Price increases

 Blessings Darlings!

We had another hard freeze Sunday night.  It did a lot of damage to my sprouting Swiss Chard, which we were hoping to use for salad and cooking greens right quick.  Most of the plants survived, but there will be delays.
HOWEVER - the freeze didn't bother the wild spring greens.  Today on my 10 minute break at work I filled a gallon bag with some lovely dead nettle.  It will become a creamy green topping for pasta tomorrow night. 
This all matters because my job exists, but doesn't really pay a living wage.  And the price of food has jumped . . . and so has the price of propane.  We are down to the point that out propane tank has only about 12% of its capacity left, about 51 gallons.  So I ordered another 100 gallons.  Which is more than 3 times the price per gallon it was when we first moved in here, some 4 or 5 years ago.  I DID get a small discount for our first fill, I'm sure.  But with Covid induced price increases (due to workers missing work from illness and/or deaths, leading to supply problems) followed by supply pressure from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, added to the fact that the past month was 3 degrees F colder here than it had been one year before (and that year wasn't a warm one) - I'm going to be spending $500 to just get 100 gallons of propane.  100 gallons.  We usually use 400 gallons a year.  In November I spent $1400 on propane (we really were sucking fumes at that point, 4% left in the tank).  It looks as if I'll be spending at LEAST $2000 for propane this year.
I expect there will be a lot of weed - excuse me, wild crafted vegetable eating in our future. 
Frondly, Fern

It's a New Year!

Blessings Darlings!

Yup, a new year.  New chances.  Mostly the same old bills.

Here there has been a change - after months of complications, the Chubby Hubby is now getting Social Security benefits.  He's in his 70's - so since starting it after turning 70 he's getting a monthly deposit that looks HUGE in our eyes.  Between that and my job all of our 'normal' monthly bills will be able to be paid without panic ... for the first time since 1991 (when he left his job with regular paychecks to start his own business.) 

How do I know that we'll be able to pay all regular bills?  Because I made a budget, of course.  We all know that we should know what our monthly regular bills are, but making budgets out of those figures can be scary.  It can show what we're doing wrong (we, for example, are spending WAY too much of our income on rent so CH has space for his business.) 

So, yeah, go forth and see what you spend on stuff last year, so you know at least what minimums you'll be spending this year.

I'm sure that we'll be tweaking this budget.  It doesn't have 'correct' amounts for things like health insurance/meds in it since Bob will be switching to Medicare and paying for that and some of the additional plans for that, and our higher income has me no longer eligible for Medicaid so I'll be paying health insurance and higher medicine and doctor visit copays.

Still, it's a start.

The current budget doesn't have room for savings, tho', and we need to get that in order.  At one point last month our savings account had only $38 in it!  Remember - that's the account that would also be  bail money for some of you who read this regularly, so some of y'all have a vested interest in us having cash in that account!

So our cheapness .... uh ... frugality is going to continue, along with refining what we really spend. 

And, seriously - why is propane still so expensive now that oil prices have dropped?  We finally we able to get the propane tank filled today, and it's going to cost around $950!  What's up with that?

At any rate, this is what we're starting our year with.

Frondly, Fern.