Your Financial Friend

The cost of living is getting higher all the time and most experts don’t see most prices going down any time soon.  The price of  most of the things we purchase is usually out of our hands – we pay what they charge. There are some things we can control, though. One of these things is the price of food. Now I don’t mean buying truckloads of food to get a lower price. I just mean we can save money by doing some things on our own.

Baking your own bread at home. is one of those things.  The price of bread is running between $3. 00 and $4.00 for a loaf of a name brand bread. Not too expensive for some people, but if you’re struggling to make ends meet, or you kids eat a loaf a day, that’s expensive!

Several years ago baking your own bread involved a long drawn-out process. Now, as we all know we can get a bread machine to do it for us. But many people still don’t realize is how easy it is to bake your own bread using a bread machine.  Some people don’t  have the time to learn. Some people don’t care to learn. Using these machines is really easy. You can find all about that on the internet. The hardest part is the planning, but once you’ve got everything and tried it once or twice, it can be done in about ten minutes.By the way, I baked the bread before my wife wrested the chore away from me.

OK. so what does it cost to make the bread?

We’re talking prices here and saving money so let’s look at what it costs to make a loaf of bread:

The bread machine is the major upfront cost. Look at all those wedding gifts you got and have nevr use, and you might even find a bread machine you don’t even know you had. Barring that, you have to buy one. Online, the cost of a Breadman bread Machine is between $51.9 to $59.99 online.  The cost is probably similar at your local Target or WalMart. This particular bread maker can make up to a two pound loaf of bread. That sounds like a chunk of change, but how much did your MP3 player, (substitute any “toy” here), cost? Did you save any money in your budget with it? A bread maker can last you many years and save you a ton of money.

The next biggest expense is probably the bread flour. It costs $2.44 for a five pound bag of white bread flour at WalMart. If you like making the bread and have a place to store the flour,  it costs $7.72 for a 25 pound of bread flour at Sam’s Club.

Other things you will need:

1. Yeast can cost about anywhere from $.75 per loaf to $.05 per loaf. Buy at least in two pound packages to save the most money.
2. Oil, other types of flour . . . Only if you want other kinds of bread.  Add another 10 – 20 cents for oil and whatever.

My wife says most bread recipes call for 4 cups of flour, on average, of whatever kind of flour she uses for the different kinds of bread she makes.

That means she can get 5 loaves of bread from one five pound bag of flour, (if she makes French or white bread), or 125 loaves of bread or more out of a 25 pound of flour. So at five loaves per five pound bag that’s about .50 for flour. If we include the price of  the bread machine for a year, at about $1.00 per week, that’s about:

• $1.85 for one loaf a week
• $1.35 per loaf for two loaves a week
• After a year the bread costs on average about $.50 per loaf

Are there any other benefits?

There are definitely some additional benefits of baking your own bread, which are probably better than saving the omoney:

• Fresh bread all the time
• No preservatives
• Make many different kinds of bread

The Bottom Line

So here’s the question: do you want to save money baking your own bread and get the other benefits above? That’s your choice, but it sure makes sense for us.

George

It’s about time again to talk a little about saving money; not the “let’s put more into the bank savings account“, savings, but everyday savings in buying “stuff”. Now “stuff ” doesn’t just mean toys, although there’s a lot of toys in our stuff. I mean for stuff we shop for every day.

I would bet that in today’s economy a lot of people are internet shopping. I’d bet they’re also looking for internet shopping deals. One type of shopping many people are not aware of is internet cash back shopping.

Not the credit card cash back, but cash back from the stores they’re doing their shopping in, through the website portal at which they’re doing the shopping.  They’re shopping at the same stores they usually shop in; big stores, like Target, Office Depot and Home Depot.  There’s several ways of saving big-time from these types of sites:

• Free to join – not like a shopping club
• Great prices from each store
• Coupons from many of the stores
• A percentage of their total, as a cash back
• By using a cash-back credit card
• By sharing their experience with other people and leading them to shop at the site.
  • The “referrer” then gets a percentage of cash back, above and beyond what the other person gets

A web portal actually does exist like that, and it’s called “GreenBackStreet.com”.  I’m sure there are other web shopping portals, but this is one I have known about and have been using for quite while now. By the way, I do get, as stated above,  a percentage of cash back, above and beyond what the other person gets. Is it self-serving? Maybe, but if it’s helping someone save money? And that person also gets a percentage of cash back, above and beyond what the person they referred to the site gets. (After all that, I’m glad there’s copy and paste.)!

Anyway, click here on greenbackstreet, and check it out. Let me know what you think.

George

The government just got finished with a bailout for a whole bunch (a technical term) of big banks and car companies. They gave them hundreds of billions of dollars, (a whole bunch), so they could become solvent and start lending money and selling cars again.

Now they’re back and asking fora whole bunch more money. And from what’s in the media none of them are solvent yet and it looks like they could still file for bankruptcy. I can’t see where any of them got better.

I do know one thing though, it was all done “For the children“. And for their children and probably their children after that. At least the taxes they’ll pay, to pay back the all the “money out of nowhere”, the government spent.

That’s our Change, and we Hope there’ s a way other than taxes on the back of our children, to pay for it all.

As the title asks and I’ll ask again, “What business got better”, that we spent hundreds of billions on?

