Infrastructure...

...or lack thereof. Within the past couple of days we have seen gas prices rise exponentially, had a power outage, had an internet outage, and my bank's website "had issues" according to the customer service lady. Here's how we are dealing with these things...

• On payday I logged into my bank's website to move money to savings and to an investment account and nothing was working. A few hours later it still showed pending for something that wasn't pending and processed for something that wasn't processed. I called the customer service line and the lady said their computers were having issues. Several hours later the site was kind of working. Fortunately I wasn't in a hurry to get my banking done but we do keep some cash on hand in case the system stays down for an extended period of time.
• For some reason we had zero power outages for the first 12 years that we lived in Vegas, however during the past few years, we have had several. Our power was out for about five hours a few days ago but now we are so used to breaking out the power banks it's barely a glitch for us. Since these issues seem to be getting worse (and in case power costs really spike) we are ready with power banks and solar panels to take care of our basic power needs.
• After the power issue resolved, out internet had an area-wide outage. We dealt with that by hotspotting to our cell phones (I still had a few work emails to send off). Then, since streaming wasn't working we watched a TV show via the over-the-air antenna then watched a movie from our newly-created DVD collection. We got rid of our DVDs years ago but I decided to start collecting them at $1 each on dollar Mondays at the Goodwill. When I first started doing this, hubby said we will never use them but I pointed out that we are using the collection..as I slid the movie into the DVD player! :)
• Gas is continuing to rise so we just fill up when it gets to 3/4 tank. Which is better than the guy at the gas pump before us who left his receipt for $180 worth of gas on the pump. Yikes!
• My project this week is to acquire a 55 gallon water barrel. With infrastructure (and our government) hanging by a thread, and because we live in a dessert, it makes sense to be ready for a water service outage as well. Hopefully we never have to use it and can just rotate the water by watering the shrubs with is, but better safe than sorry!

A Shopping Update

We did our usual shopping rounds today and noticed all kinds of signs that our economy is teetering on the brink...

• The Goodwill was packed with people today. It was dollar day so Mondays are usually busy but there were way more people than we usually see there.
• We had lunch at our favorite dim sum place which is usually busy every time we go there but there were a lot fewer people today than normal.
• We went to two Dollar Tree stores and the shelves were noticeably sparse. I think it is only a matter of time before the whole notion of dollar (now dollar fifty) stores goes the way of five and dime stores as the cost of producing and shipping these small items is increasing by the day.
• We got gas which was $4.79 a gallon(!?!). Yikes.
• At the big Mexican grocery store we shop at, produce is usually very cheap and very fresh. Prices seemed much higher than usual today and none of the produce seemed as fresh as usual.
• We skipped Costco and Sam's Club today as we have a good-sized stockpile of food. I am, however, making a point to pick up a few extra food items at every store we shop at (like two pounds of brown rice and two pounds of pinto beans at the Dollar Tree today, extra mayo that was on sale at Albertsons this week, etc). 
• Tech shopping has pretty much come to a halt. Samsung released their new phones recently and I wasn't even tempted to upgrade, and I have several laptops that work just fine, ditto for tablets. Besides the higher price for tech items these days, "improvements" are generally unnoticeable compared to previous iterations.
• Overall we are pretty well set to weather economic turmoil, however I would love to have a garden. Unfortunately our yard is tiny and the ground is like concrete (although this lady in Las Vegas seems to have an AMAZING garden!).

Relaxing Sunsets

Since anything I would write about would be a downer (gas prices, food prices, a horrible aircraft accident, a missing general that the media is mostly ignoring...), I will just post some relaxing sunset photos. I hope you all are doing well!

10 More Things

In no particular order...

