Slow Cooker Salsa Chicken Burritos

I mentioned that this week our grocery bill was a whopping $36 because we are making do with mostly on hand items. When I searched my shelves and fridge I found a can of black beans, frozen boneless, skinless chicken breasts (I stock up on these when I find a good sale on the hormone and antibiotic free kind), a half used bulk jar of salsa and about 6 large flour tortillas leftover from quesadilla night.  So what did I come up with for dinner?

Salsa Chicken Burritos!

Slow Cooker Salsa Chicken Burritos:
2-3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 medium sized jar mild salsa (I used about 20oz or so)
1 can black beans, drained
Tastefully Simple Fiesta Party Dip Mix
Large flour tortillas
Shredded cheddar cheese
Sour cream

Place chicken in your slow cooker.  Cover chicken with salsa completely. Sprinkle Fiesta Party Dip Mix over top to taste. (I used about a teaspoon or so just to give it a little kick) Set slow cooker on low and let it cook for about 5 hours or until chicken is falling apart. Take 2 forks and shred the chicken breasts. Add the black beans and mix the chicken, salsa and beans thoroughly. Cook for an additional half hour.

Take a large flour tortilla and sprinkle with cheese. Place chicken mixture on top of cheese and roll like a burrito. Add a dollop of sour cream to finish.

Viola! Completely easy and tasty dinner packed with a little extra protein!  Enjoy!

Small Setback

After our daughter was born, we decided to try to live off my husband’s income as much as possible.   Most of our “living” related bills are paid by his salary and my salary mainly goes toward groceries, the car payment, and the debts.  This made sense for us because I am a contract employee and sometimes have short breaks between assignments.  Of course I would end up on an extended break right when we are really focusing on paying off debts. Of course.  I am currently going on no work for 3 out of the last 4 weeks.  Yes, that makes a major dent in our plans.

While I’m scrambling around changing up my debt snowball spreadsheet and making sure all bases are covered, I’m also trying to think of areas to save more and how to make a few bucks to help offset the loss a bit. 

First, I did manage to spend only $36 at the grocery store this weekend and I picked up a “big city” newspaper with better coupons so I can start implementing my Grocery University strategies.  I used my store card and my own pantry and fridge to keep the total so low for this week.  We bought no meat because our freezer was still full from previous weeks and I worked a menu to fit around that.  Hubs also worked late everyday last week so the baby and I made do with leftovers and a bit of mac n cheese.  This coming weekend I plan to use coupons and the GU strategies to keep the grocery total low even with the addition of meat and produce.

This weekend I also received a small check from a local consignment sale where I sold my daughter’s outgrown items.  This got me thinking what else can we sell that is currently just cluttering up the house?  Here are a few I came up with:

• Old electronics, books and DVD’s – we have at least 1 old Kindle a cell phone or two, a hundred or so DVD’s and probably 50ish books we could stand to purge.  When doing a quick search online, I found that Amazon will let you trade in these types of items for Amazon gift cards.  They even pay shipping! This wouldn’t be an immediate cash in hand type thing but we do use Amazon often and these gift cards would not go to waste.  We also have a local used bookstore that takes items for cash or trade in value that I will be looking into.
• Old purses – since I’ve become a mom I usually carry a diaper bag or large satchel type bag for all the mom-on-the-go needs so my purses are in a closet collecting dust.  I know I have at least 2 Coach purses that are in ‘like new’ condition that I would not miss.  I’m considering listing on eBay or our local Facebook garage sale site.
• Diapers – Ok this may be totally weird to some, but yes used cloth diapers are a commodity.  I have a few brands/styles that just didn’t work for us and would be snatched up quickly by someone else.  I even have a couple new-in-package that I just don’t like or need.  Don’t tell the Hubs this, but I have more than enough diapers in my stash to keep the baby’s bum covered through a wash day… or two.  On to lighten the stash a bit!
• Online surveys – I’ve tried Swagbucks with little success. It seems I spent 15 minutes on surveys only to find out I didn’t qualify for said survey.  But others I know have had great success mainly using the search function.  I recently found InboxDollars and have found this program much easier for me to use with better results.  I “made” $9 in a little less than 24 hours just by reading emails and filling in the profile information!  You can even print grocery coupons through this site and you earn $0.10 for every coupon you redeem! 

Do you know of any other non-traditional money making ideas? I would love to hear them!

The Ugly Truth

So if I’m going to be talking about paying off debts, I have to come clean about the total of those debts.  In order for me to stay home with our little one, we decided we need to eliminate all but my student loan debt.  The number we are looking at is {deep breath}:

$18,838.39

I hate seeing that number.  It’s much easier to stomach in individual credit line balances than to add it all up into one.  The breakdown is about 50% credit cards/store cards and 50% car loan.  I read somewhere that the average American family has $8,000 in credit card debt so we are apparently decidedly average. I’m so not proud of that fact.

Why aren’t we including my student loans in the total?  Well I’m ashamed to admit, the amount is ridiculously high and it will be a very long time before those are paid off.  Luckily, my interest rates are low.  Once the above debts are taken care of, we will be putting any extras toward tackling this beast.
So what is the goal? 

