Tightwad's Savings

On Saturday I traveled to Georgia to speak about the Operation Christmas Child, so I took an opportunity to stop by Publix. I had coupons for Lara Bars and apple juice. My bars ended up free and I only paid $1 for a bottle of apple juice.


Although I don’t shop at Target as much as I used to, I also took an opportunity to stop by the store. I had $5 gift card from Starbucks promotion so it was time to redeem it. Because I have $1 off any size Tide, I purchased a few packets. I am planning to send my parents a care package around Christmas, so I purchased candy for them. Baby wipes ended up costing me less than $1 after sales and coupons.




All in all I had a lovely break from shopping with coupons.



Total spent: $10.06



Total saved: $16.08

Garden in October (Part I)

GUEST POST by Jennifer Iseli


“May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish the work of our hands for us – yes, establish the work of our hands.” Psalm 90:17

• Watch for frost warning and cover tender plants.

• Make sure all houseplants (or any tender plant you want to over winter) are brought back inside. Check for pests so that you don’t have any uninvited room mates!

• Dig and store tender bulbs like: dahlias, caladiums, cannas and tuberous begonias.

• Mow warm season grasses low and overseed with Rye (if wanted).

• Now is a good time to have your soil tested. If you wait too long, the ground will be hard (frozen) and you may not get the results of your test in time to add amendments or fertilizers before you plant your garden in the spring.

• Turn your compost pile. If you haven’t started one yet, use any old grass clippings, shrub trimmings, old annuals, and any other (disease free) debris to start one!

• Fall is a great time to plant trees and shrubs. It gives them time to recover from transplant shock and start to establish their root systems while the heat and drought aren’t as stressful. You can continue planting as long as the plants are used to outdoor conditions and the ground is not frozen.

• It’s time to plant cool season annuals such as pansies, snapdragons, ornamental cabbage and ornamental kale. If you cover mums and asters on nights when a frost is expected, they will bloom longer.

• Apply pre-emerge herbicide to control winter annual weeds.

• Collect any remaining seed that you may want for next year. Dry and save them in a cool, dark place.

• Consider planting a cover crop in your vegetable garden.

• Dig all sweet potatoes before the first frost.

• Wait for a hard frost before harvesting Brussels sprouts.

Russina Blini

My mom makes the world’s best blini (crepes). She can make crepes with butter, apples or meat. When my mom came to visit us this summer, she made lots of crepes with meat so that I could freeze it. My husband thinks that my mom’s blini are better than mine…perhaps it is because she spent years making them.

The first time I tried to make blini in high school, I ended up calling my mom at 12 am (her time) asking her why my blini are not coming out right. Of course she couldn’t tell me what I was doing wrong, because an ocean was between us. But I dumped everything out of my bowl and tried to make another batch. As Russian saying goes, “Pervui blin komam”. This literally means that the first crepe won’t come out right, meaning that the first time you try to do something, you won’t be good at if you don’t keep on practicing.

I had plenty of practice in college making blini, when I found out that my friend Lindsay loves crepes just as much as I do. So we would get together and make crepes. Now that I am married, when I want to get rid of milk that may be expiring in a day or two, I make crepes.

1 egg
1 tbs sugar
1 ts salt
1.5 drinking glass of milk**
1 drinking glass of flour *

*My mom brings Russian flour with her, when she comes to visit us. She doesn’t like the fact that American flour does not dissolve good. I have tried to make crepes with organic flour and found that it works just as good as Russian flour.

** Growing up in Belarus we didn’t have measuring cups. So when my mom cooks, she uses a drinking glass. The trick in this recipe is to use the same drinking glass to measure milk and flour.

In a mixing bowl add egg, sugar and salt. Mix everything very well.


Add milk to the mixture and once again whisk everything together.

Slowly add flour constantly whisking. Make sure that you whisk until flour is dissolved.

Make sure that your frying pan is hot. Gently coat the sides of the pan with butter and add ½ cup (our measuring cups) of crepe mixture in a frying pan. Do the same things as you would do with pancakes, make sure that mixture is spread evenly on the pan creating a very thin looking pancake.



