoes you will layer over the corn and top with the cheese. Place in the oven at 370 for about 30 minutes. Make sure the cheese is melted and let your dish continue to cook for a few minutes; just don’t let the cheese burn.

You can use green beans in place of the corn.

Poverty Hamburger

I got this recipe from Pinterest, so here is the pinned post. 

Paying with Cash and a Little Dave Ramsey

Like millions of people in the country my husband and I have debt. We both have student loans, credit cards, care loans, etc. WE HATE IT, we don’t want to owe people money. Over the last year we have been making sense of all our debt and coming up with a plan on how to pay it all off, not just the minimums and then some. This is a big adjustment for our family because we are used to eating out, driving new cars, buying things we want over just the stuff we need, ok really we live beyond our means.  It is time to change this because we are in our early 30’s, we have a family, and we want to teach our children that they can have the better things in life if they save for it and pay cash.

We started the Dave Ramsey program last year and I was not a big fan of the whole program, but we did take a few good things away from it. The biggest thing we took away from it is the need to budget our monthly expenses, as well as some yearly expenses and pay cash for most expenses. For example, we have budgeted $450 a month towards our groceries. We will take $450 cash at the beginning of the month and place it in an envelope. When we run out of cash in that envelope we are done for the month. That sure does put the pressure on to make sure you plan things out and stay within a budget. But, if we do well at budgeting and planning things out and we have extra money left in the envelope we can choose to keep the money in that envelope to make things easier the next month, we can put it in the savings account, or take the few extra dollars and place it towards the debt we have to pay off.  

Some expenses we have each year that we usually don’t plan out or save for until the end of the year are Christmas gifts, holiday dinners, and even car repairs.  We know it will be about $500 to get new tires on our car and that will need to happen in the next year or so. So we have a sinking fund for this, we took the $500 and divided it by 12 and each month we will put that amount ($42) in an envelope. This way we have the money and there will not be an issue or freaking out about where the money will come from when we need new tires. We will use this same method for Christmas gifts and such for next year. Again, this way when it comes time to buy gifts for everyone the money (and budget) is there and there is NO STRESS. We use this same method to plan a vacation a few years in advance, this way our family makes awesome memories and see the world but the stress of finances are not there and when we are done we will not have any more debt from that vacation. In 2012 we took an AMAZING vacation to Florida and then a cruise to the Bahamas. We visited Clearwater to see Winter the Dolphin, and a few days at Universal Studios before and after the cruise. It was amazing and completely paid for before we even left home.

Another important thing we took from our brief jump into the Dave Ramsey world is an emergency fund. We all have emergencies that come up, but as soon as we have an emergency fund this emergencies won’t be as stressful.

I am so excited to make these changes. I think by cutting out the debit cards and having cash on hand for things we need to buy will keep us in line. It is so easy to swipe a card and $5 here and $3 there really do add up before you even realize what is going on.

Our goal for 2015 is to save approx. $10,000 and pay off about $10,000 in debt. I will keep you updated on how this is going during the year and some of the things we have done to help meet this goal. I hope you all can keep me in line. 

Coupons… Where do I start?

My family has changed how they eat over the last few years and we rarely eat boxed dinners or foods with a ton of preservatives. So I never paid attention to coupons because I never thought they would be good for my family. Now I realize I should look at coupons and figure out this whole game of extreme couponing. Maybe not to the extreme as some of people take it, but I wouldn't mind a small stockpile of toilet paper, deodorant, and the other things we use often. But where do I start? Someone please help me out.

I see coupons for $1 off toilet paper, but when the original price is $9.99 how and that heck do I get it for free like you keep seeing other people? So over the next few months I will update you all on my quest to save money with coupons. I know it is possible and it is time I sit down and figure it out.