1. If you "sprung your clocks forward" last Saturday evening, did you also do these things?
2. I was listening to this YouTube video and realized that many of the "extreme" cost-saving things Clark's callers are doing to save money are things we have been doing for years!
3. I was talking to a friend, and her son, who is in his forties, is not doing well health-wise. I know sometimes people just need someone to listen when they are worried about a serious problem but my analytical mind goes to 'what are the next steps to fix this situation?' So in addition to several medical resources, I sent her this list because if it comes to someone's end-of-life situation, not having the appropriate documents on hand can be a financial and legal catastrophe.
4. Here is a great list of ideas for eating cheap and healthy.
5. My favorite site for online shopping discounts (mostly hiking and walking gear, shoes, etc): Sierra
6. OTOH, I have really cut back on my Amazon purchases because it seem the product quality, shipping time, and the need for less crap cluttering up my house have all converged. Lots of Amazon products seem to be crap now.
7. Oddly enough, we barely had a winter this year and we should reach 90 degrees this week(!). Yay because nice weather, boo for the extremely critical snow pack (or lack thereof) this year.
8. Work is stressful, news is stressful, $5+ per gallon gas is stressful...life is stressful these days (and we are in a pretty good financial situation compared to many people. I have no idea how families with a lot of kids are getting by these days!).
9. Plus, I'm old. In everyday work situations, I miss the good old days of not having to be careful that I am not "speaking aggressively" or taking pains to tiptoe around people's feelings when they aren't doing their job, don't know how to do their job, and don't ask for help until things are on the verge of falling off a cliff. Bah humbug
10. And then there is politics...

10 Random Things

In no particular order...

1. This is my picture of last night's full moon. I wanted to stay up and see the lunar eclipse but it didn't happen until after 1am and I had to work in the morning so I missed it.
2. Don't forget to set your clocks forward next Saturday.
3. The live eagle cam is back and the eagles have two eggs they are sitting on. Cool!
4. If you think Big Brother is watching you, you are right.  :(
5. On the other hand, here is a great list of non-digital activities to check out. I met two ladies doing diamond art and had never heard of it but it looked really interesting.
6. Apparently we are at war with Iran now. Needless to say, we are beefing up our preps even more.
7. Our list of "things to prepare for" is getting exponentially longer...war, Social Security going insolvent, AI displacing 90% of the workforce...ayayay
8. We went from cold and needing the heat on to roasting hot at 80+ degrees and needing the AC on in the matter of one day last week. Crazy!
9. My neighbor gave me a bunch of homemade tamales yesterday so that was a nice (and yummy!) surprise.
10. I need to start reading books again. I am either reading short things online or reading studies and reports with a ton of data. I have the attention span of a goldfish these days so hopefully reading longer novels will fix that.

Happy spring to you all!

50 Ways We Save on Food

I am always surprised by how expensive food is these days. It seems like every time we go to the grocery store, the food we usually purchase has increased in price yet again. Bummer :(  Here are a bunch of ways that we save money on food...

