When I very first started blogging in 2013, I would often have “debt discussions” with my early blog readers. At the time, my husband and I had  just decided to pay off our law school debt as fast as we could. Since we had six figures of debt, we knew it was going to be a long haul. Paying off debt was always on my mind and I was happy to talk about our goal and progress with anyone who would listen.

Not everyone is as open and willing to talk about debt with their in person friends as I was. Others who had similar financial struggles and goals were looking for a place to talk about debt. Having debt discussions with my blog readers helped us all stay focused on our financial goals.

Even though I don’t talk about debt as much as I used to, I still can’t help but see the financial analogies in my daily life experiences, so today I’m going to share a recent one with you.

My shoulders

I have been having some problems with my shoulders since early last fall. I knew there was a problem, but I put off seeing a doctor thinking that there was probably nothing he could do about it anyway.

I had waited long enough that my annual physical was coming up so I planned to bring it up with my doctor. He ordered x-rays and sent me to physical therapy.

Never having done physical therapy before, I had low expectations that it could actually help me. I was delighted to have a physical therapist who was very positive and completely confident that she could help me. I didn’t realize how doubtful I had become, until I was exposed to her radiant confidence.

Maybe healing was possible!

She gave me a bit of homework, which I was happy to do, especially with the physical therapist’s confidence that it would help me.

It’s been about a month of weekly physical therapy and I am in a great place! I rarely feel the pain that I used to, though I still avoid certain movements and compensate to avoid potential pain (habits I acquired to try to avoid pain for months before I went to the doctor).

Now my shoulders have improved enough that it’s easy to fall into laziness and neglect doing the things that I know will help me reach my goal of being completely healed.

What my shoulders have to do with your finances

As I reflected on the shoulder experience I am currently living, I couldn’t help but think that it’s kind of like the journey to financial peace that many people have.

Maybe you have a financial pain that has been bothering you for a long time. Maybe it’s debt or bad spending habits. You don’t want to get help or address the problem because you just can’t envision that anything could really ever change.

Then you come across a guide who can help you and knows that healthy finances are actually completely within your reach. She is so positive and confident that you start to believe that maybe financial peace really is possible. Even for you!

You start to follow the plan she has outlined and you have success! After a while you decide that maybe where you’ve gotten is good enough. After all, you’re in a much better place than you started, so you can’t complain.

Still you know if you continue to follow the plan, diligently sticking with the “prescribed exercises,” a full financial recovery is totally possible. Why settle for less?

The prescribed exercises in my case were printed out for me by my physical therapist and given to me along with the stretch bands needed to complete them.

The equivalent in our financial analogy could be budgeting, controlling spending, and sticking with your debt payoff plan.

Don’t give up!

You’ve come so far and overcome so many setbacks.

You’ve developed new habits and learned new skills.

You’ve made progress and had a taste of what is possible.

Don’t stop now. Don’t settle for “good enough.”

In case you can’t tell, I’m absolutely preaching to myself as well.

And I’m convinced! I’m off to do my full regimen of exercises right now.

What about you?

What do you need to recommit to doing to achieve the financial peace that you want? Let’s do this together!

If you need help making a plan to get started on your debt-free journey, check out my Smash Debt Guide.

You’ve got this!

The post My Shoulders and Your Budget appeared first on Six Figures Under.

The closer our kids get to leaving the nest, the more we are prioritizing family travel and adventure together. Our oldest will graduate from high school in just two years, so we are eager to take some of the trips that have been on our short list for a long time.

If you read our March Family Budget Update, then you know that we made a recent decision to budget for a big trip together this summer in addition to the trip we already have planned for Spring Break 2025.

A friend recently gave me this financial advice for traveling: “Just come up with how much everything will cost, then double it. That should be about right.”

No way. Not me!

In any travel, cost is a real factor. For me, thinking through all the expenses and plans well in advance allows us to prepare financially for the trip so we can just enjoy ourselves when we get there, without that nagging feeling that maybe we shouldn’t be spending so much, or that surprise total at the end that leaves us scrambling to cover unplanned expenses.

In this article, I want to walk you through my process for planning and budgeting for a big trip like this. I am meticulously planning our itinerary and travel so that we know precisely how much money to save before we go.

An important reminder

I should start by saying that these trips require some sacrifice on our part. We didn’t just come into new money that allows us to take this trip.

Right now we are prioritizing family travel over many other things that we could be spending money. For example, we would really like to replace the flooring in our house. Our carpet is thrashed and hideous. Every time we have someone new over, I am embarrassed by how ugly and stained our carpet is. A few months ago we explored options for flooring and got our house measured for cost estimates.

Ultimately, we decided that making memories with our kids while they are still at home is more important to us than having nice things like beautiful floors, decent furniture, and more-than-basic cars.

Helping in that decision is the fact that we still have lots of little people who are especially hard on floors and furniture.

I think it’s important to remember about the trade-offs. When I am keenly aware of our awful old carpet every time someone comes over, I remind myself that I am choosing to spend money on travel right now instead of home improvement. When I remind myself about that tradeoff, I don’t feel bad for myself and I don’t regret my choice at all.

WHERE we’re going this summer and WHY

A few months after Mike and I were married, we spent 4 months living in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala for an internship with LDS Employment Services. We taught a career workshop and a self-employment workshop to (mostly) young adults who were getting started in the working world. We also traveled to different parts of the country to train local volunteers so they could continue teaching the workshops after we had returned home. We quickly came to love the country and the people.

That was 18 years ago!

For years we have planned to return and take our kids to Guatemala so they can meet our friends there and get to know this beautiful country. We have been pretty busy during these past 18 years, but we know that once the kids start leaving home, getting them all together for a family trip will be even more complicated.

I have looked at airfare several times in the past years, but was never ready to make the trip happen. A few weeks ago, I peeked again this summer and was pleasantly surprised. That got me excited and I started to look seriously into making this trip happen this summer.

When we were in Guatemala in 2006, we didn’t have much in the way of extra funds for travel. We took advantage of a few opportunities for additional touristy-type travel after finishing our internship, but we barely scratched the surface of what Guatemala has to offer.

We decided that taking all 6 of our kids (ages 4, 6, 9, 12, 14, 16) would be a little overwhelming for many reasons, so we decided to take only the oldest three.  The oldest three have each studied Spanish, so the trip will be more meaningful for them.

The three little ones aren’t missing out entirely. They will fly to their grandparents’ house for two weeks, so they aren’t too disappointed about missing out on Guatemala.

Dates and Flights

The first step for planning our trip was setting the dates and getting flights. When I had initially looked at flights (before we had even decided to take the trip), I found flights in the $300-$400 range. At first I was prioritizing the price of the flight, trying to plan the dates for the least expensive flight, but those dates didn’t work for my parents.

I didn’t want to give up the idea of going this summer, so I continued to look at alternate dates and found even better dates that would allow for a longer trip. I looked for a more convenient (but still well-priced) flight that would have a layover at my parents’ airport so we could personally hand off our three younger kids.

Knowing that we wanted to see some of the sites in northern Guatemala, I looked into flying into Belize to start out our trip. If we flew in and out of Guatemala City, we would have to take another round trip flight up to Tikal to see that area. By starting out in Belize we can cut out a leg of the in-country flight.

I made a spreadsheet to compare the options for two different sets of dates then showed Mike the options. He voted for the option that gave us a longer time in Guatemala. I also compared the cost for the lowest tier of service and the tier that allows you to change/refund your flights and choose your own seat assignment.

For our own peace of mind when investing this much money into a trip, we wanted our tickets to be changeable/refundable in case something came up. And, for the comfort of our littlest travelers, being able to choose seats together sounded like a good idea. We debated this additional cost and decided that for those two reasons, it was worth it to us to pay the extra $730.

Round Trip– From Home to Grandparents (x3) $805

One-Way– From Home to Belize (x5) $1,300

One-Way– From Guatemala to Home (x5) $1,455

Total cost: $3,560 (5 people to Guatemala and 3 people to Phoenix)

Looking at it on a per person basis, that breaks down to $268 round trip for the kids going to Grandma’s house and $551 round trip for each of us going to Guatemala.

Because we had already started saving for our Spring Break 2025 trip, we had money already set aside that we could immediately put toward our flights. Had we not already been saving for our 2025 trip, we probably wouldn’t be making this 2024 trip happen.

—-Budget for Flights: $3,560—

Activities for our Guatemala Itinerary

Once we knew the dates of our trip and had the flights secured, I got started planning where we would go and what we would do. This was the fun part! I listed all of the places we wanted to visit and things we wanted to do, then started fitting them into the schedule based on their location. Some things needed to be on certain days (like going to church in Quetzaltenango to see our friends where we used to live), so we put those things on the calendar first and worked more flexible activities around them.

If I were planning for activities in the United States I could easily look up the admission prices to the various parks, museums, and sites and then dig deeper to see how to get the best deal for each one, like I did planning our San Diego family adventure a couple of years ago.

In Guatemala, it is wise to pay for not just the admission but for a guide to take you around, especially when we’re talking about going into the jungle. While there will inevitably be many willing “guides” near the Mayan ruins and other sites, we’re planning to book tours ahead of time with reputable companies. There are tour guides available for every budget. Since we will also need transportation to the various sites, in many cases we have found tours that include travel.

Here are paid activities that we plan to do in Guatemala. I added a link to the Wikipedia article for each one if you are curious. The cost listed is the total for 5 of us.

