Too Much Ham

I had a ham sandwich for dinner tonight. We have a crap ton of ham from when we bought an 11 lb ham last week and I am reaching a point of disgust with the ham. I am going put the rest in the freezer and thaw it out later because I can't eat another ham related meal without gagging. Ham is delicious but not for 5 days in a row.

Take Out

I ordered BBQ takeout tonight despite having food in the house. I ate half of it and am taking the rest of it for lunch tomorrow. I'm writing postcards to my family to keep in touch and I normally send postcards that are larger in size and have less standard pictures on them (for instance, I have a postcard that shows Judy Garland's comeback concert at Carnegie Hall rather than a picture of the Coca-Cola ad in Times Square) and I just can't stop myself from buying new ones whenever I stumble upon them. I resisted though and I am sending postcards I already have. When these run out I will buy the smaller ones that are 8 for a dollar instead of the ones that are 3 for a dollar and send those instead.

Movies

Today we went and saw Alice in Wonderland after work. We have a card that gets us free movies on Tuesdays so we try to take advantage of that whenever we can. We had to pay a little extra to cover the increased cost of the 3D tickets but for a total of $6 we got to see a really excellent movie.

Despite getting home later than I would have liked I still managed to pack up lunches so we don't have to spend money on food tomorrow. We also picked out a nice outfit for my fiance to wear to his interview tomorrow! We are so excited! Hopefully he will get this job and we won't have to worry too much about money anymore, even though we are saving to buy a place of our own someday and we would still live very frugally and post here about it to save up a downpayment.

Dinner

Today we made the corned beef that we've had for a while and just not gotten around to making. It was tasty and I packed some up for lunch tomorrow for the both of us. I collected all of our change and put it in the change jar as well.

Money

I found a dollar on the ground today! Score! Gotta love when that happens.

Yesterday we went to Zabars to pick up a couple of things and we called my soon to be MIL to see if she wanted anything. She said if we brought her some baked salmon she would pay us back and give us enough to cover some bagels and cream cheese. Because we were kind enough to think of her when we went to the store we ended up with a free breakfast today.

Free Breakfast

Yesterday I found a penny on my way to work. I usually ignore change on the ground because I figure there are people out there who could use it a lot more than I can but with the pending income reduction every cent helps. We also had a friend over last night to play board games so I picked up a couple of cheap frozen pizzas so we could have that while we played. I spent $12 that I hadn't anticipated spending on the pizza but I feel like that was worth it since we didn't have anything that didn't require an hour or more of cooking to eat in the house. Tonight we are making the corned beef we were going to make yesterday and that will be lunch for the next 2 days as well. I also got a yummy looking recipe for free for roast potatoes online.

This morning I had a bagel for free from my office. On Fridays they provide free bagels for everyone and I had a buttered bagel that was super tasty! I went in the break room at lunch to fill up my water bottle and there were 3 bagels still there on the table (they get thrown out if they aren't eaten by 2:00) so I took another and stuck it in my desk to eat before I head out tonight for a show. My fiance's uncle is in a band and we are going to see them play.

Soda

My fiance drinks probably 4 or 5 2 liters of diet soda per week. He is nuts about flavored drinks but as a diabetic he can't drink regular juice or soda. He has about 1,000 various flavored drink mixes but he never uses them and buys soda instead. I have started mixing up the sugar free kool-aid and such for him so that he doesn't have to spend the money on diet pepsi.

Bacon-y Goodness

Today my future mother-in-law invited us out to brunch on Sunday but made it clear that she couldn't afford to pay for our meals because she also recently developed financial problems, however temporary, and just wanted to make sure we knew that it would be on our dime. We don't normally mooch from her or anything, she simply wanted to make sure we knew the score before we joined the game. We turned her down because we simply can't afford to spend the money.

We made bacon sandwiches for dinner last night and I've really made the bacon stretch. Usually a 12 oz. package of bacon is eaten between the two of us in a single sitting (sometimes stretched out into 2 if it is used in quiche or something) but we each had bacon last night, leftover bacon sandwiches today for lunch, and there are still three strips in the fridge. Those will probably be broken up into a salad or some such thing tomorrow.

My fiance applied for 12 jobs today. Hopefully one of them will call him back!

Well, shoot...

My fiance found out last week that he might be losing his job next month. The possibility of layoffs means the possibility of losing 50% of our household income. We simply cannot afford that with our current lifestyle. We put together a budget and my beloved applies for jobs every evening when he comes home from work but we will have to do a lot more to keep this from turning into a huge problem. I thought that to keep myself focused and possibly solicit ideas from other people on how to save money I would start a blog about all the things we are doing to make and save money. Some will be little things, some will be big things, and all will be steps towards building a better, more financially secure future for ourselves.

So far these are the steps we've taken to stabilize our finances:

-I took my work bonus and put most of it into my savings and used the rest to stock up on some essentials at a grocery store in CT where the prices are much lower than they are here.

-We've started collecting things we don't use any longer and put them in a basket labeled "things to sell on eBay"

-I've started cutting our fabric softener sheets in half so we get twice as many runs through the dryer before having to buy new ones.