When one side is cooked, which you should see brown dots on the bottom of the crepe, it is time to flip the crepe.

Once the crepe is cooked, I usually like to eat it hot with butter. I also like to dip my crepes in jelly for dessert like dish. You can be creative and add fruit or whatever your heart desires.




When I want a more filling meal, I fill the crepes with ground turkey mixture (you can add onion and boiled egg to the mixture). I then roll it up and when I am ready to eat I warm it up in a hot frying pan. It is best warmed up in a frying pan with butter. Cook a crepe until both sides are brown and crispy.

Saving money on meat

Buying meat to fix for dinner every single night of the week can break a tightwad’s budget in a matter of a second. It also does not help, when your husband is a meat lover. So when we started the journey of living frugal, I began to look at alternatives to save money on meat. I have tried to put less meat than the recipe calls for and add more veggies instead. However, as soon as we would finish eating dinner, my husband would kindly ask me to add more meat next time.

Because adding less meat to a dish did not work for us, I began to purchase meat that was reduced for quick sales. If I see that our grocery store is selling ground turkey for $1.99 a pack because the expiration date is due in a few days, I stock up. If I see a whole chicken reduced for quick sale, I stock up. Honestly, we haven’t had any problem with buying reduced for quick sale meat and we have been eating this way now for a good long while.
If I can’t use meat right away, I freeze it.

Since our freezer is pretty stocked up, I don’t have to buy meat every single week. Once we start running low on meat, I am back on the mission of stocking up our freezer. I found that I can also e-mail companies directly asking for coupons. Tyson was pretty generous in sending coupons, which allowed me to purchase a whole chicken for $2+ after the sale and coupons. Chef’s Requested has sent us previously coupons and my husband is now hooked on their hand trimmed marinated steaks.

Because Chef’s Requested steaks taste so unbelievable good and my husband can eat the whole package, which is 3 steaks (a size of my palm), in one setting, I decided to find a way to stretch his meat eating pleasure and the dollar. When my mom was visiting us during the summer, she had a brilliant idea of cutting the steaks lengthwise and make 3 steaks turn into 6. She would then use meat tenderizing tool to make the beef tender. After dipping the steaks in eggs and then cover in flour, she would pan fry the steak until they are golden brown. Trust me the steak would come out so wonderfully tasty.



Since Daniel was in a military camp, when my mom multiplied the meat by cutting it lengthwise, I decided to try the trick with Daniel. I actually cut the steak lengthwise 3 times, thus making two packages of 6 steaks turn into 18 thinly cut steaks. The result? Our tummies did not know the difference if we were eating two ten ounce steaks or three 4 ounce steaks. By having two steaks thinly sliced, instead of two steaks full size, I found my self just as full and satisfied. In the same way, Daniel felt just as satisfied eating 4 thinly sliced steaks instead of eating 3 full size steaks (which makes 9 thinly sliced steaks). This trick allowed us to stretch a dollar without much sacrificing.

How do you save money on meat?

I am ready for snow...I think

Growing up I dreaded winters, because the minute you look outside the ground was covered in snow. Sure, watching beautifully white snow glistening as soon as a ray of sunshine hits it is fun. However, after a short while walking in the snow to a near by bus station and waiting for the bus to arrive while it is freezing cold outside is not so fun.

After I moved to the US (south), I was shocked when schools were canceled at the sight of a first snowflake. I laughed out loud when I heard about people rushing to the grocery store to clear the shelves and stock up on bread and milk. I never understood why bread and milk. When I got married and moved to the mountains, I was kind of hoping that I would see snow more often, but I was wrong. Last year meteorologists promised snow in our area too many times to even bother counting. I came to conclusion that every time a grocery store would like to get rid of old inventory, all they have to do is ask a weather man to announce that it would snow. In a matter of one hour the shelves are in need of some serious restocking.

As soon as the shelves are empty, you know that the roads are clear too. Occasionally when it does snow, it takes time for the roads to be scraped and sprinkled with dirt/salt. So it is understandable why every single person stays home, when it actually snows. Safety must come first!

