Coolbaugh has lowest foreclosure home prices

The township leads Monroe County in sales of foreclosed homes so far in 2017

Source Business - poconorecord.com http://ift.tt/2oAhnaQ

How to Make Spaghetti and Meatballs Even Cheaper (Yes, With Real Meat!)

When it comes to comfort food, it’s pretty hard to beat good old spaghetti and meatballs.

From romantic date-night meals to easy family dinners, this simple (but delicious!) dish has a way of improving life’s best moments.

via GIPHY

Better still, this time-honored meal is just about as affordable as it is tasty. As everyone who’s ever so much as spoken to a college student knows, pasta is dirt cheap — and the fixings don’t have to break the bank, either.

But they don’t call us Penny Hoarders for nothing. We’re always looking for the best possible deal, and dinnertime is no exception.

So we cooked up some money-saving tips to help you make your favorite pasta dish easier on the grocery budget. Here’s how to make spaghetti and meatballs even less expensive… and even better.

How to Make a Spaghetti and Meatballs Recipe as Affordable as Possible

So, how do we make this beloved, frugal staple even cheaper?

Well, first of all, it helps if you already practice thrifty grocery shopping habits, like couponing and checking for cash-back rebates on apps like Ibotta.

But what about for this dish, specifically?

Let’s break it down. Three basic elements go into spaghetti and meatballs:

• Pasta

• Sauce

• Meatballs

To make the meal as affordable as possible, we need to get the best price on each individual part.

Let’s start at the bottom, shall we?

The Pasta

Obviously, spaghetti noodles are pretty cheap: You can usually find a pound of dry pasta for about a buck and a half. With a two-ounce serving size (which yields about a cup once cooked), that means you’re looking at about 19 cents per plate. Not bad!

But you can do better — and it’ll taste way better, too.

Homemade pasta is so good it’ll make you wonder why you ever ate the dried stuff, and it costs literally cents to make. This basic recipe from The Prairie Homestead yields about a pound of fresh pasta, and calls for exactly four ingredients: flour, eggs, salt and water.

You can buy a 10-pound bag of flour for less than $5, so this recipe uses about 14 cents’ worth. The water is free, and we’ll use about 1 cent worth of salt.

And unless you buy the fanciest pasture-raised eggs produced by the most spoiled chickens in the business, you probably don’t spend more than $3 per dozen. That brings the total price of a pound of homemade pasta to just 90 cents, or 22.5 cents per generous 4-ounce serving.

It’s true that the process of actually making the pasta is fairly labor-intensive. Rolling dough takes a lot more time and effort than simply opening a box.

But seriously — seriously — trust me on this. Do yourself the culinary favor of eating freshly made pasta. It’ll blow your mind.

The Sauce

I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent an inordinate portion of my life pacing the pasta sauce aisle, at a loss for which one to choose — and totally shocked that a single jar can cost up to $10!

A basic red sauce, at its heart, is simply a mix of tomatoes and Italian spices. You may already have everything you need to whip one together in your kitchen: tomatoes (canned or fresh), garlic (or garlic powder), salt and maybe some sugar.

Other popular ingredients are nearly as inexpensive: dried thyme, oregano, parsley, red pepper flakes and Worcestershire sauce appear in many recipes. If you want to be fancy, you might spring for red wine, fresh basil or a sauteed onion.

Of course, spaghetti sauce recipes can be much more complicated, but you might be surprised what you can make with what you already have. The biggest investment is likely the tomatoes, which cost less than $2 for a big can.

You can always skip the work and go for the bargain jar, which sometimes costs even less than dried pasta… but won’t measure up to even the simplest homemade sauce, taste-wise.

And although it might seem like the cost of ingredients adds up quickly, a simple scratch-made sauce is cheaper than most pre-made options, as Beth at Budget Bytes discovered — hers was just 29 cents per hearty half-cup serving. (The same size serving from the fancy jar I considered above costs $1.60.)

Your best bet? Check out your pantry (and garden!) and compare what you have to your favorite recipe. Don’t be afraid to improvise. It’s comfort food — it’s supposed to be rustic!

The Meatballs

Now we’re cooking.

Hearty, stick-to-your-ribs meatballs are the star of this dish, and certainly its priciest component.

But never fear. You can have your meatballs and eat them, too.

Most meatball recipes call for ground meat, garlic, onions, spices, and binding agent like eggs, bread crumbs and milk.

Just as with the other ingredients, the vast majority of those components are pretty darn cheap. But the meat itself is a different story.

Ground beef isn’t prohibitively expensive, but let’s say you buy a one-pound package of lean beef for $5.

Considering the pasta and sauce alone cost just 51.5 cents per serving, adding a 4-ounce serving of meatballs could raise the price of the dish to $1.77 per serving — an increase of more than 340%.

So what’s a hungry Penny Hoarder to do?

Clearly, you’re not forgoing the best part of dinner. You’re gonna have to find a cheaper meatball. (And don’t you even think about reaching for that bag of pre-made ones in the freezer aisle!)

