My Frugal Goals

With the start of a new school year, and only one child living at home, I decided that we need to reset our frugal goals for the year, and set some new long term goals for us.

Long Term:
1) Bathroom-
We need to put a tub in the kids bathroom, and we need to connect the plumbing to the tub.  There is currently no tub in the bathroom, just a hole where the tub used to be.  I am estimating the cost of the tub, surround, and installation will come up to $5,000.  We will have this project finished by this time next year.

2) Textbooks-
Now that we have paid for this semester's books, we need to start saving for next semester's books.  Each of the boys will contribute $200 to the cost of their books.  On average, the books have been costing us $600/semester.  My goal is to save $800 for the textbooks.  If we don't need that full amount, we will save the difference and roll it over to next semester.

*Long term, I am looking at saving up almost $6,000 over the next year, with $800 going towards textbooks.  I'd really love to have that bathroom functioning again sometime soon!  According to my calculations, we need to save around $116 every week in order to have the $6000 to pay cash for the books and for the bathroom repairs.



This Week's Goals:
3) Meatless Mondays-
Any meal where meat is not served is inherently cheaper than a meal where meat is served.  Mondays will be meat-free from now on.  (This includes lunch!)

4) Salvage the strawberry patch.
Our strawberry patch was invaded by Appalachian Mounding Ants this past year.  These mean little buggers dig holes, bite, and killed off my strawberries.  I gave up on doing anything with the strawberries at all last summer, and haven't dealt with that corner of the yard since then.  The patch was in a raised bed, so this past fall, we pulled the surrounding bed supports out of the ground and put it into the shed.  I've found a new place for my strawberry bed that is closer to the house, and closer to water.  I need to put the raised bed into the new location, and then see if there are still any strawberries left in the old patch to salvage that can go into the new patch.

5) Can spaghetti sauce.
The tomatoes are going gangbusters.  It's time!

6) Finish the T-shirt quilt for middle child.

7) Go grocery shopping and stock up for a month.
I will plan out our meals for the next month.  One stop at the grocery store should hold me for the next month.

8) I will get out and exercise at least 3 days this week.  I know it's not frugal now... it's for the future.  The better my health now, the less chance I will have of having a long-term chronic condition in the future.  This in turn will keep our long term health expenses down as we will have fewer medical expenses as we age.

9) I will line dry 3 loads of laundry.

10) I will begin working on the calendars that I give out to family every year.  These calendars contain pictures of our family, and go to the grandparents.

Lofty goals!