Making the Most of your Benefits

I am lucky enough that I am able to work for a large national company. Something that I've learned (some of it the hard way) that I want to take a few minutes to discuss.

Read through what your benefits are relating to your 401K, many employers amount match up to a certain percent. If they match up to a certain percent, if you can afford it, make sure you have that percentage put into your 401k. If you don't you're losing free money! You wouldn't leave a $20 bill at the the cash register when you're done at the grocery store, why leave it in your employers pocket. 

There are a number of employers that offer other perks, make sure to leverage them to benefit you. Do you have kids, check to see if your employer offers a benefit for child care, mine gives a weekly subsidy. Is it a lot, no, but it takes only a few minutes to set up and puts a little extra money in your pocket. 

Another benefit that may be available relates to your health. Some employers or your insurance company will pay for your gym membership or give you some type of compensation for completing a certain number of work outs during a year. 

Some companies have benefits that could surprise you, one my company offers that my husband and I were considering at one time, is $10,000 towards your costs for adopting a child. We tried for 6 years to have our son, and we were seriously talking about adoption. Now that our little guy is here, that conversation has been tabled, at least for now. 

These benefits that your employer has and offers is part of your compensation for doing your job. Just like the health insurance they provide, it is something they offer to compensate you. So, make sure you use and take advantage of them.

You should be able to find these on your employers website or in your employee hand book. Make sure to take the time to look through what is offered. You might be surprised at what is available to you. 

Taking Advantage of Your Local Sales

When trying to save money and live frugally, a great way to cut down your grocery bill is shopping the sales. If you're able to match up even a few coupons you can rack up significant savings. This week Shaw's,  one of my local stores, was having a sale, buy 10 items and get them all for .79 each. The great thing about this sale is you can mix and match, so I got 4 cans of soup, a package of butter, a can of stewed tomatoes, 2 bags of frozen ravioli and 2 bags of frozen gnocchi.

By buying all 10 items I got them for .79 each. However, to make the sale better I did the following:

Soup- $1/4

Ravioli- $1/2

Gnocchi- $1/2

So, all 10 items cost me $4.90 or .49 each

Shaw's also had coupons in the paper recently for their brand, Value Corner. There were coupons for pasta, well, I found the pasta was .69 this week, and the coupon was for .50/1. So I got 2 packs of pasta for .19 each. 

They also had a sale on Kellogg's cereal, buy 4 for $10, that sale in itself isn't all that great. But, you can make it pretty good. Whenever I see Kellogg's on sale I always check Kellogg's.com for coupons. I found that they had a .40/1 Raisin Bran coupon and a .50/1 Rice Krispies. Well, my husband likes Rice Krispies and I like Raisin Bran, so that was perfect, I printed off 2 of each. So I got 4 boxes of cereal for $6.40, but Shaw's made the deal even better. They were giving away a gallon of milk with every purchase of 4 Kellogg's cereals. So I got 4 boxes of cereal and a gallon of milk for $6.40 or $1.28 each. Now these were full sized family boxes, not the small ones, so this was a pretty decent deal. 

I know a lot of people think, I just don't have time for all of that. Well, 30 minutes on a Saturday afternoon saved me $43.83, which is $87.66/hour. I don't know anyone that makes that amount per hour. To show you that I really did save that much, and that I saved more then I spent, I've put the receipt summary below. 

3 - Things I do to Find more Time in My Day

I'm a working mom, I clock forty+ hours a week and take care of my munchkin. My husband is very helpful, but he also works long hours. In order to do all the things I want to do and get done, I've had to get creative with my time. Working from home has been very beneficial to this, it allows me to do a few things on my lunch break, like the dishes, change the laundry, fold clothes, and other little cleaning things that add to the time I have later in the day. I make a daily list of everything I want to get done, usually it's a list of 10-20 things, which only 2-4 get done.

As any mom or dad of an infant knows, you jump when they cry. So, my to do list seems to keep getting longer and longer but as long as my house is sort of clean and my son is fed, bathed and happy, it doesn't matter. Now, some of the creative things I've done to find the time:

I purchased a baby carrier. The one I got was a MO+M carrier you can find it here on Amazon. I really like this pack. It is easy to use and allows me to work around the house while my little guy is able to have mommy time. He has even fallen asleep while I'm working around the house. I do struggle with trying to pick items up off the floor, but that is also due to having extra weight on my front.