Xunantunich Mayan ruins in Belize – $100– includes transportation, entrance fee, and tour

Cahal Pech Mayan ruins in Belize – $25– includes entrance fee only

Yaxha Mayan ruins in Guatemala – $163– includes transportation, entrance fee, and tour

Tikal Mayan ruins in Guatemala – $178– includes transportation, entrance fee, and tour

Fuentes Georginas volcanic hot springs- $100 includes transportation and entrance fee

2-day backpacking trip up Acatenango volcano to see Volcan de Fuego – $320 includes transportation, entrance fee, guide, camping equipment, and food

Semuc Champey turquoise pools and caves in Guatemala- $128 includes transportation, entrance fee, and tour.

In addition to these, we will be visiting people and places that don’t cost money like the Quetzaltenango Guatemala Temple and the Coban Guatemala Temple. I am also adding in $150 to the budget for anything else we might have time to squeeze in.

Total cost of Planned Activities: $1,014

Extra for unplanned activities: $150

—-Budget for Activities: $1,164—-

Accommodations

We will be traveling all over Guatemala (and a little of Belize, too), so we will be staying in many different hotels, hostels, and Airbnbs. Once I nailed down the flow of our itinerary, I started looking for where to stay.

In most parts of Guatemala, the price of accommodations can be significantly less than most places in the US. We could have booked really nice places for what a mediocre place would cost here, but I was careful not to get carried away. With two weeks of nights to book, even a “great deal” adds up, and we are mostly just going to be sleeping in these places.

Location was a more important factor than price in choosing where we stayed. Since we will either need to walk or get a ride everywhere (we aren’t renting a car), it is important to us to be situated within walking distance of the bus terminal or wherever we are visiting.

I was careful to book places that were easy to cancel in case our plans change. Here are our planned stays:

San Ignacio, Belize (hostel)- 1 night – $85

Flores, Guatemala (hotel)- 2 nights –  $162

Guatemala City (apartment)- 1 night – $55

Quetzaltenango (Airbnb)- 3 nights- $240

Antigua (hostel)- 3 nights- $114

Lanquin (hostel)- 1 night- $56

Coban (Airbnb)- 1 night- $84

Guatemala City (Airbnb)- 1 night- $64

Estimating the budget for this portion of our trip was pretty easy since everything is booked in advance. I’m still adding in $100 of wiggle room to cover any changes depending on the exchange rate. Most of these places will be either paid in cash in Quetzales or charged to our credit card in foreign currency. While Google is handy for estimating the exchange rate for making our budget, credit cards usually use a less favorable exchange rate in reality.

Total for booked accommodations: $860

Wiggle room: $100

—-Budget for Accommodations: $960—-

Travel within Guatemala

We have absolutely no desire to rent a car and drive in Guatemala. That crazy driving is just too far out of our comfort zone, not to mention the dangerous roads and possible encounters with highway robbers.

Thankfully there are many other options for getting around. If you read about our family trip to Washington DC, you know we aren’t afraid of relying completely on public transportation to get around. Guatemala takes that spirit of adventure to another level!

To travel within Belize and Guatemala we will be using everything from taxis and Uber to “chicken buses” and microbuses. We will also take a one way flight from northern Guatemala (Tikal) to Guatemala City. We will mostly use various buses. The downside of taxis and Ubers is that with 5 of us traveling together, we would require two cars every time, which doubles the cost and means we have to split up.

I researched the various bus routes and making notes of prices, pick up locations, and schedules. Thankfully, there’s a lot more information availalbe online than there was 18 years ago! I won’t bore you with all of the details, just the totals. The totals below often represent several different modes of transportation. The cost listed is the total for all 5 of us.

Belize City Airport to San Ignacio $90 (Taxi – Charter bus)

San Ignacio to Flores $135 (Taxi – Chicken bus, includes $100 tax for leaving Belize)

Flores to Guatemala City- $225 (Flight – Uber)

Guatemala City to Quetzaltenango- $60 (Charter bus)

Quetzaltenango to Antigua – $70 (Charter bus – Chicken bus)

Antigua to Lanquin- $110 (Chicken bus- Charter bus – Chicken bus)

Lanquin to Coban- $25 (Chicken bus)

Coban to Guatemala City- $70 (Charter bus)

Guatemala City to Airport- $15 (Uber)

These are just the cost estimates for getting from city to city, but don’t include all the travel within each place (from door to door). We will surely do a lot of walking (sometimes that’s just easiest), but will also take other transportation as needed. I’m adding in $150 of wiggle room to our transportation budget to account for extra travel or difference in actual cost (vs what I found from my internet research of mostly blogs).

Total estimated major travel with country: $800

Additional wiggle room: $150

—-Budget for In-country Travel: $950—-

Food

If you have read about our other family travel adventures, you know that we don’t budget much (if anything!) for food. Eating out is expensive and with a big family, the cost adds up quickly! Since eating out isn’t a part of our normal lives, we don’t do it on vacation either and no one knows the difference. When we are traveling, we try to stick to our normal food budget. We love staying at Airbnbs where we can easily cook for ourselves to keep food costs down.

The food for our trip to Guatemala will be different than our normal family trips for several reasons:

• We won’t be staying places with kitchens for most of the trip. In fact, many of our stays will be for just one night.
• We will have a very full schedule that won’t leave much time for home cooking.
• From our previous experience, we know that finding ingredients we are familiar with can be really hard.
• We want our kids to experience authentic Guatemalan food.
• Prepared food is not prohibitively expensive there like it is in the US.

Now, does that mean we will be eating out for every meal? No. I expect we will buy prepared food once or twice a day on days other than Sunday. We can buy bread and produce from the market to eat for most breakfasts and lunches. We are pretty easy to please.

We will also have to buy all of our water since the tap water in Guatemala is not always safe to drink.

For our budget, I’m figuring 500 Quetzales per day (100Q per person per day). In American money that’s about $65 per day  which is $13 per person per day. I really think that will be plenty!

—-Budget for Food: $845—-

Gear

When I first started thinking about this trip, I envisioned packing light with each of us taking just a traditional carry-on and a backpack. It wasn’t long after I started planning that I realized that would be a terrible idea.

We will be staying in 8 different locations and riding on cramped buses to get between them (with travel of up to 10 hours at times) and walking across towns to get to bus stations. Sometimes we will be checking out of one place then going on tours all day before traveling to our next accommodations. We won’t have anywhere to stash even a small suitcase while we are galivanting around the country. We need to pack even lighter than that, which is fine, but requires some additional gear.

Our new plan is just backpacks. I did some research on the carry-on size maximum and found 40L size backpacks that will work. They are a few inches too tall, but slightly smaller in other dimensions, so they can be squashed if their size is challenged.

We will be in Guatemala during the rainy season, so it could be potentially raining everyday. While trash bags can work in a pinch, I wanted backpacks that had rain covers included.  We already have one backpack that should work. After reading reviews, I chose these backpacks for the other four.

Now that we are packing for two weeks in a carry-on backpack, we have to be careful about everything we’re bringing. For now I’ll just mention some of the main gear items we are budgeting for.

40L Backpacks – $40 x 4 = $160 (we chose 4 different colors of these affordable backpacks with excellent reviews)

Waterproof hiking boots – $65 x 5 = $325 (so far we have purchased these, these, these, and these)

Lightweight microfiber towels – $30 (After lots of comparing of sizes and prices, I got this set)

Lightweight hiking pants – $40 x 4 = $160 (so far we have 2 pairs of these for Mike and our oldest son)

Money belts – $7 x 3 = $21 (we bought 3 of these since we already have 2 from our first Guatemala trip)

Battery pack– $36 (We got this battery pack to be able to keep phones and headlamps charged)

Mosquito net head covers for adventuring in the jungle- $13 (We bought this 6-pack)

Total estimate for the above items: $745

I will add an extra $155 to cover additional clothing or toiletry needs that come up as we are packing.

—-Budget for Gear: $900—-

Spending/Giving

We really aren’t sure what sort of souvenirs we will buy, but we expect there will be some things. We will set aside $500 for spending.

We also want to set aside some money that we can use to give as we travel. I know we will want to give, so having money already planned for this will allow us to give without worrying that it will cause problems with our budget. We will budget $300.

—-Budget for Spending/Giving: $800—-

Total Trip Budget

To summarize, here are the current budgeted expenses for our summer 2024 Trip to Belize and Guatemala:

$3,560 — Airfare (includes $805 for 3 youngest to fly to Grandma’s house)

 $1,164 — Activities

   $960 — Accommodations

    $950 — Travel within country

    $845 — Food

   $900 — Gear

   $800  — Spending/Giving

TOTAL: $9,179

Right now we are looking at nearly $9,200 for 5 of us (including the 3 younger kids flying to Grandma’s house). I prefer to err on the side of slightly over-budgeting, so I am actually expecting to  stay below this budget.

After the trip, I will do a follow up post detailing our actual spending on our Guatemalan Adventure so that we can see how it compares with our informed budget plan.

I love having such a detailed trip budget rather than just an arbitrary amount that we hope will cover our trip’s expenses. A thoroughly planned trip budget like this lets us know how much money we need to set aside between now and when we take our trip. When we are traveling we don’t have to stress about how the cost of things is adding up because we anticipated our costs ahead of time.

I hope it was helpful to get a sneak peek (okay, it was more than just a peek!) into what goes on in my brains (and many spreadsheets) when I plan a big trip.

I should also mention that I think this part of planning is FUN, not a chore. I like having all of my financial ducks in a row, so budgeting for a trip this way is my jam. I also know that future Stephanie will be able to relax and enjoy herself so much more without having money worries hanging over her.

How do YOU budget for trips?

When you budget for big family trips, do you budget meticulously or just save a certain total amount?