1. We cook from scratch. A lot. 
2. We generally use local grocery store apps when we shop and only buy items that are on sale then build menus around what we bought on sale (instead of making a menu then buying the items at full price).
3. We love to buy deeply-discounted loss leaders or half-off clearance items then make interesting meals with them.
4. One thing we don't buy is "processed" food that is simple and cheap to do at home (I can't believe people buy a cut up watermelon when it is easy--and much cheaper--to do this at home!).
5. We shop at Costco and Sam's Club for staples (50 pound bag of rice, huge box of old fashioned oats, cases of canned tomatoes, etc).
6. We shop at the local Mexican grocery store for super cheap produce.
7. We shop at the local International Market and Filipino grocery store for specialty items (dried fish, kasha, patis, etc).
8. We shop at Dollar Tree for random, inexpensive items like bread, jelly, tortillas, etc. Recently they had Heinz 57 for $1.25 a bottle so we bought a bunch of them.
9. We cook large portions of food like soups, stews, and Filipino dishes then freeze the leftovers for future meals.
10. I like to bake so at least once a week we eat homemade bread, cookies, desserts, etc. 
11. Hubby likes meat so he generally uses a small hunk of meat cut up into small pieces instead of cooking slabs of steak for example.
12. I rarely eat meat so I use beans and lentils in place of meat in soups, stews, tacos, burritos, etc.
13. We generally take our drinks in insulated tumblers anytime we will be out and about for a while.
14. Hubby likes soda so we buy this on sale, usually on the "buy a half case, get one free" sales.
15. I almost always drink water. Instead of buying bottled water, we bought some five-gallon water jugs, fill them up at the local water station (tap water tastes like Lake Mead here so most people buy purified water), then I fill up a pitcher of this water and keep it in the refrigerator.
16. We also bring our own food when we will be out and about for the day (ie: when hubby bowls, hubby plays poker, or when I go on long walks). Hubby likes sandwiches and I like to heat up leftovers and put them in an insulated container then cut up veggies or easy-to-eat fruit to complete the meal.
17. If we do eat out, it is almost always with a coupon (Subway, Del Taco coupons in weekly junk mail flyers) or free (from hubby's poker comps at the casino).
18. Also when we eat out, we usually only order one meal, split it, and still have leftovers to take home.
19. We keep a fully-stocked pantry so it is always easy to whip up some kind of quick meal (like spaghetti, canned soup, tacos, etc).
20. We buy certain things like a spiral ham, turkey, etc after the holidays, put them in the freezer, then cook up the items when we have a party or other event to cook for. 
21. We have never used Door Dash or Uber Eats (the fees are outrageous!).
22. Hubby always makes coffee at home in a $5 drip coffee maker he bought at the Goodwill.
23. I (finally) broke my addiction to daily "Blast" coffee drinks at Baskin Robbins. Now I buy coffee ice cream at the store and make my own coffee drink for a fraction of the cost.
24. Hubby watches food videos on YouTube then tries cooking new dishes all the time.
25. We often cook for parties. Hubby is an excellent cook so whenever people invite us to parties we usually bring a (Filipino) main dish and I bring a (Filipino) dessert. This is much cheaper than buying a "party-sized" dish at Costco to bring.
26. When we host parties, we tend to cook food that "stretches" like a huge bowl of chicken Caesar salad featuring $5 Costco chickens, big pots of spaghetti, Asian noodle dishes, fried rice, etc.
27. Speaking of Costco chicken, we can make about six meals with one chicken: roast chicken wings/legs, shredded chicken for tacos, shredded chicken for chicken Caesar salad, shredded chicken for chicken salad sandwiches, chicken thighs for a pasta side, then use the bones for soup. 
28. We hard-boil a dozen eggs then use them throughout the week (egg salad sandwiches, deviled eggs, potato salad, garnish for soup, a quick protein snack, etc).
29. We boil a bunch of potatoes then use them throughout the week (potato salad, boiled potatoes with gravy for a side dish, fried with onions and eggs for breakfast, etc).
30. Tortillas have a dozen uses: breakfast wrap, salad wrap, turkey or ham wrap, bean and cheese burritos, enchiladas, etc.
31. Pizza is super easy (and often cheaper) to make at home. Hamburgers taste way better when made at home. Pretty much any restaurant food can be easily--and cheaply--made at home. YouTube has an infinite number of videos on this topic.
32. Speaking of YouTube, Julie Pacheco is one of my favorite YouTubers when it comes to ways to stretch your food budget.
33. We hate to waste leftovers; they are either left in the fridge then incorporated into the next day's meals or labeled and put in the freezer to eat at a later date.
34. We also give a lot of food away. The neighbor's kids have me on speed dial when they are craving brownies. Hubby's cousins drop by regularly and take home frozen Filipino leftovers. We often bring snacks for hubby's bowling team.
35. Occasionally we will go to ethnic restaurants for food I can't recreate at home like Indian food, Ethiopian food, etc.
36. When we buy bakery items at the grocery store, we buy them at half price on the day-old rack.
37. Lots of "processed foods" can easily be made at home like yogurt, pudding, dried fruit, granola bars, beef jerky, etc.
38. Some people in our area save money on food by having a garden (I haven't had much luck doing this in our desert environment, however).
39. Another way to save money is to buy in bulk then can/pickle/smoke/freeze the items (like buying a giant bag of cucumbers and making pickles or buying strawberries on sale and making jam).
40. Gleaning and foraging was popular when we lived in Washington. Each season we would pick wild blackberries and huckleberries for the freezer while friends would go out hunting for wild mushrooms.
41. Speaking of DIY food sourcing, we used to hunt, fish, dig for clams, go crabbing and shrimping, dip for smelt, etc. and fill up the freezer that way.
42. Soups, stews, and chili are easy to make with leftover items...a bean or a grain, assorted vegetables, a can of diced tomatoes for the base, liberal use of spices, and you have a cheap and yummy meal.
43. We usually buy spices at ethnic stores as they are much cheaper than at the regular grocery store.
44. I clean out the fridge every week; this way we know what food needs to be used up soon (also I hate reaching into the produce bin and find decomposing vegetables...yuck).
45. We rarely eat out for breakfast as restaurant breakfasts are so expensive compared to the price and simplicity of cooking breakfast at home (for example, a bowl of oatmeal at a restaurant might be $7 while it costs 70 cents to make it at home!).
46. Likewise, buying things like drinks and desserts at a restaurant are way more expensive than they should be so we drink water at restaurants and eat dessert at home.
47. When in doubt, we check the unit cost for grocery items to make sure we are getting the best deal for our money. Hubby and I often do some quick mental math to determine if the almond milk is cheaper in the half gallon or gallon size when the gallon size is on sale.
48. Another thing hubby does when we shop for groceries is whip out his cell phone then use the calculator to record all of the prices for the items we are buying; more often than not, we get overcharged for an item or two and need to have the cashier correct the price.
49. When there is a random clearance or "too good to be true" price on an item, hubby takes a picture of it to show the cashier if the price doesn't ring up correctly.
50. We try not to "over buy" food. Several years ago, the 99 Cent store had bags of brown rice for super cheap so we bought dozens of bags that we never got around to using and which eventually went rancid so we ended up throwing them away. What a waste of money!