Talking about safety! Last year I learned that my car has anti break locks (I think that is what it called). While I was still at work, it started to snow. So I was very careful going up the mountain. I finally made it (almost made it) to the house. When I was getting ready to turn in to our driveway, I let my foot hit the breaks. Big mistake! I kept on pressing the breaks only to find myself freaking out because my car kept on going. The following thoughts ran through my mind, “I can either hit the ditch or Daniel’s car to help me stop…I guess the ditch would be better”. As I started to force my steering wheel to turn, my car finally stopped perpendicular to the incoming traffic. Thankfully we live way up the mountains and everyone was already at home sipping hot chocolate, so no cars on the roads.

I somehow managed to find my way to our house and park my car. Frantically I told my husband that my breaks need replacement because they were broke. He decided to take my car for a drive only to inform me later that my breaks were fine and it was the anti lock system that made me so scared. So much for warning me that I had the stupid system in my car that almost forced me to use the ditch as my stopping force.

My hope is that we will see snow this year and I learned the following trick just in case we will have so much snow that it would require Daniel (not me) to use the shovel to clear the driveway. In order to make snow shoveling an easy task, spray the shovel with cooking spray and the snow will fall off the shovel. How cool is that? Now I just have to sit and way for the weather man to make another promise that it would finally snow.

It is almost vacation time!

To celebrate my accomplishment of finishing MBA program in October, my husband and I made plans to go on vacation the weekend I after I finish my last class. At first we wanted to take a trip to Montana, because we thought that is would be a beautiful place to visit. For some reason I have been fascinated with picturesque view of rolling hills of Montana and country lifestyle. I can just close my eyes and picture passing beautiful farms on the way to the hotel.

Well, my eyes were quickly opened when I started to research the cost of staying at the hotel, airline tickets, car rental and on and on the list goes. Before you know our 5 days trip would cost up almost $1500. Oh boy! We sure were not planning to spend that much money, so we decided to talk it over our wants of going to Montana. Do we really want to spend that much money for 5 days of vacation? I don’t think so. Can we find a home for $1500 instead? Absolutely!

So instead of just scratching the idea of going on vacation all together, we decided to think of inexpensive ways to go somewhere where we could relax and spend quality time together. In a matter of a few days I approached Daniel and asked what he thought about going to Hilton Head for 5 days to visit my American family. Since Daniel has never visited my family’s new home, he welcomed the idea with thumbs up. My American mom has been inviting us to visit them for months and the timing now seemed perfect. The house, which looks like it just came from one of the HDTV shows, located near the beach so Daniel is super excited about going finishing. I look forward to spending my time reading books that have nothing to do with business. And both of us are looking forward to spending time with the family.

At the end, the only money that we would have to spend on this vacation would be for gas. We will have a great time relaxing all while spending treasured time with the family.

How do you save money on vacation?

Lead Me to the Cross

When we moved to the mountains, Daniel and I quickly became friends with Craig and Vickie. Daniel would go fishing with Craig and I would spend my time talking to Vickie on the phone. The age difference never stood between us, since the sisterhood in Christ united us. I often would share my hurting heart for my parents’ salvation with Vickie, only to receive a sweet word of encouragement that was grounded in the Word of God.

I recall a time when “He is Mighty to Save” song came on the radio and Vickie with a sweet spirit said to me, “Every time this song comes on the radio, I pray for your mom and dad’s salvation”. It was during the season of life that every time I heard this song, the Holy Spirit within me would dance.

My Spirit was rejoicing in the fact that I had a sister in Christ that took her time to uplift my parents in prayer and used a song as a reminder to pray. I was also rejoicing in the fact that my God is MIGHTY to save, because nothing is impossible to Him. The Word of God says, "The LORD your God is with you, He is Mighty to save." (Zeph 3:17) The thoughtful act of my friend’s prayer made me realize that I can do the same thing for those around me. I can ask the Lord to bring a specific person to my mind during the time that I am listening to a Christian radio station and lift them up in prayer. In that I can continue to lift them up every time I hear the same song.

Do you have a friend who is in need of a prayer? Find a song associated with his or her circumstance and lift a friend up in pray every time you hear the song. I can promise that your friend would be forever grateful!

“I thank my God every time I remember you.” ~Phil 1:3