Have you been to Central America? What travel tips do you have?

The post How we budget for an epic international family trip appeared first on Six Figures Under.

Sometimes saving money just requires asking a simple question or two. With very little effort you can be saving money on your monthly bills and beyond. In many cases it is just a matter of asking to pay less.

It never hurts to ask, right? The worst that can happen is… nothing, which is exactly what is going to happen if you don’t ask.

How much money could you be saving?

Today I’m sharing four examples that teach four principles about how simple questions can save loads of money. I would love to hear your experience in being brave enough to ask potentially awkward questions in order to save money.

Rates are Negotiable

My first experience with reducing bills was when my husband and I were first married.  After being married for only four months we left the country for an international internship.  We moved out of our apartment and put our things in storage.  Naturally we called to cancel our utilities, including our land line phone.

My husband explained to the phone company representative that we were moving out of the country so we needed to cancel our phone service.   As soon as the representative heard “cancel” he kept lowering the price to entice us to stay with their company!

We though it was pretty funny because it wasn’t about money.  We were leaving the country!  No great deal on our monthly phone bill was going to change our mind.  We learned something though, which we stored away for when we came back to the states: rates are actually negotiable!

Customer Loyalty Pays

My dear friend wanted to get an iPhone but couldn’t see adding the data plan to her monthly bills.  She decided that if she could get her other monthly bills lowered enough to cover the cost of a new phone plan then she would go for it.  I was impressed with her discipline to stay within her current budget.

She called her cable and internet provider and politely said,

“I have been a loyal customer for X years and really like your service, but I feel like I am paying too much.  I get offers in the mail about signing up for other providers at much cheaper rates.  I am willing to switch to get a better price, but I would like to stay with you if it’s possible.  Is there anything you can do to lower our rate?”

Both companies were willing to lower their rates and she got her iPhone without increasing her monthly bills.  As loyal customers, we have more power than we think.

Have a Creative Alternative

Another close friend was tired of paying for expensive trash pick-up in her rural area, especially since her family didn’t generate very much garbage each week.  Her husband had just moved his small business to a new office in a newly developed business area.  He was the first one to sign on with the builder/landlord.  Noticing the large dumpsters were never full since the office space wasn’t yet all rented out, she asked the landlord if it was okay if she brought the family’s trash up to the dumpster each week.  He agreed, which completely eliminated the monthly garbage bill!

Of course every situation is different and will require its own custom solution.  By thinking creatively about lowering your monthly bills, you may be able to come up with a solution that will save you.

Look Beyond the Bills

While tuition is not a monthly bill, this example teaches the same principle.  When he decided to return to school and applied to J.D and M.B.A programs, he received a scholarship offer from both the law school and the business school at the university he ultimately selected.  The law school offer was more generous than we expected.  The business school offer was much smaller.  A few days after receiving the offer from the business school, he contacted the dean of admissions and explained that while he would love to attend, he wasn’t sure we could justify the added cost over an already expensive law school education.  Fifteen minutes later, the scholarship offer was doubled and our tuition cost was down by ten thousand dollars– just for asking!

This seemed like a novel idea to us at the time, but talking with other students, our experience was hardly exceptional.  Many students ask for increased scholarships or other benefits, and if a school wants you to attend, they’ll often accommodate the requests.  In retrospect, my husband probably should have also negotiated an increase at the law school.

The lesson: A scholarship offer is usually not a take-it-or-leave it proposition.  Treat the initial offer like a starting point for negotiation and you could ends up thousands of dollars ahead.  This lesson applies equally well to job offers.  The first offer is a starting point, and the company has illustrated by making the offer that they want you there.   Don’t be afraid to ask for more.

Is asking a potentially awkward question worth it?

Umm… YES!  The best part about saving on monthly bills or tuition (as opposed to just a purchase here and there) is that you see the savings every month!  Even just a little less on a monthly bill will add up quickly over time.  The savings can go straight to paying off debt or saving for the future.

Could you be a phone call away from saving hundreds of dollars a year by reducing your bills?

You’ll never know unless you ask!

• How have you experienced the power of asking?
• Have you had experience getting a monthly bill reduced by just asking?
• If you could get a bill reduced, which one would it be?

Note: This post was originally published in January 2014.

The post The Power of Asking– Simple Questions Have Saved Us Thousands! appeared first on Six Figures Under.

If you’re trying to save money on groceries, the last thing you want to do is throw food away! Wasting food, simply put, is wasting money.

In the past I’ve shared 7 ways to use milk that is almost expired to help people not waste one of the most common staples in our kitchens.

Today we’ll look at bananas! Bananas are the perfect healthy snack to have on hand. Nature even has them conveniently individually wrapped for us! It can be tricky to be always stocked with bananas, though, as they can ripen fast, especially in the summer.

The good news is that there’s no such thing as a bad banana. Even a very overripe banana can be saved and given another (very delicious) life. I’ll share with you my top five uses for overripe bananas so you’ll never need to toss them out again!

What constitutes an overripe banana?

First, let’s talk about exactly what constituted an overripe banana.

As bananas ripen they get sweeter and softer. Whether a banana is underripe, overripe, or just perfect is partly personal preference. For some people, even one brown spot is overripe, while others prefer a well-speckled banana.

Test and texture aside, bananas become less appealing (no pun intended!) as they get brown. In the summer, an overripe banana will summon fruit flies from who knows where, a clear sign it’s time to use ‘em or lose ‘em.

While brown bananas may be too soft, squishy, and ripe for you to enjoy fresh, overripe bananas have many great uses for baking and other treats.

Great Ways to Use Overripe Bananas

There is no need to throw away brown bananas ever again! With these 5 smart ways to use overripe bananas, you’ll never waste another banana!

1- Banana bread

If you do any sort of baking, you probably already know that overripe bananas are the perfect ingredient for banana bread. What you might not know is that overripe bananas can be frozen to make banana bread in the future. Here’s our favorite moist and delicious banana bread recipe.

At the end of the post, I’ll share two tried and true methods for freezing bananas, so you can bake your banana bread whenever it’s convenient for you.

2-Banana Pancakes

In our house banana pancakes are a welcome sight any day of the week. We don’t even have to sleep in and pretend like it’s the weekend. The best part is there’s no recipe required. Just add mashed banana to your pancake batter, no matter if it is a lot or a little. It always turns out great!

If you’re looking for whole wheat pancakes, here’s our go-to homemade whole wheat pancake mix that we keep in the pantry.

3- Smoothies

Our family loves smoothies with whatever fruits we have on hand. Adding bananas to smoothies makes them nice and creamy. You can use overripe bananas that are fresh or frozen. You don’t even need a recipe. Just throw some bananas along with some frozen berries and milk or juice.

To save time, you can freeze smoothie kits by adding all of the solid ingredients to a freezer bag. Here are some of my best money-saving smoothie tips.

4- One-ingredient “ice cream” (dairy-free)

While it’s not technically ice cream as there is no cream or dairy in this treat, the smooth and creamy consistency is shockingly similar. Peel, slice and freeze your overripe bananas, then toss them in the blender or food processor until they are smooth. You don’t need other ingredients, but if you want to add vanilla or chocolate or peanut butter, that will be delicious too!

5- Banana cake

My college roommate had a well-loved recipe for banana cake with brown sugar topping that she would make any time we had spotty brown bananas. Sadly, I have lost the recipe and haven’t found another to replace it.

Until I find that beloved recipe, we’ve been enjoying this moist and flavorful banana cake with cream cheese frosting. Whichever route you go, banana cake is a great way to use up those overripe bananas.

How to freeze overripe bananas

In case you’re like me and can’t drop everything to make banana treats as soon as those brown spots appear, here are two great methods for freezing bananas so they are ready whenever you are!

Method 1 for Freezing Bananas:

My preferred method for freezing overripe bananas is to peel the bananas and cut (or break) them in half (or smaller pieces if you want). If you are freezing lots of bunches of bananas, you will want to first lay them out on a cookie sheet and freeze for several hours before putting the frozen bananas into a freezer bag. This way the bananas won’t freeze to each other in a big banana mass.

If you’re only freezing a couple of bananas, you can get away with skipping the flash freezing step. Be sure to lay the bag flat in the freezer so that there is minimal touching of the bananas. I usually freeze bananas this way so I can use the bananas individually for smoothies if I want.

If you’re planning to use the bananas all at once for baking, then it doesn’t really matter if they are touching because you will thaw them all at the same time before using them anyway.

Method 2 for Freezing Bananas:

Let’s say you notice overripe bananas on the counter as you’re running out the door to catch a plane for a two-week vacation. You can freeze bananas in their peels if you are in a total hurry and don’t have time for the other way. This isn’t my preferred method, but it works.

Frozen bananas in peels are not very fun to deal with. The frozen banana peel turns completely black and the bananas have to thaw a while before you can get the peel off. I usually score the peel with a knife or fork to help take it off more easily. I’m not going to lie, though. It’s a little gross.

The plus side is that you don’t even need a plastic bag when you freeze bananas in their peels since the peels protect the bananas from freezer burn.

How do YOU use overripe bananas?

Here’s a random fun fact: In graduate school, my dad, a geneticist, did research on fruit flies. In order to attract his specimens, he travelled to various parts of the country with carloads of brown bananas. He got his fill of banana aroma and to this day he will not eat bananas or anything made with them. He’s totally missing out!

What constitutes an overripe banana for you?

What are YOUR favorite ways to use overripe bananas?

If you have a favorite recipe please share!

The post 5 Smart Ways to Use Overripe Bananas (and how to freeze them) appeared first on Six Figures Under.