So – wonder who caused Freddie & Fannie to fail?  The media and Dems say it was those Wascally Wepublians – or not?

One of my favorite sports is stream trout fishing. I’ll give you a little background about my experience trout fishing. I used to live in New in Jersey, where I diid most of my trout fishing. And most of it was done with my friend Art. NJ stocked a lot of trout in the Spring as did Pennslyvania and New York. So I guess you could say we fished a lot for stocked trout. But we also fished year round so a lot of the fish we caught may or may not have been for that year’s stocked fish.

Art and I caught a lot of fish. We didn’t keep but what the limit allowed, but we caught a lot of fish. We also mostly fished with bait, usually nightcrawlers and salmon egg depending on the time of the year. In the Spring we used a lot of salmon eggs, the rest of the year it was nightcrawlers.

Our tackle of choice was ultra-light spinning rods and reels, Fly rods were OK, but we caught a ton more fish with spinning tackle. Again, Art and I caught a lot of trout. What’s a lot? Anywhere from 22 to 54 trout a day. One day we caught 103 when our friend Fred was with us. Of course there were many days when we caught nothing or maybe one or two.

This background is so you get the idea that I’m not just some yahoo spouting off about trout fishing, that only read ablut it in a book. (I may be a yahoo, but of a different kind)

Here’s a story I did about how to catch Golden trout.

Fishing for Golden or Palomino trout is as easy or hard as fishing for Rainbow trout – with one difference, you may be able to see them a lot easier. That doesn’t mean they’re easier to catch though.  After all the Golden trout is really a Golden Rainbow trout. But if you can catch Rainbows, you can catch “Goldens”. I lived in New Jersey for many years and both New Jersey and Pennsylvania stocked Goldens/Palominos every Spring for a while. The best bait? In the spring it was Salmon eggs by far. Mike’s Lucky 7 was the brand I used.  I just did a search on Mike’s and found that they have salmon eggs in all different colors and flavors! I just used the orange ones.

The rod was a four foot ultra-light glass. The reel was an ultra-light spinning reel with four pound test.  I used one to four split shot ten to twelve inches up from the hook, depending on the current. Goldens are found usually in the head or tail of a pool or in the rapids. Cast your line upstream of where Goldens might be.  Here’s the parts that will differ from any other instructions you may encounter:

• Hold your rod tip up high
• Hold the line in the crook of your index finger – you need to be able to detect the slightest “tick” from your line. No matter how big the fish is, they only give you a “tick”!
  • It takes a while but you’ll soon be able to detect the “tick”
• When you feel the bite, lift your rod up high

You’ve probably hooked your first Golden, or even a regular Rainbow !

The rest of the year a half of a nightcrawler did the trick. If use a nightcrawler though, you have to let them chew on it a little longer or you’ll pull it out of their mouth.

This might sound like old advice from an old guy, because it is.  One more thing to address. I fished for stocked trout every Spring. but I also fished throughout the entire year, and we actually caught some Goldens most of the year. Stocked fish or not, Goldens are fun and this works.

Don’t worry – the true spirit of Christmas lives on!!  We had a huge apartment complex fire here in Minnesota a few days ago.  Thank God that not one person was even injured!  Even all their pets survived!  The thing is, though, every apartment burned down.  Everyone living there was now homeless.  it being the Christmas season,  all their Christmas trees and presents were also burned.  They only had the clothing on their backs.

The Red Cross and the Salvation Army, (my personsl favorite), pitched in and gave them all clothing and shelter.

Here’s the best part, in three flavors:

1. They had so many donations of toys, clothing in two days, etc., the apartment dwellers asked people to stop the donations ’cause they didn’t know what to do with them!
2. An anonymous donor gave One Million dollars to the displaced dwellers -  each of the renters got a check yesterday or today for over &17,000.
3. This is also unbelievable – the building owners gave them all their December rent and their their cleaning deposit.  This is one evil owner who accepted their responsibility and stepped up to the plate – without being asked.

Maybe this would have happened anyway.  but I think that this is the true spirit of Christmas.

George

At this time of the year, saving is a big topic on people’s minds.  One of the things I’ve found out is that Sam’s Club has a lot of closeouts and out of stocks that they don’t advertise.  You can find out what they are though:

Just look the price of something, and if it end in 1 cent, this is the last of the item either for now or the season or forever.  Example:

$28.81 or $1798.81

Hope that helps.

George

This is a time in our country where one is almost afraid to say “Merry Christmas” for fear of offending someone.  It is called “politically incorrect” to utter such words in public.

Political has to do with politics – all of politics, all political parties.  However, the term “politically incorrect” seems to only fit in situations where someone is offended, mostly liberals.  So maybe the term should be “Liberally Incorrect”!

Christmas has been around for a lot longer than the recent politicians. Over 2000 years as a matter of fact.  It seems that we shouldn’t be saying “Merry Christmas”, though even though that is the holiday

“Happy Holidays” seems to be the right greeting now.  What holiday are we celebrating?  CHRISTMAS.

So say it – “MERRY CHRISTMAS”, “MERRY CHRISTMAS”,”MERRY CHRISTMAS”.

Those are the right words – Get over it   Are you offended?  You know what – I don’t care!!!  I’M OFFENDED that people will stop me from saying “Merry Christmas”.  The US Constitution guarantees me the right to say those words.

“MERRY CHRISTMAS”