After another three days of moving, we finally have everything at our new place. About 80% of it is still stacked in boxes, but we have the important stuff like clothes, food, and wine. Tomorrow hopefully, we’ll get the cable set up. Honestly, I’m not sure if we plan to watch a minute of television this week.
During the moving we found time to pick up two items from Craigslist. The apple of my wife’s eye was 5’8″ wrought-iron wine rack for the new living room. It’s hand-crafted and quite ornate, but most importantly holds 50 wine bottles. That’s a lot of wine, but with wine country so close we often have that much on hand. Though it cost us $350 dollars, it’s probably worth over $1000.
My luxury Craigslist item was a 7 cubic foot chest freezer. I love to buy in bulk when there’s a sale. At times, I could save $3 or $4 a pound. Walmart’s website says the same size freezer can hold 210 pounds of food. Of course it depends on how dense the food is, but in theory that could be $600 or more in savings for every time we cycle through it. More important than the savings, I love the idea of not having to run to the store to get lunches for the wife. Additionally, we could look at preparing food for the whole month and having it ready to cook in just a few minutes. (If anyone has suggestions of such meals, let me know in the comments.)
Here are some more links from personal finance writers this week:
- Brip Blap posts making money with a credit card.
- Frugal Dad makes several great points in 5 reasons not to save stuff for later. My wife and I are experience this now with our moving.
- Generation X Finance blogs on where to go for help with getting out of debt – credit counseling and more.
- Million Dollar Journey does a case study: 60 years old, lots of cash, no portfolio – the income.
- Digerati Life goes into travel credit cards: how to travel with money.
- Money Smart Life writes teaching kids about money.
- My Dollar Plan looks into Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights Act of 2009.
- The Sun’s Financial Diary pitches in with what the CARD Act of 2009 means to you.
More Finance Posts:
- Free Money Finance asks, “is it ok for a pastor to earn $600k a year?”
- Five Cent Nickel wonders is personal responsibility dead?
- No Credit Needed writes the day it clicked.
We’ve been planning on getting one of those freezers for a while now. It’s on the wedding registry — they’re actually surprisingly cheap new. If we don’t get it, we almost have enough in gift cards from the shower to get one with them.
Our Meijers always has great sales on bulk items – sometimes 5 pound bags of chicken are buy one get one free. We simply don’t have room in the freezer over our fridge to take advantage of that kind of sale.
There’s a local place that sells pre-cooked meals. You have to buy a laundry basket full at once. You get 24 foil containers (or ziploc bags, depending on the meal), and each has 3 servings.
It’s more expensive than making from scratch, but cheaper than eating out. No prep time (or cleanup) – just toss a salad together and you’re good to go.
We’re on month one of the experiment. I’m a fan of the chicken bruschetta; not so much on the tortellini.
We recently bought a deep freezer from Sears (ended up costing about $175 after discounts and it being on sale). It is 8cuft apx and has since been put to good use. Bought a boatload of chicken @.66 a lb and 1/4 of a cow (about 160lbs) from the grazeland out here in Colorado. Fortunately we are a family of carnivores! Will keep continously stocked anytime we find a sale at the commisary. This is probably one of the best buys to date (even with the extra electricity to run it).