Years ago I regularly shared frugal feats, flops, and funnies posts to share with you some of the daily ins and outs of living the frugal life and hopefully to encourage you on your own financial journey.  But it has been a while since I shared one!

It’s a good exercise to think through our successes and failures to keep a good perspective. And I always appreciate a good laugh.

I would love to hear any of your own recent frugal feats, flops, and funnies in the comments!

Frugal Feats

When a long-arm quilting machine was offered for free to my quilt guild email list, I quickly showed it to my husband. I had been interested in one for a long time but it had never become a priority. I figured that he would point out the fact that we don’t have a good space for a big machine and frame like that, but instead he said, “Should we see if we can go look at it tonight?” He even made the phone call and arrangements for us to take a look.

We were the first to jump at this opportunity and came home with thousands of dollars worth of quilting machine and frame. But that wasn’t all. The couple had already moved cross country and had decided to sell their California house. They wanted to get rid of everything in the house so they could have it ready to sell by the end of the month. In addition to the quilting machine, they also gave us a brand new serger, regular sewing machine, iron, air purifier, magnetic ball and rod toy (like these), computer speakers, guitar, autoharp, some dolls for the toddler in our Ukrainian family, manual wheat grinder (which has already entertained our 6-year-old for hours), and all the food in their pantry.

Believe it or not, we turned down lots of great things too. We were also offered a large computer monitor, toaster oven, Instant Pot, towels and bedding, lots of furniture, and several lovely sets of china.

I didn’t think it could get better than a free long arm quilting machine and frame, but there was an entire van load by the time we left! And the family was so happy to see their things go to a good home so they could get closer to listing their beautiful home.

Sometimes free really is free, if you keep your eyes open.

Frugal Flops

My two older boys went on a snow campout with the boys from church. They had been looking forward to it for more than a year, as last year’s snow campout was cancelled due to lack of snow. I helped them gather all of their gear together, making sure to write our last name on everything. I can’t speak for all teenage boys, but mine have a bad habit of losing things. My freshman lost two jackets this year at school, each within a week of their purchase (that’s a frugal flop in itself!).

While the campout was a success, it turned out to be a flop in the finance department for us, for a few reasons. First, our oldest son had a sledding accident which ultimately landed him in the emergency room for a broken leg. The silver lining, I suppose, is that this being his third hospital visit in two months, he’s working his way through the individual maximum out of pocket amount from the health insurance company early in the year. That means future injuries or illness can be covered entirely by insurance. Maybe this should be a feat, but that would be weird.

Since our injured son left the campout early, some of the other boys gathered his things from his snow cave and put them into one of the cars. Unfortunately his sleeping bag and tarp are nowhere to be found. No one who went on the trip has seen them since they’ve been back. The only thing I can figure is that they blew out of the back of the truck on the drive down out of the mountains.

If it were any of our other sleeping bags, it wouldn’t be a big deal. Unfortunately, I sent our son with Mike’s sleeping bag. At 6’7″, normal sleeping bags don’t work for Mike, so he had a nice extra long and extra wide sleeping bag. We bought it years ago (when backpacking was literally our job) and really had to shop around to find the right one. The sleeping bag will cost $300-$400 to replace. The 8′ x 10′ heavy duty tarp, less than 24 hours old, cost $16.

Frugal Funny

The funny I’m going to share with you was not funny last week or for the last year! It was 100% a frugal frustration! But that all changed this week when Mike had time to work on one of our cars. Now that the issue is (hopefully) fixed, we can laugh about the ridiculousness of the situation.

Our 2007 Honda Odyssey has been quirksome and irksome since we bought it in 2019. Several years ago, one of the automatic sliding doors had some problems. Periodically a door would stop working, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Although we could always close the door manually, sometimes the latch did not pull it quite all the way shut, so the van thought the door was was still open. For a little while we would occasionally drive around with a loud, sustained beep because the car thought a door was open while we were driving. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The more aggravating part was that the latch, thinking the door was still open, would constantly pull electricity to try to close it, causing a drain that would make our battery die.

It was so frustrating! Since the door looked closed, we couldn’t tell when it was or was not draining the battery. We replaced the battery twice. We took the van in to two different mechanics. Of course, at this point we hadn’t discovered that the problem was the door latch, and they hadn’t either. They tried things that, on the surface, appeared to solve the problem, but then the latch would act up again and the battery would die again! We are both experts with jumper cables and can have a dead battery started before the kids even have their seat belts on.

When we got our last battery, we decided that we wanted it to last longer than a year, so we came up with a pretty ridiculous work-around. For the past 8 months or so, we would open the hood and unhook one of the connectors to the battery every time we got home. Then every time we leave, we pop the hood and rehook the connector onto the battery. Depending on the temperature and tightness of the connection, sometimes the car would start the first time, other times it would take several attempts, with jiggles and adjustments to the connection between each attempt. We kept toothpicks handy to wedge into the connector if we needed to tighten the connection.

Like I said, I wouldn’t have laughed about this situation a week ago, but over the last several months Mike did a lot of research and testing and is pretty confident that the door latch is the problem.  He ordered a new latch for $280 and on Saturday he replaced the old latch with the new one. No more connecting and disconnecting the battery! Though we did have to drive a screw in next to the battery contact to keep it tight, since so much on and off movement had shaved the soft terminal down a little. Hopefully the rest of the van behaves itself until we have saved up for a replacement!

Does anyone else deal with absurd car drama or is this taking frugality to the extreme?

Now it’s your turn!

• What were your frugal successes and failures this month?
• Any funny frugal moments?

The post Frugal Feats, Flops, and Funnies: Goodbye Sleeping Bag, Hello Long Arm appeared first on Six Figures Under.

Until about four years ago, we all took for granted the ability to purchase whatever we wanted whenever we wanted. When covid hit and the world started shutting down, many people raced to the store to stock up on the most important things. Before supply chain issues had even begun to surface, panic buying cleared the shelves of essentials, like toilet paper!

Unless you were in the bidet industry, with sales through the roof, that time of shortages was probably a little stressful for you.

Would it have been nice to be stocked up on everything your family needed, so you didn’t have to worry about stores having basic essentials?

After the pandemic, did you change your buying habits and prioritize preparedness? Or are you in the same position you were pre-pandemic?

Back in 2020 I shared a whole series on food storage, including getting started with food storage, where and how to keep your food storage, how to rotate your food storage, and even planning your emergency water storage.

But clearly preparedness involves more than just food. Today I’ll focus on some non-food items you should always have a little extra of on hand.

Save money by stocking up on consumables

Even before the pandemic, we stayed well-stocked not only on food, but also on household items. We try to keep a few months of personal care and household items stocked at any given time, and for things that are easy to store, up to a year’s worth.

In addition to being prepared for whatever the future may hold, I love staying stocked up because it saves me money! Here are a few ways stocking up is great on the wallet:

I know that when my deodorant stick runs out or the dishwasher soap is empty there is no need to panic and run to the store because I always have more in the cupboard or the garage. Since I don’t have to rush to the store as soon as I’m completely out of an item, I don’t have to make extra trips to the store.

Since I’m not in a hurry to buy any particular item, I can wait to buy thing when they are on sale. I get many of our household goods at Sam’s Club, which has seasonal sales on almost everything. When an item is on sale, I try to buy enough to last our family until the item is on sale again. That way, I never have to pay regular price.

Between buying for a big family and buying to stock up, I usually buy in bulk, which is a great way to save money.

Non-food items to keep stocked up on

While everyone’s list will vary a little to reflect the different products we all buy, the general idea remains the same: stock up on the consumable items you regularly use so that you are prepared, save money, and enjoy the convenience of never running out.

Here’s what we store:

House Stuff

• Laundry detergent, dryer sheets

You’re going to keep doing laundry forever, so you’re always going to need laundry detergent. If you have other laundry products that you use regularly, like Oxiclean or a stain remover, stock up on those too.

• Dishwasher detergent

Keeping the dishwasher running keeps our house running, so we don’t want to be caught without dishwasher detergent.

• Dish soap

While I wish the dishwasher could take care of everything, we still need dish soap for things we hand wash.

• Trash bags

It’s always cheaper to buy the biggest box of trash bags instead of the small box. You’re going to keep needing trash bags, so you may as well buy the biggest box.

• HVAC filters

I always order these online so that I can make sure I get the right ones. It’s just as easy to buy several as it is to buy one at a time.

Paper Products

• Toilet paper

We store a large 20-roll pack of toilet paper under the sink in each of the bathrooms in our house, with additional toilet paper stored in the garage.

• Disposable plates, cups, silverware, napkins

We very rarely use disposable plates, cups, and silverware, but it is so convenient when we several families over for dinner at once.

• Paper towels

We use dish cloths and dish towels for cleaning spills, but there are some things that are just better dealt with using paper towels (I’m looking at you, bacon grease!).

• Wax paper

Although we don’t use wax paper very often, I keep it on hand because I use it for making chocolate no-bake cookies, some of my favorite treats because they are delicious and super fast to make.

• Aluminum foil, plastic wrap, sandwich bags

Whatever products you regularly use in the kitchen, keep extra.

Personal Care Products

I won’t go through these individually. Whatever personal care products you use, keep extras on hand. To help you get your wheels turning, here are some things that we stock up on at our house.

• Shampoo & conditioner
• Soap or Body wash
• Face wash or skin care
• Razors & shaving cream
• Deodorant
• Toothpaste
• Toothbrushes & toothbrush heads for our electric toothbrushes
• Feminine hygiene
• Vaseline
• Q-tips
• Hand soap
• Make-up products

First-Aid/Medicine

• Band-aids

Pro-tip: The dollar store! I don’t shop at the Dollar Tree very often, but when I do I always stock up on band-aids. With six adventurous kids, we go through a lot of band-aids. The same bandaid box will cost 3-4 times as much everywhere else.

