My Frugal Year

It’s a cold, gray Sunday here in Colorado. The kind of day where you just want a warm cup of coffee or hot chocolate. And the kind of day when there’s nothing better than the smell some something cooking in the crockpot filling the house. Now I’m no expert cook, but I’ve gotten pretty good at knowing what to toss together in the crock that will likely taste good by dinner time.

Today I didn’t have a recipe handy, so I am winging it. I had thawed boneless skinless chicken breasts. Three really big ones. I had a hankering for something semi-spicy. So this is what I did: Sprayed the crockpot with cooking spray (makes clean up much easier), chopped the chicken breasts into chunks and tossed that on the bottom. Then checked the cupboard for what kind of canned goods I could use. Found some kidney beans, diced tomatoes and corn. Right on. Mixed those up and found a packet of chicken taco seasoning in the pantry. Mixed that up with the canned goods. Took a couple cups of rice, put that on top of the chicken then dumped the mixture of canned stuff and taco seasoning on top. Closed the lid and – voila! In several hours we’ll have dinner! No idea how it’s gonna taste, but I have a feeling it’ll be ok. We’ll have it with some tortilla chips and shredded cheese on top. Yum.


That’s a nice, frugal Sunday dinner for ya.

There’s another savings thing we’ve implemented for this year that I’m excited about. With my husband’s job he doesn’t get specific vacation time, but he does get vacation pay on his paychecks. For the past few years we’ve not done anything with it – just went into the account for regular expenses. Now when we get his checks, I take the amount of vacation pay and transfer it into savings and keep track of it with Quicken. So we’re saving that money to take a real vacation. This is something we’ve not really done – real vacations. So by the end of the year we’ll have a nice sum set aside to do a fun trip with the family. Good times!

No one is leaving the house today, so there won’t be any spending. This is a good thing!