Meal Plan

Posted on by Jordan

One of the many benefits of having a wife who is not only on board with the Dave Ramsey plan, but also a spread sheet enthusiast is that we have historical records of our budget (both planned and actual) going back almost to when we got married.

 

This means that we aren’t saying “boy it seems that we are spending more on food these days” we are saying “our food spending is %50 higher than it was two years ago!”

I have seen some numbers on the actual rate of increase in food prices, and while they are non trivial, they do not explain the change in our budget. So then the question is, how much of that came from adding Hannah, how much came from changing what kinds of food we buy, and how much is the actual price changing on us?

Surprisingly, it’s hard to know. We don’t have any real records of what individual items we were buying, or what meals we were eating over that time. While it would be wonderful to keep those kinds of records, it starts to seem more than a little silly to devote much time to it right now, given the other things vying for our time.

What I can do is post the meal plan I worked up for the week. I have gotten much more disciplined about doing a full week’s plan now that swinging by the store to grab that one thing we forgot about is a major pain. We don’t always end up making everything on the plan, but it at least gives a good framework to build a shopping list from.

  • Monday: Grill Burgers
  • Tuesday: Cabbage Skillet with ham
  • Wednesday: Carnitas
  • Thursday: Pesto chicken and pasta
  • Friday: Chicken and quina
  • Saturday: Stir-Fry

I would like to actually include links and or post recipes for the things that aren’t obvious like burgers, and in some fantasy world where I can spend 10 hours a week on this, I  would do cost per serving breakdowns as well. Here in the world of actual time constraints I think I will be happy with just getting the plan posted, and hope that it comes in handy down the road when I am trying to figure out if our eating habits are what is impacting the monthly budget 🙂

 

-Jordan

 

Dave Ramsey Live!

Posted on by Jordan

I seem to be falling behind… lucky for me March ended up being kind of uneventful, so the fact that I am just getting this posted doesn’t mean you missed much.

Heather and I went to see Dave Ramsey in Kansas City. We bought the tickets months in advance, and Heather suffered a small amount of ridicule at work for her excitement over having the tickets. The fact that the event later sold out was somewhat vindicating I suppose.

It did mean that the friends who we talked into going to the event with us were unable to purchase tickets, so we had to go by ourselves.

To be completely honest, I was doing a little bit of foot-dragging in the weeks leading up to the event. I mean, how exciting can it be to see a five-hour recap of the class we took three years ago? Well, the answer to that is, a lot more exciting than you ever would have guessed!

Dave is a gifted speaker, and his team puts on a great event. We really enjoyed it.

Reflecting on the event, I think part of the reason it’s worth doing is that culturally, it’s hard to talk about money and budgets with your peers. It was refreshing to be in an environment where people could say “I am debt free!” Granted, a person could go into the office on Monday and say that, but I don’t know how many friends that would make you… or maybe I am taking too dim a view of humanity… at any rate, it got Heather and I excited to buckle down and focus on our financial goals again, and that alone makes it worth the price of admission.

-Jordan

Yay Wireless Plans

Posted on by Jordan

There are a few things I have wanted to post about, and this topic is the best non-picture post I can think of.

Heather has my PC tied up re-doing our budgeting system, it looks like we are going to abandon Quicken in favor of a multi-page spread sheet. I was expecting Quicken to be less intimidating as a finance tracking tool than Excel, but it appears Heather has far more familiarity with spreadsheets than I do. In reality, Quicken wasn’t a great tool anyway, as it is built to track what has happened and we were trying to use it to manage a forward looking budget. I know I am wandering off topic, but I am kind of excited to have Heather working up this spread sheet. 🙂

So, getting back to wireless calling plans….

Heather and I spend a lot of time in the car these days, and in the absence of much else to do, we make quite a few calls during this time. I had been trying to keep an eye on our minute usage, but our billing date is mid month somewhere and I clearly lapsed somewhere along the line. To make a long story short, we went over quite a bit. Like $120 over. More than a little disappointing considering I had realized this was a possibility, and then forgot to keep a close eye on remaining minutes as the billing month was coming to a close. what makes it even more frustrating is the fact that when I  changed our plan, the new service wasn’t that much more. The old plan was the most basic package, with a second line and unlimited texting thrown in. Upgrading to the next tier of plan meant we got the texting for free, doubled the minutes we could use, and added ten numbers we can call without using minutes (our choice as to what numbers for that). The new monthly bill hasn’t come in yet, but I think it will end up being about $10 more. That’s right, T – E – N as in 10… so the one month we went over will cost the same as upgrading our plan for an entire year. Makes me kind of annoyed at Verizon, but I doubt any of the other carriers are much better with this kind of thing.

-Jordan

Wrapped Up Another Month

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I just finished our first full month using our budgeting system. I won’t go into detail, except to say it was fairly painless. I don’t know how much of our success was due to our really being on the same page, or due to the fact that very little happened last month to complicate things.

We are loosely following Dave Ramsey’s system. I never would have guessed being married to a business major with some accounting classes under her belt, that I would be the one to get to do all the detail work of getting the budget together and keeping track of receipts. Somehow that’s how things worked out though. I shouldn’t complain though, Heather has been really supportive, and I am happy with the system I worked out.

