Budgeting My Way To Retirement - Week 8

 

It is hard to believe we are already eight weeks into the new year.  I feel like it is going really fast.  How are you all doing?  I hope world events aren't too overly distressing.

 

I had a longer weekend having taken Monday off as a vacation day.  I'm trying to have at least one three day weekend per month.  I enjoyed a quiet weekend and then ran a couple errands on Monday morning.  I wanted to get some items that were on sale at Fred Meyer as well as scout for markdowns.  I was thrilled to find some low carb bread marked down.  It is so expensive to buy full price.  I noticed the cheese I bought is now more expensive and being sold in six ounce packages instead of eight ounce packages (sigh).  After the grocery store I stopped by the feed store to pick up hay for my daughter's bunny only to find out they didn't have any but they tracked some down at another store across town.  I ended up buying two bales there in hopes that the extra bale will help us weather the shortage on hay.  At this time they have no idea how long it will be before they get more in stock.

 

Once home I got all the groceries put away and then I pulled out a very large package of stew meat I had purchased on markdown for $3.88 (boy, those were the days).  I chopped up an onion and sautéed that in some olive oil before browning all of that meat.  It was more than enough for a pot of stew so I put up two freezer containers and used what was left.  In my medium sized slow cooker I put the rest of the meat along with vegetables, minced garlic, beef broth I made using a beef bouillon cube and a brown gravy packet.  I let that go all day and simmer for our supper with plenty of leftovers for lunch the next day and another supper.

 

Our work/school week was busy, although only four days long, and we arrived at Friday completely beat.  My oldest had tickets for us to go and see a student opera production of Pirates of Penzance so after work we drove over to her college to join her, her boyfriend as well as several of her friends.  The play was wonderful and we enjoyed it very much.  We got home around 11:00 that night and headed straight to bed.

 

I slept hard that night and woke up at my regular time ready to begin my day.  I headed off to Albertsons at 8:30 that morning to pick up meat that was on sale.  I used digital coupons and a $30 gift card I had earned from one of their promotions to shave off a lot of the cost of my little shopping venture.  I was super excited with everything I was able to get.  I'll go into more details about that in a post on Friday.  It was a great shopping haul!

 

When I got home I got busy preparing all of that meat for long term storage.  I will be doing another post on what all I ended up doing with it next week.  I was pretty pleased with how that project turned out  Even happier to mark another goal off my list.  Be sure to watch for those upcoming posts.

 

How did your week go?  Anything exciting happen for you?