Beating Broke

4 Meals from the Pantry to Save Money

March 20, 2023 By MelissaB Leave a Comment

If you’re like me, you may find it harder and harder to stay within the grocery budget as food costs skyrocket due to inflation. So I try to find nutritious recipes that aren’t expensive. In addition, to save money, I try to have one week where I don’t make a complete grocery shopping trip and instead only buy some fresh fruits and vegetables and make my meals from the pantry to save money. Doing this allows me to use up what I have and stretch my grocery dollars.

Our Favorite Meals from the Pantry to Save Money

These are the pantry meals we make during the weeks I skip grocery shopping:

Spaghetti

My kids don’t mind a pantry meal when the meal is spaghetti. So I buy pasta and pasta sauce when they’re on sale, and I purchase canned mushrooms at Costco. I mix them together for a quick, cheap meal.

We recently upped our spaghetti game by making Pizza in a Bowl (I left out the creamed soup and only used half the cheese.) I was amazed at how this meal stretched—we had it for two meals!

Breakfast for Dinner

Another favorite is breakfast for dinner. We might have omelets with green peppers and cheese and a piece of toast. Or, if we have many bread heels in the freezer, we make French toast and eggs. Sometimes we make a breakfast sandwich with ham, egg, and cheese on toast or an English muffin. Another economical recipe is Ham, Broccoli & Cheddar Frittata. (If money is tight, I leave out the ham, and it still tastes good.)

Broccoli, Potato, & Cheese Soup

I recently found this delicious recipe for Broccoli, Cheddar & Potato Soup. I like it because I can use frozen broccoli. (This recipe and the broccoli frittata recipe are the only ways I enjoy eating frozen broccoli.) Like Pizza in a Bowl, this recipe stretches and easily feeds the four of us for two meals.

Fried Rice

Another frugal yet filling meal is Chicken Fried Rice. We use a rotisserie chicken from Costco and save the bones to make homemade chicken stock. Since rotisserie chicken at Costco is only $4.99, the meat is cheap, and we add rice, frozen vegetables, a few eggs, and seasoning.

How We’re Able to Keep Our Meals Frugal

For years, I’ve stocked up on items when they’re on sale, so I pay the lowest price for groceries. We have a pantry in our basement, two deep freezers, and two refrigerators so we can keep a full supply.

When ground beef is on sale, I may buy 20 or 25 pounds. We have food intolerances and can’t eat dairy, so when our favorite vegan cheese, Daiya, goes on sale, I may buy 20 bags. Then I won’t buy any more until it’s on sale again. If we run out before it goes on sale, we do without until the next sale.

Shopping this way makes having a pantry cooking week easy.

Final Thoughts

Keeping within our allotted grocery budget is getting more challenging every month. One way we rein in expenses is by making meals from the pantry to forego a weekly shopping trip once a month.

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Why We Decided to Keep Our Amazon Subscription

March 6, 2023 By MelissaB Leave a Comment

As prices jump, my husband and I debate renewing our annual Amazon subscription each year. Two years ago, the decision was easy. One of the biggest perks was free delivery on Whole Foods orders, which I used extensively during the pandemic. However, Amazon took away free delivery last year and instituted an eight-dollar delivery fee, so we no longer had that perk. Even without it, we still have several reasons why we decided to keep our Amazon subscription, but the perks are getting smaller every year.)

Reasons We Used to Keep Our Amazon Subscription That No Longer Apply

As I mentioned above, Amazon no longer offers free Whole Foods delivery, which was one of our most important reasons to keep our Amazon subscription. However, other perks are no longer as relevant.

Free Two-Day Delivery

Amazon used to be well-known for its two-day delivery, but that happens less often. Not only are deliveries taking longer, but for the first time since we began our subscription ten years ago, Amazon lost several of my packages at Christmas time. I found the process of reporting my packages missing time-consuming. Getting ahold of a human to help me was difficult!

Why We Decided to Keep Our Amazon Subscription

Even though I feel Amazon’s quality and offerings for subscription holders have declined in recent years, there are four reasons why we decided to renew our subscription again this year.

Audible

I listen to Audible when I walk on the treadmill. I pay $14.99 for the service, so it’s not included in an Amazon Prime subscription, but I need the subscription to access Audible. With my monthly fee, I get one free book a month. To save money, I put my Audible subscription on hold for three months every year to have more time to listen to the books I’ve already bought.

Whole Foods Discount

Whole Foods is one of many stores we frequent. I don’t go there regularly because the store is too expensive for our budget. However, we are on a gluten and dairy-free diet, so I shop at Whole Foods when the specialty foods we need are on sale, such as Daiya Cheese or dairy-free butter. My Amazon Prime subscription gives me an additional discount at Whole Foods, making the prices even cheaper.

I haven’t calculated it, but I conservatively estimate that my Whole Foods discount adds up to at least half the price of my yearly Amazon subscription price.

Subscribe and Save Discount

Life has gotten busier for us this year, so I now use Amazon Subscribe and Save for our toiletries, vitamins, and some foods. I have those items delivered once per month, which saves me five to 15 percent depending on how many things I have delivered for the month.