20 Items for a Power Outage

This was the sunset before all Hell broke loose weather-wise. We have had very windy, very rainy, very cold weather with a bit of snow(!) here and there over the past few days. Added to this mess were more than a half dozen power outages in our area over the past few days but hopefully the storms are over now!

Here are the preparedness items we were happy to have on hand when the power went out...

1. Two battery banks; one 300wh bank and one 1000wh bank, along with solar panels to charge them back up should the power outage last a long time
2. A small 32" TV (this TV draws much less power than our huge TV so it is easily powered for hours by the smaller battery bank)
3. An over-the-air antenna (this works to provide a signal to the TV when the power/internet is out)
4. Flashlights (one for each room; some rechargeable, some with regular batteries)
5. Candles (for more general lighting during the power outage)
6. Matches/grill lighter (to manually light our gas range so we could cook dinner, also to light the candles)
7. Fire extinguisher (always good to have on hand)
8. Travel-sized battery banks to keep our cell phones charged up
9. Radio (for listening entertainment)
10. Extra blankets (to keep warm when the power/heat goes out)
11. Small portable fans (these draw less power when plugged in to the battery bank and kept us cool when the power went out last summer)
12. Snacks and easy-to-prepare food (making a meal from scratch during a power outage is not much fun; soup was easy to heat and eat)
13. Smoke/CO detector (lots of people die during power outages due to cooking/heating their home with combustible appliances, a big no no)
14. Books/book light (another good source of entertainment during a power outage)
15. We put a coin on top of an ice cube trav so we would know if the freezer got warm enough to melt the food inside (fortunately it didn't!)
16. Cell phones with hot spot capability (if we had to use our computers/tablets we can still access the internet this way when our home internet is out)
17. Warm clothing--sweatpants, sweatshirts, warm socks, warm hat. We rarely ever wear these sorts of clothes in such a warm climate but it's good to have a set on hand in case of power outages during the winter (nubby was bundled up from his head to his feet then wrapped in a big blanket too!)
18. Backpacking gear. We no longer backpack but still have the gear including down sleeping bags, headlamps, small cook stoves, etc which could come in handy during an extended power outage
19. Apps on my phone (for our local power company which shows power outages/estimated time to be fixed, DEM app, weather app, news apps, etc)
20. When we lived in a much colder area, we always had a propane heater and extra propane on hand for emergency use during a power outage; it doesn't stay cold for long where we currently live