Crazy tips for surviving during C-13

[Slingerland]

Hi, everybody! I thought I'd check in, everything is on course for me. Looking at some of the posts, especially "Bankruptcy Suits Me", I thought I'd start a thread, sharing tips to survive the lean years of a chapter 13 payment plan.

Here's mine: I like to BBQ, especially ribs and pork shoulder. During football season, the local grocery stores compete for tailgating business. I can often get two 10 pound pork shoulders for $1-ish a pound! So I watched my pennies, saved and "splurged" and bought myself a Food Saver vacuum sealer from Wal-Mart.

So now, instead of cooking just one pork shoulder, I cook two at the same time. The second one (plus any leftovers from the first) are split into 1 pound bags, vacuum sealed and put in the freezer. I can pull out a bag when I need to make other things: shepherd's pie, pulled pork chili, sandwiches, etc. So for $20 in pork, $2 in seasonings, $5 in charcoal, I get the protein base for 16 meals! The vacuum sealer paid for itself almost immediately! (And yes, I buy charcoal when Home Despot and Lowes have a price war.)

So, what other ideas do you use to save money? Common-sense or off-the-wall are great!

[frogger]

Buy charcoal around the 4th of July, Labor Day, and Memorial Day. That's when it's always the cheapest!

[dmc-2008]

Great thread! I never pay more than 1.99 for meat, unless its salmon. I always shop the store ads for the best deals. I hear butter is going up so buy some and freeze it. Today I went to CVS and bought 2 large gatoraide and water for .26 cents because of rewards.

I never pay full price for anything. I get books at Friends of the library, i go to thrift stores when I need something, or discount dept stores for thing I wont buy used.

I always take my lunch and eat at home 99.9 % of the time.

I have learned ho to be frugal but i feel i woll learn more. I have 2 years to go!

[spidge]

My wife and would occasionally share one meal when we went out for dinner.
Even though I went nuts for a time I drove slower giving me an extra day of gas in the car.
Cancelled the unlimited data plan for the cell phones but am still getting the shaft in my opinion.
Cancelled the movie channels, but replaced it with Netflix.
Cancelled the home phone.
Do as much of my own work on the cars as I can.
Fired the gardener.
Brown bagged my lunch for a time, but eventually went back to eating out. Leave off the side like fries and you may lose weight too.
I have a small network of friends to help me keep my sanity by inviting me along to events and gatherings. They gave me many out of house experiences I otherwise would not have done on my own.
Shop at the thrift stores. I have quite a bit of thrift store clothes and some household items.

Nothing crazy in my opinion, but each one helped.

[tissa]

For cell phones look at pay as you go plans, I only pay $12.00 a month for 250mins, 250text messages and 25Meg of data. That's all I really need I'm not a teenager I don't need to be on the phone all day. My provider is Puppy Wireless which uses Verizon's network, some others are PagePlus, RingPlus, and TracPhone. There's many more options too it all depends what network you want to be on.

The advantage is no contract but no phone discounts so I buy used phones off of Ebay or other websites. And yes you can put an Iphone on one of these plans you just have to turn off data or get an app to monitor it so you don't go wild. Lots of places have Wi-Fi so it isn't hard to control if you are careful.