Living on a Shoestring

I had to make a run to the store today, but I was fairly well behaved. We picked up two gallons of milk, a container of mayo, 10 lbs sugar, 20 lbs flour, and a container of store brand vanilla ice cream. I think the grocery portion of the bill ended up being around $27, a far cry from the $50-60 a week that it has been running.  We should be all set till next week. 

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Breakfast was actually a repeat of yesterday.  No big deal. 

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

I'm participating in the pantry challenge over at Good Cheap Eats this week. My small freezer is filled to the top and I need to think about cleaning it out and defrosting it. Plus, it will be nice to only spend money on milk this week. I think I'll also need sugar but as far as I can tell, that's it. I'll probably carry it over to a second week at which point I'll pick up some fresh produce and milk. 

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

From The Parsimonious Princess http://feedly.com/k/19uJG2u

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

2 1/3 c sugar

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

I came to a surprising realization the other day. All those frugal changes that I implemented a few years ago? They are second nature now. And most of them just don't seem like that big of a deal to me anymore. Instead of calling my husband and asking him to pick up supper on the way home, he has had to talk me into letting him grab take out. As soon as the weather warms up, clothes go out on the line (I do my best budgeting work while hanging clothes). My blog reader consists of mainly frugal or budgeting sites. My kindle (a second generation, bought used on eBay for $45) is absolutely filled with books, 95% of which were free. Hubby is thrilled that those 275+ books aren't on bookshelves in our little house. 

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

In the fall of 2009, my husband and I decided that we had to cut out our cable. It was about $130 for cable tv and internet, and frankly keeping the house was more important than what movie was playing on TV. We ended up getting DSL for about $20 a month and calling it good. We belonged to Netflix, so we figured we could get our movie fix that way.

And then I discovered Roku.

That Christmas we spent about $60 on a Roku Streaming Player as a gift to ourselves.

The Roku box allows us to stream Netflix onto our TV. It is enabled with wi fi, so we didn't even need to hard wire it into the wall. As a matter of fact, we can unplug it and take it into the other room.  Roku even has a number of free channels to choose from; Crackle has lots of great movies FOR FREE, with LIMITED COMMERCIALS.  This past spring I was also given an Amazon Prime Membership, which includes the streaming of a number of movies.  If we want to treat ourselves to a spur-of-the-moment new release, we can always rent one from Amazon (incidentally, if you keep your eyes peeled you can often get $5 Amazon on Demand credits to add to your account).

If you already own a PS3, Wii, or Xbox 360 you can stream Netflix as well. If you don't have the money to shell out for one of these, the Roku is a great alternative.

I do miss watching my Red Sox play; if I subscribed to MLB.com I could stream that on Roku as well. That's pretty much the only thing I miss about cable.  I do NOT miss the $130 price tag.

• 
• 
• 
• 
•