• Vitamins/Supplements

We don’t do a lot of vitamins or supplements, but we stay stocked up on the ones we do use.

• Medicine (Tylenol, Ibuprofen, Benadryl, cough medicine, kids medicine)

Store whatever your family uses. We don’t use a lot of medicine in our family, but we make sure to have some of the various medicines we might need. It’s no fun having to run to the store just to get some ibuprofen.

• Tecnu

Tecnu isn’t a medicine, but more of a preventative measure. There’s a lot of poison oak around, and we have several in our family with a severe reaction. We make sure they wash with Tecnu if they ever suspect an encounter with poison oak (or poison ivy or poison sumac).

Baby

• Diapers and wipes

It’s been several years since we’ve had anyone in diapers, but when we did, I definitely stayed stocked up on diapers. That was something I sure didn’t want to run out of (though I used cloth diapers with half of my babies, which really calmed the fear of running out of diapers). When I found a good sale on diapers, I would buy ahead so that I wouldn’t have to pay regular price.

• Formula

If you use formula, you definitely want to keep some extra on hand at all times. I cannot imagine the stress of being able to feed your baby when there have been shortages because of recalls or supply chain problems. I breastfed all of my babies, so I made sure to keep extra breastmilk in the freezer in case I wasn’t able to be there at feeding time.

Money

Having cash on hand is always a good idea. I’m not talking about stashing thousands of dollars in your mattress, but keeping $500 or so in small bills can come in handy in a pinch. Any more than that probably won’t be covered by your homeowner’s insurance, so you risk losing completely if there were a fire, break-in, or other disaster.

Where to shop when you’re stocking up

If you’re a smart shopper, you’ve already comparison shopped and know where the best place is to buy everything on your list. As prices are constantly increasing on everything, it’s a good idea to periodically check to see if you’re still getting the best price on the things that you buy regularly. Thankfully much of that comparison shopping can now be done from the comfort of home. Be sure that you’re comparing prices by the cost per unit rather than the total price.

With a stocking up mindset, you might decide that buying a larger package or buying in bulk is a better purchase for you. Otherwise, just keep buying what you normally buy; just buy more of it.

For products where Amazon has the best price (like aluminum-free natural deodorant, mascara, and kids toothpaste) I buy in  bulk and use their Subscribe and Save to automate the process to save even more. You can always change the frequency and skip deliveries if you want, but if you coordinate the subscriptions so you have 5 items coming at once you can save up to 15%.

Where to store your stash

If you aren’t used to keeping a stockpile of household supplies, you might be wondering where you would keep all these products!

The good news is that there’s no right or wrong answer. A corner of your closet, on a shelf in the garage, under the kitchen sink, in a bathroom cupboard, in a coat closet, in a bin under a bed. Anywhere that you have a little free space will work. While some things like toilet paper and diapers take up a significant amount of space, these non-food items aren’t picky about where they are stored.

Over the years I’ve moved our stash of personal care products from the hall cupboard, to the master bathroom cupboard, to a bin in the garage. Our laundry extras live under the utility sink in the mudroom. Our paper products and other household extras have a shelf in the garage.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Get creative and I know you’ll find a spot to start stocking up.

Make it work for you

Don’t go out and throw off your entire budget by buying everything on this list today (though if you have a lot of wiggle room in your budget, I won’t stop you!).

Instead, gradually incorporate preparedness into your way of thinking and shopping. If shampoo is on your list this week, buy two or three instead of just one. When you see laundry detergent on sale, buy extra.

Over time, you will build up a supply of the things your family uses so you will be prepared for whatever life throws at you and you’ll enjoy the convenience of never running out of anything.

I’m curious…

• What you like to keep stocked up on that’s not on my list?
• Where do you store your extra non-food consumables?

Let me know in the comments!

The links in this post are Amazon Associate links for products that I actually buy and use. When you make an Amazon purchase through one of these links I will earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting this site!

The post 29+ Non-food items you should keep stocked at home appeared first on Six Figures Under.

You loved hearing about what we spent on our 3-week cross county road trip, our 10-day Washington DC trip, and our Yellowstone Family Trip so I know you’re going to love hearing the financial (and fun) details of our family’s San Diego trip.

For Christmas 2022, we did something we’ve never done before. Instead of our traditional Christmas morning of opening presents, we left on a fun trip that we had been secretly planning for months. We spent seven adventure-filled days in beautiful San Diego, California making memories as a family!

First, I’ll share the complete cost breakdown of our entire San Diego adventure. I’ll share my best secret for getting the sweetest deals on all of the attractions!

Then, I’ll move past the prices and give you the inside detail of the fun and unique adventures we had in San Diego.

Finally, I share the fun way we presented this amazing alternative to our traditional Christmas morning to our kids. The surprise and mystery really added to the fun!

By the end you’ll be ready to start planning for your own adventure. (I might be gearing up for another family adventure as I write this!)

San Diego Trip Cost Breakdown- $4,260

For those who are new here, we have a family of 8. At the time of the trip, our kids were ages 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, and 14. We love travel and adventure, but are always very conscious of how we spend our money. I actually enjoy the challenge of planning trips for our family while sticking to a budget.

Travel $424

When we were deciding where to go on our Christmas trip, we made sure it was somewhere that we could easily drive so we wouldn’t have to pay for airfare and rent a car. We wanted to save as much money as possible for the fun part of our trip. We live about 9 hours north of San Diego, which makes for an easy day of driving.

This includes gas, tolls, and parking. If you want to look at it on a per person basis, it comes out to $53 per person.

Accommodations $1,828

We knew that, aside from entertainment, the accommodations would be our most expensive part of the trip.

We stayed 2 nights in a hotel in Buena Park. With 8 in our family, we have to get two hotel rooms. Two rooms for two nights totaled $370.

We spent the last 5 nights of the trip at an Airbnb in Chula Vista which cost $1,458. One of my secrets for finding a good deal on an Airbnb is to book well in advance so you have time to keep an eye on the market. Save the places you are interested in. In a popular place like San Diego, it’s not unusual to find a new host who is offering a 20% off coupon to their first few guests. On or past several trips we’ve been able to do this and it has saved us a significant amount of money.

This averages out to $261 per night or about $33 per person per night.

Food $0

As with our 3-week cross country trip, our Washington DC trip, and our Yellowstone trip we didn’t want food to take up any of our trip budget. We did buy food to eat, but we used our normal monthly food budget for eating on our trip, so food cost no more than if we were at home. We got creative and brought lots of food and snacks from home. We didn’t eat out (besides grabbing pizza once) and we didn’t buy food in any of the parks. We brought water bottles and snacks with us everywhere that would allow it.

The hotel we stayed in for the first two nights had an awesome continental breakfast. We brought bread and sandwich makings and snacks for all of our outings. Dinners were also low-key and often eaten on-the-go. For the majority of the trip we stayed in an Airbnb, so we had a kitchen to cook dinner, eat breakfast, and prepare lunches to bring with us.

Not having to include any extra budget for eating out when we’re on a trip is a major money-saver. For some people eating out is a big part of being on vacation, but that’s not something our family is accustomed to, so we don’t feel like we’re missing out on anything. Saving money on food really brings down the total cost of the trip.

Entertainment $2,008

I spent lots of time researching all of the entertainment options in San Diego. The city and the surrounding area has so much to offer. Any one of the cool places we went would have been an awesome trip that everyone would have enjoyed, but since we were driving a long-ish way, we wanted to make the most of our time and see as much as possible while we were in San Diego

I started researching prices of some of the places I thought we might go and looked at how to get the best deals. I made a spreadsheet to compare the various programs, passes, and discounts.

The deal that stood out as the best, was Go City. With Go City’s all-inclusive pass, you can choose how many days you want your pass to last, then all of the attractions are covered for those consecutive days.

Right now, a 5-day All-Inclusive Go City pass for San Diego is $319 for adults and $299 for children and includes more than 50 activities. Of course it would be impossible to do everything, but you will easily get your money’s worth and then some (as I’ll show you in a minute).

The Go City pass is super convenient and easy to use since it is on an app on your phone. My husband and I had access to all of our kids’ passes on our phones, so we could easily swipe through as they are scanning at the gate. The app also has a map so you can see what attractions are near each other.

Go City has passes for 30 different cities all over the world, so if you’re headed to another popular world destination, you’ll want to check out Go City.

The San Diego Go City pass includes some big attractions that are a bit of a distance from San Diego, so we hit some of those on our way down.

Here’s where we went (and the standard admission price per person that we if we didn’t have the Go City pass):

DAY 1:

• • Knott’s Berry Farm ($99)

DAY 2:

• • Newport Beach Whale/Dolphin Watching Cruise ($56)
  • San Diego Zoo Safari Park ($72)

DAY 3:

• • Sesame Place ($100)*
  • Speed Circuit ($59)*

*Not currently included on the San Diego Go City pass as of January 2024.

DAY 4

• • San Diego Pier Fishing ($75)
  • USS Midway aircraft carrier ($31)
  • San Diego Zoo ($72)

DAY 5

• • SeaWorld ($109)
  • Fleet Science Center with IMAX ($24)
  • Belmont Park Ride and Play ($54)

In 5 days we went to 11 different attractions. The total regular admission price for those attractions would have been around $750 per person or $6,000 for all 8 of us. Of course I would never have paid regular price, but it gives you an idea of how big of a savings the Go City pass was for us.

