Hi Dear Folk,
Counting down to the weekend, as I previously mentioned it is a three day weekend for me, what luxury. The Boy got off on the road by about 11:00 AM, I had long been at work. He is sharing a ride back to Ithaca with a friend and all his entourage of things. I feel he is cutting it fine as always as he is meant to be at work by 4:00 PM and it is a four and a half hour ride up there, but he'll learn. He can just dump his stuff in the hallway and make a mad dash down the hill on his bike if it is not too icy.
I was reading different Frugal Blogs, and thought how we've always been pretty frugal and at other times very frugal because of necessity, the reason I'm stating this, because it made me think of the boy. Right before the holidays, he phones us and says how do you cook a ham? So we explained. He went and bought himself a spiral cut ham on sale, which was actually already cooked, he packaged it out and thought that the per pound price worked out to be very good and it was. He pretty much cooks all his own food and packs his own lunches for college.
He works at a restaurant and therefore can eat for half price, but he made a cost comparison on this and said he can make a meal for $2.00 and there the cheapest meal would cost him $7.00. Sometimes he'll treat himself to a desert, he says the peanut butter sandwich deep fried is to die for, at his age you can eat that, and I always say anything fried tastes good. So I think we did well on training our twenty year old son to live frugally.
Clothes wise he reminds me of the French, because he buys little and good and finds it on eBay, and keeps it for years. At least I think that's what the French do. All the French student teachers we had in High school seemed to do that and I've heard that too. For instance I bought him a Fossil tweed jacket on sale when he was about fifteen, it was a great buy, and he still wears it and it still looks good.
I did make the pot of soup the other day. Mr. B. staggered down to the kitchen and put some chicken on to boil and I did the rest when I got home. Using staples and left overs I found in the fridge, onions, celery, carrots, potatoes and green beans, I added some stock cubes to give a little more taste and took all the chicken off the bone and cut it up, adding it back into the soup and boiling it all up. And very tasty it was too. How good it feels to have a nice big pot of soup to come at.
Did I mention a happy little thrift find. I was standing in the thrift last Friday evening, I had stopped in after work and Mr. B. caught me there, that was before he got ill and he said "what are you smiling at?" I said I just found a Royal Winton cup and plate. The ones where the plate has a little indentation and is used as a plate/saucer, what's the proper name for them? It has a mid blue wide border with flowers, I so love this and it was not over priced as some things in there are.
When my mum first got married she started collecting the very popular Royal Winton pattern with the flowers all over, she was going to collect the whole dinner and tea service bit by bit, I'm talking mid fifties, but dear grandma, mum in law, who if I say so myself was very bossy, said "what are you wasting your money on?" So mum only ever collected an English set of six for tea, plus the sugar and creamer and I don't think she ever bought the teapot unless that was long broken before I was aware of beautiful china. In any case I have the few remaining pieces. Grandma what were you thinking of?
Have a great weekend.
Christy
Counting down to the weekend, as I previously mentioned it is a three day weekend for me, what luxury. The Boy got off on the road by about 11:00 AM, I had long been at work. He is sharing a ride back to Ithaca with a friend and all his entourage of things. I feel he is cutting it fine as always as he is meant to be at work by 4:00 PM and it is a four and a half hour ride up there, but he'll learn. He can just dump his stuff in the hallway and make a mad dash down the hill on his bike if it is not too icy.
I was reading different Frugal Blogs, and thought how we've always been pretty frugal and at other times very frugal because of necessity, the reason I'm stating this, because it made me think of the boy. Right before the holidays, he phones us and says how do you cook a ham? So we explained. He went and bought himself a spiral cut ham on sale, which was actually already cooked, he packaged it out and thought that the per pound price worked out to be very good and it was. He pretty much cooks all his own food and packs his own lunches for college.
He works at a restaurant and therefore can eat for half price, but he made a cost comparison on this and said he can make a meal for $2.00 and there the cheapest meal would cost him $7.00. Sometimes he'll treat himself to a desert, he says the peanut butter sandwich deep fried is to die for, at his age you can eat that, and I always say anything fried tastes good. So I think we did well on training our twenty year old son to live frugally.
Clothes wise he reminds me of the French, because he buys little and good and finds it on eBay, and keeps it for years. At least I think that's what the French do. All the French student teachers we had in High school seemed to do that and I've heard that too. For instance I bought him a Fossil tweed jacket on sale when he was about fifteen, it was a great buy, and he still wears it and it still looks good.
I did make the pot of soup the other day. Mr. B. staggered down to the kitchen and put some chicken on to boil and I did the rest when I got home. Using staples and left overs I found in the fridge, onions, celery, carrots, potatoes and green beans, I added some stock cubes to give a little more taste and took all the chicken off the bone and cut it up, adding it back into the soup and boiling it all up. And very tasty it was too. How good it feels to have a nice big pot of soup to come at.
Did I mention a happy little thrift find. I was standing in the thrift last Friday evening, I had stopped in after work and Mr. B. caught me there, that was before he got ill and he said "what are you smiling at?" I said I just found a Royal Winton cup and plate. The ones where the plate has a little indentation and is used as a plate/saucer, what's the proper name for them? It has a mid blue wide border with flowers, I so love this and it was not over priced as some things in there are.
When my mum first got married she started collecting the very popular Royal Winton pattern with the flowers all over, she was going to collect the whole dinner and tea service bit by bit, I'm talking mid fifties, but dear grandma, mum in law, who if I say so myself was very bossy, said "what are you wasting your money on?" So mum only ever collected an English set of six for tea, plus the sugar and creamer and I don't think she ever bought the teapot unless that was long broken before I was aware of beautiful china. In any case I have the few remaining pieces. Grandma what were you thinking of?
Have a great weekend.
Christy
Yes train them about money matters when young and it never leaves them. We did that with ours. Martin Lewis (money saving expert) has been campaigning for schools to teach budgeting and other money issues in school and it is being included now. One of them most important things they can learn. I don't think my arteries would cope with the peanut butter sandwich but it sounds good. I think you will have to build an extension for all your new china. Still you can always squeeze one more piece in.
ReplyDeleteYou have taught your son some very wise lessons. My sos spends more than the rest of us combines. He is at school to but has no time to cook as he is training for swimming all the time. I hope he will learn to be better when he earns his own money.
ReplyDeleteHugs,
Meredith
Hope you're enjoying your 3 day weekend. Sounds like you did a great job teaching your son the value of a dollar. We don't have many thrift stores where I live but fall and summer bring lots of tag sales and you never know what kind of bargains you'll find.
ReplyDelete