Luckily, there are lots of ways to save money on meat. In fact, it might be as simple as switching to a different animal — ground pork and even ground turkey are sometimes less expensive than super-lean ground beef, and arguably better for you.

You could also buy a fattier package of ground beef (like 80/20), which tends to be cheaper, but since some of that fat will drain off in cooking, you’ll be left with less meat in your final product.

Or you might try your luck at a discount chain or ethnic grocery store, where prices tend to be lower overall.

But if you want to get serious about saving money on meatballs, the best way is to buy larger chunks of the animal at wholesale prices and then grind it down yourself, or ask your butcher nicely. That KitchenAid mixer you bought on Black Friday can fit a convenient meat-grinding attachment. It’s not as scary as it seems!

It might sound intense, but you’ll have a lot more control over the quality of meat in your finished product — and if you have the freezer space for it, buying meat in bulk will save you money on more than just spaghetti night.

You could also — *gasp* — go for homemade meatless meatballs.

Tons of amazing, creative vegetarian meatball recipes replace meat with everything from quinoa to eggplant to cauliflower. And since they all omit the most expensive ingredient, you’ll save some pennies and a life.

The Penny Hoarder’s Favorite Frugal Spaghetti and Meatballs Recipe

Now that we’ve laid the groundwork for getting the best deal on every component of your go-to Friday night comfort food, here’s our very favorite, knock-your-socks-off, super-thrifty spaghetti and meatballs recipe.

Note: We’ve included a classic meatball recipe… But even if you’re a die-hard carnivore, don’t be afraid to give alternative meatballs a try. You might just be surprised by how much you like them — and your wallet certainly won’t complain!

Abe’s Fave Spaghetti and Meatballs

This recipe is adapted from those shared by our friends at The Prairie Homestead, Budget Bytes and Carla at Food.com. It serves four people for about $3 per serving, and takes about 70 minutes from start to finish.

Ingredients:

Fresh pasta

• 2 cups flour (14 cents)

• 3 large eggs (75 cents)

• 1/2 teaspoon salt (1 cent)

• Water as needed

Simple homemade marinara sauce (makes 6.5 cups, so you’ll have leftovers!)

• 2 28-ounce cans crushed tomatoes ($1.84)

• 1 6-ounce can tomato paste (58 cents)

• 2 cloves fresh garlic (12 cents)

• 1 tablespoon olive oil (16 cents)

• 1 tablespoon mixed Italian seasoning (or whatever dried Italian herbs you have, to taste — oregano, basil, thyme, parsley, etc.) (5 cents)

• Salt and pepper to taste (3 cents)

• 1 tablespoon sugar (3 cents)

Easy meatballs

• 1 pound ground beef or pork (about $3-$5)

• 1 large egg (25 cents)

• 1/3 cup breadcrumbs (70 cents)

• 1/4 cup milk (10 cents)

• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce (4 cents)

• Salt and pepper to taste (3 cents)

Fresh Parmesan, for garnish (about $1, depending on fanciness of cheese and market price)

Nutritional information (per serving):

495 calories; 20g fat; 38g carbohydrate; 5g fiber; 16g sugar; 38g protein

Total cost:

About $8.83-$10.83 for the meal, or $2.20-$2.71 per serving.

Method:

Begin with the sauce. Finely chop the garlic and saute it in olive oil in a medium pot over medium-high heat. (If you like, you can skip this step and simply add garlic powder to the sauce later.)

Add the remaining ingredients and allow to simmer, loosely covered, for about an hour, stirring occasionally. Adjust seasoning to taste.

While the sauce simmers, start the pasta. Combine flour and salt in a large bowl, and make a well in the center for the eggs. Work them together by hand until the mixture becomes a dough. Continue to knead for 8-10 minutes, adding water as needed if the dough won’t stick together. (If it becomes too wet, add flour.)

Knead the dough well: The better-incorporated it is, the smoother your pasta will be. Once it’s assembled, smooth and satiny, roll the dough into a log and wrap it tightly in plastic wrap. Allow it to rest at room temperature for at least 30 minutes.

Now, begin your meatballs. Heat the oven to 400 degrees F. Mix all ingredients by hand in a large bowl until they come together. Shape into 1-1/2 inch balls and place evenly on a large baking sheet or pan. (Meatballs will drain, so line the pan with aluminum foil to catch the drippings!) Bake uncovered for about 25 minutes, until light brown.

While your meatballs bake and your sauce simmers, roll out and cook your pasta. Bring a large pot of salted water to boil. Then, cut the log of rested dough into smaller sections to make the process easier.

Roll the dough using a pasta roller or by hand, ensuring it’s thin and even. If working with a rolling pin, start from the inside and move out toward the edges. Cut the dough into thin, even strips using a knife or a mixer attachment.

Check on your sauce and meatballs, as the pasta only takes about 3-4 minutes to cook in boiling water. Once the meatballs are brown and cooked through, drain off the excess fat for serving, and allow them to sit for two to three minutes. (Leftovers will freeze well in a zip-top bag once cool!)