Instead, we paid $2,008 for Go City passes for all 8 of us, which comes out to $251 per person. At the time I purchased our passes there was a special sale on kid’s passes.

In order to make the most of our passes, I planned out our days very strategically, so we weren’t wasting time driving around. I made a table with the opening and closing times of the different attractions, addresses, and costs for parking. For attractions that are open late, you must use your pass to get in by 5:30, then you can stay as late as you want. I prioritized the activities that our kids would be most interested in and had back-up plans in case we had extra time.

Some of the activities required reservations ahead of time (whale watching tour and pier fishing). It didn’t cost any extra and didn’t require a down payment of any kind, just your Go City pass number.

You don’t have to lock in your trip dates when you purchase your Go City passes. Your pass will activate when you scan it at an attraction for the first time. If you don’t use your pass within 90 days it will be automatically refunded. Easy peasy! You can start planning your next trip with Go City now!

San Diego Trip Attractions

Here’s a short summary of our experience at the 11 attractions we went to with our San Diego Go City passes. Some of them are in a larger radius around San Diego and some of them are close together in the heart of San Diego.

Knotts Berry Farm

Knotts Berry Farm is about an hour and half north of San Diego, but it is included on the San Diego Go City pass. Since we were coming from the north, we decided to start our trip here. Of the 11 attractions, this is the only one we had been to before. We have all enjoyed the rides and shows at this theme park in the past and we knew our way around, so we were excited to go straight to our favorites. Unfortunately, the day after Christmas is apparently one of the busiest day of the entire year. In the past, we haven’t had to wait very long in lines, so we were disappointed to spend much of the day waiting, which made this our least favorite experience of all the places we went on our trip.

Newport Beach Whale/Dolphin Watching Cruise

This 2.5 hour cruise was a big hit with our family! The cruise came with a free beverage ticket (we all got hot chocolate with whipped cream) and free binocular rental. We weren’t there at the right season to see whales, but we got to see lots of dolphins chasing and playing around the boat. The double decker ship has plenty of seating perfect for watching marine wildlife. The crew shared their knowledge about ocean animals as we went. Our kids still talk about how cool it was to see dolphins in the wild.

San Diego Zoo Safari Park

The Zoo Safari Park is about 40 minutes away from the San Diego Zoo. The Safari Park encompasses 1,800 acres of land, which allows the animals to thrive in a natural-like habitat. Our favorite part was a 30-minute tram ride through the park (included with admission) where a guide taught us about African animals and the challenges they face. We saw giraffes, rhinos, ostriches, zebras, gazelle, antelope, and more.  We explored the rest of the park which included areas featuring lions, tigers, elephants, gorillas, and Australian animals.

Sesame Place

As a big fan of Sesame Street personally, I made sure that even my big kids had fun at this amusement park that is geared toward younger kids. We rode all the rides which had essentially no lines at all. Since it was December, all of the water slides and pools were closed, but we all agreed that they looked like fun. We watched a character show and attended the parade. I checked back while writing and found that, as of January 2024, Sesame Place is not included in the Go City Pass.

Speed Circuit

Speed Circuit ended up being even more fun than I expected. While we waited for our turn on the go-karts, we played in the trampoline zone which included inflatable human hamster balls, aerial silks, a foam pit, zip line, ropes course, and a trampoline knockout game. Everyone had a blast! The idea of the human hamster balls had me feeling claustrophobic, so I held off trying it for a long time, but when the kids finally convinced me to do it, I had fun. The kids loved the gas-powered go-kart racing, though it made me a little nervous to have my children racing around and crashing at high speeds and I think I got whiplash. Speed Circuit was recently acquired by another company and is currently closed for remodeling.

San Diego Pier Fishing

We have some kids who are very interested in fishing (and some who are decidedly not), so we split up on this one. Mike took 4 of the kids pier fishing, while I took the other two on a walk. Mike and the kids had a two-hour guided fishing experience. The guide brought all of the fishing poles, tackle, and bait, so we just had to show up!

USS Midway

The USS Midway is a retired aircraft carrier that has been turned into a museum. Admission includes an audio tour headset so you can learn about the exhibits at your own speed in whatever order you choose. We couldn’t get over how enormous the Midway was! On the flight deck we got to climb in planes and helicopters. We toured the main control center and captains quarters. I was amazed by the lower decks that housed and fed the 5,000 sailors on board this “city at sea” while it was in service from 1945 to 1992.

San Diego Zoo

The San Diego Zoo has so much to see! We were grateful for the trams and gondola (Skyfari aerial tram) that helped us get around. We saw kangaroos, koalas, hippos, elephants, exotic birds, and so much more. As the sun went down, we somehow gravitated to a super fun playground with lots of water features. It may have been December, but we left with all six kids soaked head to toe. They were freezing in drenched jeans, but we stayed until closing time because they were having so much fun.

Sea World

We started the day at Sea World by hitting all of the rides and coasters while the lines were short. Mike and I took turns with the big kids and little kids, since our younger ones weren’t tall enough for many of the fast rides. Thankfully there were lots of fun rides for the younger ones too. We went to the animal shows and exhibits too. When we got to the killer whale show, the only seats left were front and center in the soak zone. In the summer they would have been the best seats in the house, but not in December. Knowing that our kids didn’t mind getting soaked (see San Diego Zoo experience), they were perfect seats.

Fleet Science Center IMAX

We didn’t spend much time exploring the science center, we just went for the IMAX movie about Antarctica. It was a great way to relax after doing lots of running around.

Belmont Park Ride and Play

Since Belmont Park is open late, we just planned to arrive by 5:30 so we could get in with our Go City Passes and stay for the evening. Belmont Park is a beachfront amusement park. The Go City Passes got us wristbands that allowed us to enjoy everything, including laser tag, mini golf, climbing wall, ropes course, historic wooden roller coaster, carousel, bumper cars, zip line, and other fun rides. Everyone had a blast and didn’t want to leave. The location was clean and outdoors, but it felt like it was indoor because everything was so close and convenient.

Here are a few of the other attractions available on the Go City pass that were high on our list that we didn’t fit into our final itinerary or wouldn’t have worked well with our range of ages:

• La Jolla: Full Day Snorkel Rental/Bike Rental/Surf Board Rental
• Legoland California
• Plunge San Diego- pool with floating obstacle course
• Asylum Outdoor Bouldering
• UTC Ice Sports Center

The range of great things to do with the San Diego Go City Pass is really incredible. Check out all of the attractions available with the All-Inclusive Go City Pass.

The Surprise

Instead of spending Christmas Eve wrapping presents, I wrote a poem to explain our plan. To make it stand out I printed each stanza on a separate sheet of paper then taped them on a giant white board covered in wrapping paper. Because there weren’t the normal presents under the tree, no one missed the poem.

Where are the presents? They’re not in the sleigh.
You won’t open them in the usual way

Instead there are clues so you can find out
What this Christmas surprise is all about.

Don’t cry and feel glum. No need to feel sad.
But get your bag packed. There’s fun to be had!

To know what to bring, in each stocking’s a list.
Please check it twice so no items are missed.

The Littles need help, all their things to find
The schedule is tight so we can’t get behind.

When bags are all packed get your Sunday clothes on,
Then after church, the next clue’s on the lawn.

After some initial confusion (who gets up early on Christmas to pack a suitcase?), everyone got excited and packed their bags to get ready for our trip. Once everyone was packed and ready for church we opened the presents that the kids had given each other and us.

After church the kids found the next clue (which we had sneakily hid). They still weren’t sure where we were going, which was part of the fun of it.

We’ve got lots of things, a house full of stuff
But one thing there surely just isn’t enough

Is time spend together– You’re growing up fast!
Let’s make some new memories, good ones that will last!

We can’t say too much, but we won’t got by plane,
Mostly the car, by foot, boat, and train.

We drove for about 7 hours. I wrapped up some special treats for the car ride. Every hour we would open a package along with another clue about our trip. Most treats were things that we could eat in the car, but we also gave our family a nice portable bluetooth boombox speaker so that we could better listen to audiobooks and music on our trip.

With each clue, the kids had different guesses about where we were going. We had fun making each part of the trip a surprise.

I packed umbrellas and ponchos because the forecast said we would have rain for most of our days, but the only rain came perfectly timed, right as we were driving out of the city to head home!

Our 2022 Christmas Trip to San Diego will go down in the books as one of our most memorable family adventures! It’s safe to say that no one was disappointed to not have presents under the tree.

This is a completely unsponsored post. We paid 100% of the cost of our Go City passes ourselves. I was so impressed with our experience and with how much money we saved that I looked into becoming an affiliate partner with Go City. If you decide purchase Go City passes through my link, I will get a small affiliate commission (at no extra cost to you). It’s pretty much the most fun way that you can support this site. You can trust that I only share things I love and actually spend my own hard-earned money on.

The post Cost Breakdown for Our Epic San Diego Trip appeared first on Six Figures Under.

If you are one of the 3.6 million people who uses Mint for managing your personal finances, you might be panicking with the news that Mint will be shutting down completely by January and is hoping to push users to Credit Karma.

As a long-time user of Mint, I can tell you that budgeting gets much better than Mint. In fact, switching from Mint to YNAB was the best thing that ever happened to our finances.

My husband and I started using Mint in 2007, just after it launched. We loved the convenience of signing into one app, then having Mint automatically sign into all of our other accounts for us, giving us a current picture of all of our financial information in one place.

What Mint did, providing that consolidated picture of accounts, it did well, but Mint was never a great budgeting tool.