As I mentioned a few days back, we finished paying off my Escape. Our next goal is to build up a substantial “emergency fund.” We are using <online bank’s name censored> for an online savings account, it’s not quite by the FPU book, but I had an account with them already, and they sync really well with the existing <bank name censored> accounts I have. Back when I opened my account the interest rate was incredible too… It’s not quite as good now, but still considerably better than just a normal savings account.

-Jordan

** note: my editorial review board felt naming the banks posed a security threat, so the post has been edited accordingly.

Its Been A Little Over A Week…

Posted on by Jordan

And…

  • Heather and I are home
  • The apartment is 99%  cleaned up
  • We have unpacked and stowed every gift and item that recently entered the apartment.

The process of cleaning up and putting away everything did cause some stress between Heather and I. As much time as we were spending together before the wedding, we somehow never really came to terms with our approach to planning chores. We both just took care of things like cleaning and laundry when we weren’t together.

In the end, it was a great week, and everything that we wanted done got taken care of. The process though… 🙂 I don’t want it to sound like we had huge fights over anything, we just had to figure out priorities and planning styles some. I can’t imagine what it would have been like having to move one of us into the apartment over the weekend, much less moving both of us into a house.

Thank you writing will be a challenge we have to tackle soon, and we are just starting to address how meals get taken care of. Laundry and managing the budget are still in there too… Lets just say we still have things to figure out, but the first week has been really great! Not always easy, but not hard ether, just felt like something that took a little thought and effort.

Speaking of food, one of the many great items we were given was a crock pot. I have all kinds of plans for that puppy, and happened to have stumbled upon some fairly straightforward “quick” recipes for them today. Posting them here so I can find them again:  (All shamelessly stolen from The Simple Dollar)

  1. Combine all of this into a crock pot.
  2. Add salt and pepper to taste.
  3. Turn it on low and walk away for eight hours.
  4. Add a quarter of a cup of water for every additional two hours you intend to cook it.

Creamy Chicken Casserole

1 can condensed cream of chicken soup (chicken & herbs if you can find it)
1 small can mushroom pieces (a 4 ounce can, drain off the water first)
1/2 chopped red onion
1 1/2 pounds skinless, boneless chicken breasts (cut into strips if you’d like)
1/4 cup white wine (optional)

Crock Pot Chili
1 large can tomato sauce
1 pound lean ground beef
2 cans beans (kidney beans are fine, but you can use whatever you like)
2 tablespoons chili powder
1/4 cup diced onion (or onion salt)

Simple Pot Roast
1 2 to 2.5 lb. roast
2 cups chopped carrots
2 cups chopped potatoes
1 cup chopped celery
3 cups beef broth or beef stock

Ham and Potato Casserole
4 red potatoes, sliced
2 red onions, finely chopped
1 1/2 pounds cubed ham
1 can condensed cream of celery soup, diluted according to can directions
2 tablespoons flour

(This one is very good with cheese on top just before you serve it.)

Shredded Beef Sandwiches
2 pounds beef brisket
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 1/2 cups beef broth or beef stock
2 cloves minced garlic
1 chopped red onion

(Serve this on buns – magnificent!)

Breakfast Apple Cobbler
4 medium-sized apples, peeled and sliced (try Honey Crisps)
1/4 cup honey
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons melted butter
2 cups granola cereal

I hope to try one or two of these, there are a ton of recipes for slow cookers / crock pots out there, but fast and simple are really good attributes!

-Jordan

And It Just Gets Worse

Posted on by Jordan

I suppose I should take the hint and stop complaining about weather on the blog. I said it was cold yesterday, and now today is not only colder, but driving to work required scraping my windows!

Scraping ice isn’t a chore I really mind that much, but doing it today was depressing. Its not even November yet, I didn’t want to start doing this every day quite yet. Then again, Saturday was nice enough I didn’t even need a coat, so I shouldn’t act like its going to be bitterly cold until March. The weather will swing the other way a few times I am sure.

I might have my projector sold, but it will be a few days until I know for sure. Selling off a few things I own, and cutting ourselves down to just one round of rent and utilities for the remaining time until the wedding is going to do wonders for our goal of paying off all our debt ASAP. Dave Ramsey would be proud I am sure 🙂

Only three more days until I move, and I am maybe 15% packed… you would think I could have used some of that time last week when Heather was gone to get that take care of, but I really didn’t accomplish much on that front. Moving is more fun if you wait till the last minute anyway, right?

-Jordan

(Doing these rambling multi-topic posts is messing up my nice clean plan for categories and tags, you would think the editor would crack down on that)

Shoeboxed

Posted on by Jordan

Just saw a link to this service: Shoeboxed. They offer to help deal with the mess of receipts most people ( ie me) end up with.

I am not saying I am sold on the idea, but I think it might be worth looking into. Plan ‘B’ would just involve being diligent about putting all receipts into the computer, but my past history with that hasn’t been so great.

-Jordan