4 tried and true (by me) freezer recipes to help boost your budget

I’m a huge advocate for freezer meals because they help families avoid takeout or delivery on the days when they can’t even fathom making and cleaning from dinner.  We all have days like that.  Freezer meals help you avoid takeout or delivery meals and will keep all that money in your pockets!

Here are five freezer meals (from our rotation) that we have found worthy to continue making after the first attempt.  Rest assured that this isn’t just a compilation I found and thought I’d pass along; we actually make and eat these.  You can see photos on my instagram every once in awhile when we make them.

Let’s get right to it:

1. Chicken Pot Pie – This recipe is one of our favorites!  We prepare it both fully assembled and in a gallon freezer baggie depending on the room available in our freezer and if we have any premade pie crusts on hand at the time of the prep.
2. Chicken Noodle Soup – This is my husband’s favorite soup recipe!  What I love about this is that I’m able to make it with leftover ingredients from the chicken pot pies.  It is SO delicious.
3. Chicken Broccoli Rice Casserole – Such a simple recipe, yet so yummy.  I add additional salt when making and on my personal plate, whereas my husband likes to add seasoned salt or hot sauce.  This is one of the simplest freezer preps, too!
4. Pizza – Frozen pizzas never last in our house.  We eat pizza like there’s no tomorrow and often these are gone by the end of the week when we prep them.  They take up very little space in the freezer and the amount of money they save is worship worthy.

What is your favorite tried and true freezer meal?

Four tried and true make ahead meal recipes to add to your freezer meal stash. We really do make these and have them in our rotation! Yum!

Current Debt Summary

We had over $100,000 worth of debt when we realized how unnecessary carrying debt is.  We want to be the owners of the belongings we use and care for, not some random bank.

We keep track of our debt-milestones in many medias; excel spreadsheets, bullet journals, banking apps, and in notebooks scribbled when we randomly have a thought that has to do with the budget (it’s addicting).

Recently we’ve come up with a current total and here it is:

Personal loan –             $6,001.40
Revolving debt –           $7,106.54
Vehicle loans –            $21,923.56
Student loans –           $15,515.83
Total current debt –   $50,547.33

We are more than half way toward being debt free!  Isn’t that amazing?  We had well over 100k  in debt and we’ll be below 50k by the end of August.

Such an amazing milestone! *applause*

The last time we were in only (hear my sarcasm) $50,000 of debt was before we were engaged and we each had about 25k of debt, and that was in 2013!  How exciting is this?!

The snowball is picking up momentum.  The personal loan should be paid off easily by the end of 2017!

Let’s get this.

Debt snapshot as of August 10, 2017. We began our early 20’s with over 125k in debt, and we’re on a journey to be debt free by 30!

July Budget

Happy August, friends!  Today is the first Monday of the month so we’re going to review July’s accomplishments.

There weren’t many if we’re talking finances… We were able to overpay our debts as usual but by significantly less than we expect of ourselves.

July is always a crazy month for us, since we try to do something for Independence Day and Elizabeth’s birthday which always end up costing us extra.

Afterthought: we’ll have to create a sinking fund for Birthdays in the future.

We were, however, very fortunate in that the present we gave her was an electric MINI cooper we purchased when I was only 8 weeks pregnant with her.  It was the Saturday after Black Friday (2014) and the car was on sale for $25.  I would have purchased at least a couple but ironically only one would fit inside my MINI Cooper!

Back to the budget – we spent more money in every one of our budget categories due to our July lifestyle.

August is shaping up to be a significantly better month so far, though we are going on a vacation in a couple weeks.  Wish us luck, we’re already doing our best to prep for money saving measures while we’re away.

Our Budget Overview

Here is how things break down.  Hopefully seeing these hard numbers will help people understand that normal families can accomplish financial freedom as well!

We make $4,584.00 base pay and $1272.00 for our housing allowance.  We choose to live on base and our rent is $1,150 (includes utilities) therefore we receive $122 back each month making our take home pay roughly $4,032 (after taxes and such).

Our starting number is $4,032 for each month.

Expenses that are not debt are:

• Cellphone 1 – $39.73
• Cellphone 2 – $39.73
• Internet – $44.99
• Netflix – $15.37
• Insurance – $149.82
• Total expenses = 289.64

Our debts:

• Personal loan – $449.56
• Student loans – $202.36
• Vehicle 1 – $350
• Vehicle 2 – $350
• Revolving debt – $125
• Total debt = $1476.92

Phew.  So much debt!

Those two categories added together means that $1766.56 automatically comes out of our account each month leaving $2265.44

This is an improvement from a few years ago if you can believe that; we’ve since paid off THREE debts and have received a few pay increases.

 

Currently we are snowballing at least $750 a month into our debt automatically, but will randomly throw chunks as the month goes on.

We’re hoping that this blog keeps us in check so we can throw at least $1,000 additional toward our debt each month.

Now let’s high five since we just showed y’all our skeletons, that’s the appropriate thing to do, correct?

Debt free by 30

Hi there!

This blog is here for us to share with you our journey from being over 100k in debt in our early 20’s to becoming debt free before we turn 30.  Exciting, right?!

This won’t be one of those blogs where we grab you with a hook about how much we paid off in how little time only to reveal that we were millionaires, or lived with our parents, or won the megabucks, because that’s just nonsense.  However, if we were to win the megabucks it would certainly expedite this process…

Here’s how it will go:

We are a single income, active duty military family.  We feed 2 adults, 2 children and 2 dogs.  We’ve moved half a dozen times in the past 4 years.  We have normal life expenses,  normal budgets, normal needs, and crazy anger toward debt and the social norm that debt is.

We don’t aspire to be approved for the biggest mortgage we can afford.  We want to buy a house outright.

Follow along to see our financial accomplishments and inevitable trials, and our budgets.  (We will be sharing actual numbers).  We will also share with you the how.  Our habits, our hobbies, our splurges, and most important, the love we share in our family which is the root of it all.

We hope you stick around to cheer us on, and hopefully we’ll encourage you to become angry toward your debt and strive to be debt free too!

Purchase Dave’s book that inspired us to begin our journey here: The Total Money Makeover: Classic Edition: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness.  Bonus – It’s available for Prime!  ❤

“If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else.”

– Dave Ramsey