Mint is fine for seeing where your money went, but not a really good way of telling it where to go, which is what a budget should do. 

In 2014, after seven years with Mint, we began budgeting with YNAB and have never looked back! YNAB taught us solid budgeting principles and habits that led us to pay off six figures of student loan debt in three years, then buy a house a year later. We still faithfully manage our money with YNAB now, nearly 10 years later.

So that you can get an idea of the differences, let me elaborate on the 4 big concerns we had with Mint budgeting and then share how YNAB overcame those issues. Of course, you don’t have to take my word for it, you can always try YNAB for free so you can see for yourself!

Here are 4 major drawbacks of using Mint for budgeting:

1.Income and Spending aren’t connected in Mint

Clearly income and spending are two vital parts of a budget.  In Mint income and spending are separate and distinct rather than integrated.  Sure, there is a graph that shows your spending versus your income in general terms, but it is a record of the past, rather than a plan for the future like a budget should be.

2. Mint doesn’t use zero-based budgeting

Zero-based budgeting means your income minus your expenses equals zero. That doesn’t mean  that you “spend” every cent, in the traditional sense of spending. It means you give every dollar a job, like paying your bills, eliminating debt, saving for retirement, or buying groceries. By assigning each of our dollars to a specific budget category, we can maximize the amount that goes toward our goals

Since Mint doesn’t give us a good way to account for being over-budget in one category and under-budget in another category, it’s pretty hard to make sure your each of your dollars has a place to go.

3. Mint doesn’t help with going over budget

The budget bar graph gives an idea of how much we have spent already in each category that month and how much more we have left to spend, but it does not offer much help if we do go over budget.  There is no consequence for going over, except that the entire bar for that category turns red. That might be useful if it added some information, but there is no visual indication of whether you’re one dollar or a hundred dollars over.

4. Credit cards were complicating our budget in Mint

We use credit cards for convenience, rewards, and protection.  We always pay our credit card off each month, so getting into debt isn’t an issue for us.  The problem with Mint was that it was hard to know how much extra we could pay on our student loans (we wanted to pay as much as we could).

Using credit cards with a traditional budget means you are actually spending next month’s income since bills lag a month behind.  Since our bills came the month after the purchases, our monthly income and spending never matched up.

This made knowing how much to pay toward our debt hard.  We would take what looked like excess in our checking account and put it toward debt, but the next month we would have a credit card that required the bulk of a paycheck.

YNAB solved all the problems we had with Mint

Unlike Mint whose main focus is reporting, YNAB is actually designed as a budgeting tool. YNAB (pronounced “why-nab”) is more than just a budgeting tool, it’s a philosophy and method for managing your money.

In 2013, we set a goal to pay off our six figure law school debt. With such an audacious goal, budgeting became extremely important to us. Mint’s weaknesses stuck out like sore thumbs. We discovered YNAB and were hopeful that it would solve our budgeting frustrations and allow us to pay the maximum possible on our student loan debt.   We took the leap with YNAB in 2014 and we haven’t looked back. Nearly 10 years later, we are still faithfully using YNAB to budget!

Here is how YNAB solves the budgeting problems of Mint:

1. In YNAB, income and spending are inseparable

In YNAB you only budget money you have, not money you plan to have.  This is a major shift from traditional budgeting where you budget the income you plan to get that month.  This might seem like a subtle change but it’s actually huge!

2. Zero-based budgeting is YNAB’s middle name

The first of YNAB’s four rules is “Give every dollar a job.” YNAB teaches you to spend according to the funds you have allocated to your various spending categories, not the total balance in your checking account.

If you are just starting, you will budget only the money you have to work with now. Each time you get paid, you can tell each of those dollars where you want them to go. You’ll start budgeting for the most important or urgent things first.

If you have a specific goal, you can put your end-of-month excess toward that savings or debt payoff goal. Otherwise, the excess will just carry over into next month’s “available to budget” balance and you’ll have a chance to assign it a new job.

3. Dealing with overspending is easy with YNAB

If you have given up on budgeting because you never stick to the arbitrary numbers you set at the beginning of the month, the YNAB method will help you see that you are not a budgeting failure.  You just need a budget that is flexible. YNAB won’t magically make more money if you overspend in one category, but the app allows you to easily move money around between categories to account for necessary overspending.

When you have learned the YNAB method, you are less likely to have problems with overspending, because you can easily look at the money allocated to each specific budget category. Those amounts aren’t just arbitrary numbers, they represent actual real dollars in the bank. If you don’t have enough money in the category you want to spend from, you need to move money over from another category to cover the purchase you are about to make. When I say “move money” I mean move money in YNAB, you definitely don’t need separate accounts.

4. YNAB handles credit cards like a boss

I love the way YNAB deals with credit cards. I think it is seriously the safest way to use credit cards. YNAB treats credit card spending as if it were cash. It is “gone” from the budget when you make the transaction, even though the money is technically still in your checking account until the bill is paid next month. When you spend money in YNAB using a credit card, YNAB keeps track of those transactions so that when it’s time to pay your bill the money is all there waiting for you. When you spend according to your YNAB budget and keep everything up-to-date, you don’t have to worry about accruing credit card debt. With YNAB you can safely rack up those points and miles while your budget runs seamlessly.

Happily move on from Mint!

If I sound like a YNAB superfan, it’s because I am. It’s not just me though. I regularly hear from readers who thank me for introducing them to YNAB because it has revolutionized their finances, too.

So instead of being sad that Mint is going away, use this as an opportunity to step up your budgeting game! Whether you have loads of debt to pay off, you’re already a millionaire, or you’re somewhere in between, YNAB will help you manage your money.

You can try YNAB for free for a month. You’ll definitely want to take advantage of the awesome classes to help you make the most of your trial and get the hang of budgeting the YNAB way. You’ll be so glad you did!

The post Budgeting gets much better than Mint anyway. We switched to YNAB nine years ago and haven’t looked back! appeared first on Six Figures Under.

The internet is full of “money-saving” products with all sorts of promises to make your life easier while keeping cash in your pocket. I’m sure some of those gadgets are great and for the right people would make a financial difference, but that’s not what I want to talk about.

Today I want to share with you 3 everyday, simple household products that, when used as I describe, are sure to reduce your budget every month. These are all items that we consistently use every single month and we’ve been doing so for years. In fact, along with lots of hard work and dedication, these seemingly small things helped us pay off six figures of student loan debt.

Whether you are working to pay off debt, to save up to buy a house, or to pay for a fancy vacation, you can take advantage of these strategies to help fund your goal.

I’ll start with the simplest item and move through the three items in order of amount saved. The last item easily saves us thousands of dollars every single year.

At the end, I would love to hear what the stand-out items are in your home that you can credit with saving you the most money!.

Reusable water bottles

We don’t buy bottled water. Ever. Not for trips, not for sports events, not to keep in the cars, not in our emergency storage.

In our family, we all use reusable water bottles that we fill up with tap water. They go to school, on trips, in the car, and at home. We have several different brands and don’t swear allegiance to any one brand. For decades we used Nalgene water bottles exclusively and we still have a handful in our water bottle cupboard. Now most of our kids have insulated metal water bottles with straws.

We keep several refill jugs in the car (more when we are on a long trip) so we never run out of water. Our refill jugs are cleaned out juice containers straight out of our emergency water storage. They are always filled so they are easy to grab and go.

Last week a stranger stopped at our house to fix his flat tire. He was grateful for a safe place to change his tire and thankful that my husband had tools he could use. He asked for a drink. “Just a bottle of water would be fine” he said. I sent him home with quart mason jar (we have a zillion) since we didn’t have bottled water.

A case of 40 16.9 oz generic bottles of water costs $7.63 where I live. That includes a $.05 per bottle deposit (which you technically could get back if you found somewhere to recycle the bottles, but those places are nearly non-existent these days). That comes out to $.19 per bottle. We have 8 in our family drinking a minimum of 4 bottles per day, that’s $6 per day or $180 per month. The reality is that we drink much more, so the savings would be even greater.

If you are in the habit of carrying a water bottle, you won’t have to buy bottled water at any of the locations where they are sold at an incredibly marked-up price. Depending on the event, one bottle of water could cost anywhere from $1 to $6 or more. That’s an expensive way to stay hydrated.

The tricky part about this one is that it’s easy to justify the convenience factor of bottled water, as the savings seems small when taken individually. When you make the lifestyle change to not buying bottled water, you will reap the savings every single month!

Red-Lidded containers

When it comes to saving money in the kitchen, these red-lidded containers (that’s what our family calls them) are some of the best!

The technical name of these money-saving rockstars is Rubbermaid Easy Find Lids Food Storage Containers, but my family would not know what I was talking about if I said that. I love that these containers do not leak! I feel confident sending soup with the kid who tosses their backpack all over like it was a soccer ball. They are clear so you can see inside of them pretty well, but they aren’t breakable glass.

Don’t be fooled by these containers that are also from Rubbermaid and also have red lids. They are NOT the same. They are light duty and good for a couple uses, but I would never toss them in a backpack or trust them falling out of the fridge.

I should also mention that Easy Find Lids came out with a vent lid (on the larger containers) not too long ago that touts the prevention of splatters in the microwave. We have some of them, but I wouldn’t trust tossing them in a bag as something could open the vent and cause a spill. Probably a grown-up would be fine, but I still prefer the non-vented lids (which you will find in this set). If you want to try the vents (some people love them), then this set has a good assortment of sizes with vented lids for the bigger containers.