Pay off $18,838.39 by December 31st, 2015 or about 16 months

With our current budget, if everything goes perfectly, this should be achievable by October 2015.  If something goes wrong, like losing a couple weeks of work, December gives us a little leeway.  I’m hopeful that I will be able to shave $200 off our monthly grocery bill using the Grocery University program (a 33% reduction!) and will then apply that to our debt.  In doing that, these debts will be eliminated by September 2015 or just over a year.  
There you have it in writing.  Here’s to hoping what they say about putting your goals in writing is true!

Do you have any current financial goals? What are your strategies to help you achieve these goals?

Taking a Bite out of the Grocery Bill

This post contains sponsored links from Grocery University.

Currently I grocery shop weekly.  I try to make a menu plan ahead of time and then stick pretty closely to that plan when we head to the store. I do not currently budget our grocery trips. Some weeks the bill is just $75, some weeks it's $150 or even $175! When I started making up a budget, I quickly realized that we were spending close to $700 per month on groceries. For two (and a half) people!  If you want to factor in what we are spending eating out in addition to groceries our monthly food budget is close to $1000.
Let's just let that sink in a minute shall we?

$1000.... We are spending nearly 22% of our monthly income on food. That.is.ridiculous.

Hubs doesn't think we can cut the grocery bill much but I would like to challenge him on that.  I've read dozens of articles on how to cut your grocery bill, watched hours of couponing shows, looked at coupon sites galore, perused our local newspapers... and I have yet to implement a system that works for us. Coupons in our local paper are sparse and hardly ever for things we actually eat. The TV shows on using coupons focus on those with "stockpiles" and all I can think about is "we have no place to put that much stuff!" and "how are they ever going to eat 100 yogurts before they expire?!"  The coupon sites are sometimes tedious to look through and who has time for that with a 13 month old?

There has to be a better, more efficient way to save, right? I mean, families of 4+ are claiming a monthly grocery budget of less than half what we spend.  Coupons can't be that difficult to find and use because thousands of people use them every day.  There has to be a way to maximize their use to my advantage without buying mountains of stuff to clog up our guest room. People have it figured out and I should be able to figure it out too!

Enter: Grocery University by one of my favorite bloggers.  This is a program she has talked about and used to reduce her grocery bill and others simply rave about it.  I am excited to see the reduction in our grocery bill and I am even more excited to tell you that there is a SUPER SALE on this program happening TOMORROW!

Grocery University is usually $9.97 and I am certain it will save you more than that just on your first shopping trip.  But for tomorrow only you can get this easy to use money saving program for as low as $2.99! So what do you get for $2.99?  You get a 2hr audio course on everything you need to know to make the most of your grocery budget, a printable workbook with more tips and visual aids, and the bonus Rock Bottom Price Database.  And?  It comes with a 60 day money back guarantee!! Seriously, what do you (and I) have to lose other than hefty grocery bills?  I'm so excited to get started and see how much of a difference it makes for us!

So more about that super one-day sale I was telling you about... The early bird will catch the worm on this one!  Save your family a little money and catch this amazing deal on Grocery University!

• 5 a.m. CT - kick things off with the low, low price of $2.99

• 8 a.m. CT - price goes up to $3.99

• 11 a.m. CT - price goes up to $4.97 

• 2 p.m. CT - price goes up to $5.97 

• 5 p.m. CT - price goes up to $6.97

• 8 p.m. CT- price goes up to $7.97 

• 11 p.m. CT- price goes up to $8.97 

 

Although this post is sponsored, all opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive compensation if you make a purchase using this link.

Where Do We Start?

My baby girl is one. O-N-E!?  How did that happen?  Where did that first year go? How much of her first year did I miss?  Why are we no closer to me staying at home?

I met my wonderful husband at the young age of 32… quick 3 years ago.  At that point in my life, I had almost given up hope on my dream of having a family.  I knew in my heart that if I was ever blessed with a husband and then baby, that I wanted to be the one who was there to raise him/her.  I didn’t want to miss any precious moments and, honestly, work/career just wasn’t that important to me.  Fast forward three years and we are happily married for almost 2 years and have a 1year old baby girl!  God is so good!

Since it took me longer than some to get here, I spent my pre married years getting my college degree, starting my career, battling thyroid cancer and collecting debts along the way.  Credit cards, student loans, medical bills… they started building while I lived in the now without a thought for the future.  I had debts, but I had a job to support them so it was ok. Right? Wrong.

When we were blessed with the news of our baby girl, we could hardly contain our excitement! We both had hopes of me staying home to raise her but reality set in when we sat down to crunch numbers. Because of past bad/hasty decisions on both our parts and our current debt load, I needed to work.  At the end of my maternity leave, I went back to work part time (30 hours/week) and have spent every spare minute dreaming of ways to make staying home with our daughter work for our family.

We created a budget and a snowball plan to tackle our debts but it seemed that our goals kept getting pushed back.  To be completely honest, we had a budget but it was only on paper. We didn't live it.  We didn't change our spending habits.  We didn't change so our situation didn't change.

This is the start of our journey to make those changes and to make our dream of me being a stay at home mommy a reality.