It’s that time of year for our annual fall bills to come in so our savings are taking a hit. Fortunately, our AAA house insurance and California Fair plan only increased about $10o+. I can’t pay the whole thing at once so part will go on the cc till next month. Then Allstate was due and that went up over +$300. WoW!! Next will be property tax and which also went up but we can hold off on that till early Dec. And Barclay’s Triumph motorcycle insurance too.
So lots of BIG bills and it’s definitely stretching our limited finances.
In other areas though, groceries have only been about $160 and the $60 was splurging at Nugget market for fancy lunch stuff after my Velcade shot. I wanted to have some deli things available on Thursday and Friday so I didn’t need to think about lunches. Oh, and a piece of chocolate cake was involved too!!
Last night we had the leftover loaded baked potato soup and a salad for dinner. Tonight is going to be a homemade pizza.
I plan to swim tomorrow and then when I get home I’m going to pressure can Lentil soup. It should be an easy recipe as you don’t have to presoak the lentils or cook for 30 minutes.
This coming week I plan to try do these dinners;
*freezer spanakopita
*spaghetti sauce meat/ marinara sauce ( I want to make a big batch of meat sauce to freeze).
*panko shrimp and jasmine rice with veggies
*chicken noodle soup from the pantry( the soup base is pressure canned with out noodles, you add the noodles later)
*tofu something, maybe burgers or scramble or tacos
*mushroom frittata with salad
*falafel with tahini dressing and sourcream in pita bread
I think having a meal plan helps with keeping things running simply and smoothly. I don’t set a particular night for each meal, just when it fits in.
I still need to forage around the chest freezer and see what else needs to be used.
Tahoe Girl 
I hear you on the big bills. We just got our property tax which is all adjusted for our purchase except for the basis adjustment for the sale price of our previous home. That will be small and the total wasn’t a surprise but yikes! I like your approach to meal planning and did something similar last week and will again for this week. Enjoy the fall weather.
I budget year round for those big bills – I take the current year’s bill, add 10% to it in anticipation that it will go up, then, divide the new total by 12. Then, every month, I put that amount of money into savings to pay the bill when it is due. Every so often, there is a surprise increase, but, usually, the funds have been set aside when the bill comes due. I’m retired and live on a fixed income, by the way.
I think I’ll look at that for next year. I really want to cover annual bills with just our SS.