Money-saving use #1: replace expensive single serving packaging

The small size (1/4 cup) is perfect for dressings and sauces, but I love it for putting yogurt or applesauce in school lunches. A quick calculation from Walmart’s Great Value applesauce show that the cost of individual applesauce cups (9.7 cents/ounce) is 44% higher than applesauce in a jar (6.7 cents/ounce). Applesauce in the squeeze pouches (20.3 cents per ounce) is almost 300% more expensive than what’s in the jar. The math for making your own applesauce will vary depending on where you find your apples, but I know for us it’s always been very cost effective.

Our favorite containers allow us the huge money savings of buying (or making) in bulk, while still offering the convenience of individual serving-size packaging.

Money-saving use #2: Food on the go

If you didn’t think lunch could get easier than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, think again! Thanks to these containers, we can pack just about anything for lunch: watermelon, taco soup, cornbread. You name it, it’s safe in your red-lidded container (and more importantly your other stuff is safe from that sticky juice or messy soup).

Whatever you would eat at home is safe to eat on the go. Save time by packing for days or for multiple people at once.

Money-saving use #3 leftovers

We love leftovers around here! As a busy family, leftovers are intentionally worked into our menu. I purposefully double and triple recipes so that I won’t have to cook on other nights. Everyone loves a “leftover buffet,” or at least loves that each of them can choose the thing they like most from the buffet.

The problem with leftovers (and one reason they get a bad rap) is that they often get forgotten, which may result in a UFO (unidentified food object) in the fridge. Eww! So while using washed out sour cream or yogurt containers (recycled as “Tupperware”) might sound like a great idea, it also disguises your leftovers. Maybe you’re better at fridge management than I am, but for me, if I can’t see them I forget they are there. My favorite red-lidded containers are clear (well, more opaque), so you can roughly see what food is in there (and you don’t mistake it for sour cream or whatever kind of container you are recycling).

Calculating the actual amount of money saved using these containers in the three ways listed above is tricky. How do you put a price on the leftovers in the fridge. How much would eating out cost instead of always bringing your food? How often are you currently use single-serving containers? I don’t have an actual calculation, but for us, the savings from these three uses is easily in the hundreds each month.

I am unapologetically a superfan of these food containers! I have used them daily for the past decade and I frequently give them as gifts because they are the best!

Box fan

By strategically using a couple of box fans, we very rarely have to use our expensive air conditioning. We are getting cooling that would otherwise cost us thousands of dollars a year.

The good news is, if it cools down outside at night where you live, this strategy will work for you too!

We don’t typically use our air conditioning, so as the day goes on, it gets warmer inside our house. Every evening when the sun goes down and it’s cooler outside than inside, we open all of the windows. We put box fans in a few of the windows, leaving other windows open without fans.

You can choose if you want to blow the warm air out (fan blowing toward the outside) or blow the cold air in (fan blowing toward the inside). If you are blowing the warm air out, cool air will be sucked in through the other open windows in the house. If you are blowing cool air in, the warm air will go out the other open windows.

No matter which direction you put the fan, your house temperature will drop the same, but there are a few other factors that might help you decide. If you like cool air blowing forcefully on you, then you’ll want the fan blowing in. If your screens have holes that let bugs in, or you have a lot of dust, you probably want to blow the fans toward the outside.

If you live in an area where you feel safe leaving your windows open all night, you will cool your house off the most by leaving the fans in the windows all night long. If having your windows open while you are sleeping makes you nervous, you can close them when you go to bed and open them again early in the morning. We close our windows before the temperature warms up.

It’s lovely waking up chilly on a summer morning, especially knowing that your electric bill didn’t take a major hit to get you those temperatures. We let our curtains or blinds keep our house cool all day long! This might seem like a pretty simple concept, but it works wonderfully! It would cost us thousands of dollars every year to keep our house at the temperature we can get and maintain basically for free.

There are a couple of weeks every year when the temperature is well into the 100s and the night time temperatures don’t get below 80. In those times, we use our air conditioning. Seeing the bill on those hot days reminds us the value of this strategy!

In the beginning of the article, I said we use these items all year round and I really mean it. We consistently use fans in the winter, too, but in a different way. While we have central heat, we primarily heat our home with a wood stove. Using the same principles of air flow explained above, in the winter, we use fans to push and pull air into the various rooms in our house. But the biggest savings comes in the summer.

How do you save?

Using reusable water bottles, red-lidded containers, and box fans save our family a significant amount of money every single month. Saving money in these areas allow us to have more money to put toward our financial goals and things that matter to us.

Are there simple, everyday items in your house that you attribute significant savings to? What items in your house save you the most money? I would love to learn from you!

As an Amazon Affiliate, any purchases you make through links provided above will help support this site at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products that I truly use and love.

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The post 3 Inexpensive household items we use to save hundreds of dollars each month appeared first on Six Figures Under.

Fall means it’s time for pumpkin everything! I love eating pumpkin all year long, but in the fall the rest of the world (well, at least the country) joins me.

Do you know what makes pumpkin recipes even better?

Making your own pumpkin puree!

Seriously.  If you’ve never tried making homemade pumpkin puree, then make this year your time to give it a try!  You’ll be so glad you did.

Making  your own pumpkin puree is better for your body and your budget.  When you make homemade pumpkin puree, you don’t have to worry about any weird preservatives.  Plus, it’s waaay cheaper than buying the canned stuff.  And it’s easy!

The short video below will walk you through all the details OR just scroll down for a complete picture tutorial!

Originally published 11/11/2013

How we use homemade pumpkin puree

We use pumpkin puree instead of canned pumpkin for all things pumpkin, including:

• pumpkin bread and muffins
• pumpkin sheet cake
• pumpkin cookies
• pumpkin pancakes
• pumpkin pie
• pumpkin custard (pretty much just a deep pumpkin pie without the crust)
• pumpkin soup

2020 harvest of pumpkins and banana squash

2021 harvest of pumpkins and “bananakins” (our giant pumpkins crossed with banana squash to make a huge squash!)

How to make pumpkin puree step-by-step

Making your own pumpkin puree is really easy.  If you don’t have much freezer space, you can still puree a pumpkin and keep the puree in the fridge for a couple weeks while you try all the yummy pumpkin recipes you find on Pinterest.

Don’t be fooled into thinking you can only use pumpkins labeled as “pie pumpkins” for this.  Any pumpkins will work well and be healthy and delicious.  Actually any winter squash will work just fine (banana squash, butternut squash, etc).

Start by cleaning and cutting your pumpkin in half and cleaning out the guts.  Don’t be intimidated by the slime factor here.  I promise it’s way easier than trying to squeeze your arm down inside a pumpkin to clean it out to carve a jack-o-lantern.  Grab an ice cream scoop to scrape out all the stringy and seedy parts.  You can save the seeds to roast later.

Lay your pumpkin halves on a cookie sheet with the skin side up.  This keeps the meaty inside of the pumpkin nice and moist.  You don’t need to worry about covering your pan with anything.  The pumpkin juices wash off very easily.

Stick your pumpkins in the oven at 350 degrees.  It will probably take around 45 minutes, but it will vary depending on the thickness of the meat.  If you have large pumpkins (like I did), you may want to move your oven racks down lower (like I didn’t) to prevent scorching the skin (though it doesn’t affect the meat).  You will want to check on them after 30 minutes to see how they are doing, though they could take up to an hour.  When a knife goes into the meat effortlessly, you will know they are done.

The next part is my favorite.  The skin just peels away!  But before you get started, let the pumpkins cool for a while because they are hot!  When you can actually touch them, you can easily peel most of the skin off with your hands (and it’s fun!).  Sometimes you will need to use a knife on the edges.

As you peel off the skin, you can put the chunks of pumpkin meat into your food processor or blender.  When I’m doing lots of pumpkin (which I usually am), I use a food processor, but a blender works fine too.

Meet Gonzo.  I bet you can’t guess where he picked up that nickname!  Does your food processor have a name?  Gonzo has proven to be one of our most useful wedding gifts.  Unfortunately, they no longer make him any more, but it’s similar to this food processor.

I put all the pumpkin puree into several large containers and stick them in the fridge while I wait to use or freeze the pumpkin puree.

Freezing pumpkin puree

There are a couple of different methods for freezing pumpkin puree.  If you aren’t worried about specific measurements, you can just put the pumpkin puree directly into Ziploc freezer bags to freeze.  For soup or large batches of baked goods this is fine.

Another method of freezing pumpkin puree is to measure the pumpkin puree as you put it in bags.  Measuring the pumpkin puree makes it much easier when it comes time to use.  Lay the bags flat as you freeze them so they store nice and compact.

Personally, I like to freeze pumpkin in batches in plastic containers.  I love these Rubbermaid storage containers because the bottom of each container says how many cups it holds, so it is easy to thaw for recipes (they are also awesome containers for lunches, because they don’t ever leak).  I find this method much easier than continually scraping out a measuring cup into a Ziplock bag, but with the convenience of measuring.

After the pumpkin puree is frozen in the containers, I let it begin to thaw slightly (about 15 minutes on the counter).  After thawing for a few minutes it pops right out of the plastic containers.  I double wrap each block in plastic wrap.  Then, I fill each container up a again with more puree from the fridge and freeze another batch.

After each block is wrapped in plastic, I store them in the freezer in Ziplock freezer bags.   I usually use mine within a year or two (in the chest freezer) without any problems

Making my own pumpkin puree allows me to do much more baking of fall pumpkin treats than I would if I had to buy a canned pumpkin each time.  We just can’t get enough pumpkin!

This post has affiliate links to products that I know to be awesome and think you’ll love too!  If you make a purchase through one of my links, I will get a small percentage of the sale (at no extra cost to you) and be very grateful!

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