Frugal Friday File 2019, week 47...

I haven't felt very frugal lately, hence the lack of Frugal Friday posts.  But I'm transitioning, so I'm cutting myself some slack.

I took the new job with four goals in mind.  

1. Having group medical insurance available to me if Carey decides to retire now that he is of an age that he could.
2. Having a higher salary so that my Social Security income will be increased when I am able to start claiming it.
3. Putting as much money into retirement savings as possible before we have to start taking it out.
4. Saving funds for two large home improvement projects that will enhance the sale of our home when we decide to downsize: new roof and new floors.  (And doing them well ahead of planned sale--years down the road--so that we will get to enjoy them while we are still here!)

We are making a start on the objectives we can.

Successes:
1.  I've been putting money in savings for awhile now, knowing that our roof needs replacing.  Though we are looking at having it done in a year or so, Carey decided to get a bid on it so we have an idea of what we will be facing.  For a metal roof, they quoted a price of $75,000!  That is over two times what our first house cost...the whole house, not just the roof!  They said it was because with all the dormers/gables on our house, there would be a lot of forced waste of the metal roofing material.  For a standard roof, I believe the quote was for $45,000...still staggering.

Yeah.  I don't have anywhere near that much saved.  So I will continue saving from Carey's income as I have been...add a hefty percentage of my own income...and not rely on the first quote we got, but have a few other companies look at it and give us estimates!

2.  I set my 401k contribution at 25% of my salary (making sure that wouldn't put me over the annual maximum contribution for someone my age).  

3.  I found a free Kindle book that interested me.  Usually the free ones are not to my interest, but this one is an actual diary of a holocaust survivor.  I almost clicked buy on another, but passed on it, as the topic sounded appealing, but the reviews weren't great...and it was $1.99...so kept those 2 bucks in my pocket.
  

4.  Scraping the bottom of the pan with all of my makeup lately.  I believe I will use a pointy object to scrape the edges loose to make it more easily reached by my brushes.  I have replacements at the ready, but want to use up every bit first.

5.  Almost two weeks, and still on the same tank of gas.  I use more out for fun after work than I do getting to/from, but I've been running the grandgirls around a bit.  Loving the quick trip to work...especially when I look back on the days I used to have to fill up twice a week!

Saturday:  breakfast for dinner
Sunday:  Sunday family supper at Kasey & Beau's
Monday:  15 bean soup w/ Cheddar bay biscuits
Tuesday:  *chicken
Wednesday:  *Hot and Sour Soup
Thursday:  *Tex-Mex
Friday: leftovers

Number of individual servings made and frozen for work lunches this week:  2

(*not-frugal takeout or dinner out)