I've also started trying to monetize my crocheting. I make little gum cleaners for babies. They are made with soft cotton and slip on your finger to clean your babies mouth. To do this, I need both hands, so, one place I've found time to do this is while traveling in the car. When my husband drives, I can crochet my finger covers. I've listed them on Etsy, you can find them here, hopefully they'll have some success.

If I don't have a set plan, I can be very loosey goosey and not get anything done. So, to combat this, I make lists, and once the list is done, I create a game plan. In my mind, I try to figure out the fastest way to get everything done. So, if my list has laundry, dishes, clean off the kitchen counters, sweep, hand wash the bottles, and make dinner. I start with laundry because it's a quick hit and the washing machine can be running while I get everything else done. Then I do the dishes, I want to be able to have them off the counter so I can clean it. Also, just like with the laundry, the dishwasher can run while I'm working on the next project. I usually jump next to hand washing the bottles, that helps with my cleaning off the kitchen counters, because it's hard to clean them off when the dirty bottles are some of the things sitting on them. Then I clean the counters, I want to make sure that they are clean and wiped down before I make dinner on them. Then I get dinner going, once it's whipped up and cooking, I do another quick clean of the counters. Then boom, sweep the floor and I'm done. I always sweep the floor last because even when you try to be careful, some food crumbs or stuff from the counters will fall on the floor.

Working to be self-sustaining

Today, I'm going to be talking a little more about our gardening plans and some of our goals with the garden. For us, part of saving money and becoming frugal, is becoming more self-sufficient. We want to not only have fresh veggies and fruits during the summer, but be able to preserve them for the winter as well. To this end, we are putting our large yard to use for us and planting as much as possible. Our big project this year is to expand the raised garden by 12 square feet. I know it sounds like a lot, but in order to make this feasible, we need the space.

Today, even though there is still quite a bit of snow, we set out our plans for this year.

Last year we planted 2 apple trees, we'll probably plant 1-2 more this year because we want to start being able to dry, can and freeze the apples. We're going to be trying to preserve as much as we can for use throughout the year. We'll be documenting everything as we do it, from the beginning.

We tried gardening last year, but with the pregnancy and my husband working extra hours, we weren't able to harvest and preserve a lot. This year I'm working from home, I won't be pregnant and my husband won't be working crazy hours, which will allow us time to make our gardens work for us. In addition to expanding our raised garden, we'll be re-arranging the flower garden to insert some herbs and veggies. I'll be adding tomatoes and peppers to the flower garden to maximize our growing space and potential.

We'll be planting a lot of herbs this year, we want to dry them for use throughout the year. Not only are herbs and spices expensive, but by growing them we can know where they came from, how they were handled and make our own spice blends.

We're using the same thought process for everything we'll be growing. We want to try to get a large yield of everything to get us through the as much of the winter as we can. The less we have to buy the less money we have to spend on food.

We're also going to be planting a large wildflower garden in a corner of the yard because we want to entice honey bees to come pollinate our gardens.

If we have any money left over, we'll be redoing our compost bin. Unfortunately, the one we inherited when we bought the house is not working out well. It's not large enough and it's not animal proof. We've had a few uninvited guests that helped themselves to it by ripping through the cloth sides. We'll be making one out of wood and chicken wire. We want to design it to have a small swinging door at the bottom to easily remove the lower layer of compost.

We're funding most of our projects by using the rewards points from our credit cards. We have credit cards that accumulate points that can be redeemed for gift cards and other items. So, we get gift cards to the hardware/gardening store, for us it's usually home depot, and voila! we have money to fund our garden projects. The points take a while to accumulate because we aren't (usually) high spenders. So, I've been planning this for a while. That's a key to being frugal, plan, wait and feel the rush of we did that.

Not planning is detrimental to being frugal, if you just wing your spending you'll never have enough and your budget will never balance. Well, I hope you enjoyed the photos of some of the wildlife near us, see you tomorrow.