Amazon Prime Videos

We use Amazon Prime videos frequently for two reasons. First, we homeschool, and Amazon has many educational shows my kids watch. Second, we like to watch Japanese shows, and Amazon has a fair amount of Japanese programming that we can view.

Not all videos are free on Amazon Prime, but I frequently agree to have my Amazon orders delivered on the same day, a few days out. As an incentive, Amazon often gives me digital credit. I can use those credits to watch shows that cost money on Amazon for free.

Final Thoughts

We had many reasons to keep our Amazon subscription a few years ago. We don’t have as many reasons now, but currently, the benefits outweigh the price of a subscription. However, in future years, that may no longer be the case.

Is It Worth Paying for an Amazon Prime Membership?

Start the New Year by Finding Money

Should We Pay Cash for a New Car?

February 20, 2023 By MelissaB 1 Comment

My husband and I have had our Toyota Sienna for 18.5 years, and it has 240,000 miles. We plan to buy a car in the next year or so, and, for the first time in our lives, we’ve saved money for the purchase. However, we can’t decide if we should pay cash for a new car or take out a loan instead with the plan to pay it off quickly.

Reasons to Pay Cash for a New Car

We have three reasons why we want to pay cash for a new car:

Stick to the Budget

Paying cash helps us stick to the budget in two ways.

Maintain Our Monthly Budget

We have a monthly budget that is working for us. If we pay cash for our vehicle, we don’t have to rearrange the budget to determine where the money will come from to pay a monthly car loan. Our finances stay as they are, and all is well.

Maintain Our Car Budget

In addition, if we pay cash for a vehicle, we have a finite amount of money available. That’s it. If we go over that amount, we either have to take some money out of our emergency fund or get a car loan.

If we consider taking out a car loan instead, overspending is easier. We’ve been to several dealerships to look at cars, and we find it easy to think, “We should upgrade our budget a bit because we can get better options and safety features if we do.” If we use a car loan, we won’t feel the pain of paying a higher price as much. Sure, we’ll feel the pain when we have to make the monthly car payment, but we won’t feel it when we sign on the dotted line because the money is not immediately coming out of our account.

No Interest

Without a loan, we won’t have to pay interest on the vehicle. The car will only cost us what it takes to drive it off the lot. Every other time we’ve bought a car, we’ve had to pay hundreds to thousands more in interest over the life of the loan.

Save for the Next Car

Currently, we are setting aside $400 a month in our budget for a new car. If we don’t have a loan, we can continue to set aside that money every month for a replacement vehicle for my husband. (His car is 10 years old and has 115,000 miles on it, so we’ll need to replace it in five to ten years.) Without a loan for my car, we can save for and hopefully pay cash for my husband’s replacement vehicle, too.

Reasons to Finance

Even though we love the thought of paying cash for our new car, there are advantages to taking out a car loan, especially if we plan to pay off the loan quickly.

Builds or Maintains Credit Score

Our credit score is excellent, and we are debt free except for our house. If we take out a car loan, we will maintain our high credit score.

While this is an important factor for some people, but less of an issue for us. Even though we’re debt free, we use credit cards regularly and pay them off before they’re due, so we maintain our credit score. So, I don’t think having a car loan or not will make much difference to our credit score.

Doesn’t Deplete Emergency Fund

We have both an emergency fund and a new car fund, so the money for the car would come from the car fund.

However, our emergency fund isn’t as large as I would like it to be. (It currently covers 1.5 months of living expenses.)

If we took out a car loan for at least part of the price of the vehicle, we could add the cash we would have used for the car to increase our emergency fund. That is a tempting idea, especially in this time of high inflation. However, if we don’t need that money as the months go on, we could use it to continue to pay extra on our car loan and pay it down more quickly.

In addition, we have one child who is attending a community college. He has one more year there before he transfers to a university, which will cost more. So, having more cash set aside to help him with his college expenses is tempting.

May Get Dealer Incentives

Long gone are the days when cash was king at car dealerships. Now, dealers make money on the financing, so they prefer customers who finance.

If we’re willing to finance, we may get dealer incentives to sweeten the deal. Without financing, those incentives are likely off the table.

Paying Cash May Increase Our Chance of Being Audited

If we pay the dealer more than $10,000 in cash, the dealer must file Form 8300. The IRS needs to know if we’re spending a large amount of cash and how frequently. Paying cash once for a new car likely won’t trigger an audit, but it does add an extra layer to our tax filing the following year.

Taking out a loan and paying more than the required monthly payment to pay the vehicle loan off quickly may be a better solution.

Our Loan Requirements

We would not consider taking out a car loan if we can’t get an interest rate below four percent. Our credit union said they could offer us a loan at 3.5 percent interest. We haven’t yet asked what the dealer can offer.

Additionally, we wouldn’t take out a car loan for a term longer than 36 months as we don’t want to extend this out for years. Even with a three-year loan, we may try to pay it off in two years.

Final Thoughts

Should we pay cash for a new car? For years that has been our dream, but now we’re wondering if some of the money wouldn’t be better served increasing our emergency fund, especially during this period of high inflation.

Read More

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