Ladle marinara and meatballs onto the pasta and garnish with a fresh-grated hard Italian cheese, like Parmesan.

Pair with a good, cheap wine — which you can score for less than $15 per bottle, or $3 per 5-ounce serving — and toast to living the good life for just $3 a plate.

Buon appetito!

Your Turn: What’s your favorite spaghetti and meatballs recipe? How do you make it as affordable as possible? Let us know in the comments!

Jamie Cattanach’s work has been featured at Roads & Kingdoms, the BUST blog, Ms. Magazine, The Write Life and elsewhere. You can learn more and wave hello on Twitter: @jamiecattanach.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, one of the largest personal finance websites. We help millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. In 2016, Inc. 500 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the No. 1 fastest-growing private media company in the U.S.

source The Penny Hoarder http://ift.tt/2q1R4vD

Eight Key Strategies to Help Keep Overbooked Families from Overspending

This time of the year, our family always feels incredibly overbooked.

Our three children are each in a couple of activities all throughout the year that are really easy to manage. Musical practice once a week paired with martial arts practice twice a week in the evenings isn’t a problem. I participate in a couple of community groups, as does Sarah. This is all easy to manage along with the normal routines of our life.

In the springtime, however, things get crazy. Our oldest two children are both fanatic about soccer and participate in two different spring soccer leagues. Our youngest child enjoys baseball and thus participates in a spring league for that as well. These leagues each involve multiple practices a week and at least one game a week per child.

(It’s worth noting here that neither Sarah nor I encourage these activities much at all. We let our children’s interests dictate the activities, keep the count relatively small, and, if anything, try to talk them out of stuff. These things are generated by their own interests.)

On top of that, Sarah is in the final crunch of the school year as a teacher. On top of that, our children usually have a number of “special days” at school during the spring, with things like vocal concerts and open house days to show off school projects. On top of that, I’m usually crunched myself as I’m usually preparing writing in advance of summer plans so that I can actually spend a week or two with my family without constant writing deadlines.

“Overbooking” is perhaps an understatement.

Because of this, we often find ourselves with overlapping time commitments and serious time crunches in the evenings. It is really tempting to rely on services and take-out foods and other conveniences that, on the surface, seem to save us time during the busiest moments.

What they really do, however, is allow us to fix poor planning at a cost. If we plan poorly, sure, we can fall back on some easy but expensive solutions, but those solutions cost us money and aren’t really perfect, either.

Instead, over the years, we’ve developed quite a few strategies to make all of this work without simply throwing money at the problem.

Here’s how we handle it.

Strategy #1 – Save “important but not urgent” tasks for the weekend, even if it feels awkward.
Our house gets messy during the week. Real messy. We’ll skip vacuuming for a few days. We’ll not pick up very well in the living room. We’ll let a few dishes pile up. We’ll fill up two or three laundry baskets of clothes without doing a load.

Sure, we could do those things now, but they’re not urgent tasks. They’re important, but they’re not particularly urgent.

When you’re in a time crunch, prioritizing the tasks that are both important and urgent becomes even more vital than before. Things like making sure a meal is on the table at a particular time or that you’re picking someone up at a certain time or that you have necessary equipment ready to go when people need them are “important and urgent” tasks. Vacuuming the living room carpet is important, but it’s not nearly as urgent as those things.

In other words, a big part of dealing with a time crunch is properly prioritizing things. I personally handle this by thinking about priorities when I’m actually running errands. While I’m running an errand, I’ll think about what actually needs to be done tonight in order to make things run smoothly tomorrow. When I have 15 minutes to spare, the task that comes first is making sure everyone is prepped for whatever happens in 15 minutes.

Sometimes that means that someone leaves an article of dirty clothing on the bedroom floor or that a plate sits in the sink for a while. That’s okay. Those things really can wait until you’re under less of a time crunch.

Strategy #2 – Prepare a lot of meals with the help of a slow cooker (or other prepare-ahead-of-time strategies).
Our single most useful tool for time-crunched periods is our slow cooker. It singlehandedly keeps us from spending a lot of money on take-out when things are in a crunch.

I’ll use this past Thursday evening as an example. One child had a piano practice from 4:30 to 5:00, then soccer practice from 5:30 to 6:30, then martial arts practice from 6:30 to 7:30 (this is far and away this child’s busiest day of the week – many evenings involve no activities). Another child had baseball practice from 5:00 to 5:30, then taekwondo practice from 6:30 to 7:30. A third child has soccer practice from 6:00 to 7:30. These various practices are spread across three different towns.

As you can see in that example, there’s basically no window for a full family dinner. When you add in the fact that one parent doesn’t get home until shortly after 5:00, there’s also really not much of a window to cook a dinner on the spot.

Our solution? Make a soup in the slow cooker with sandwiches for dinner. When a parent has time to eat with one or two of the children, everyone just grabs a bowl of soup out of the slow cooker and makes a very simple sandwich, which all takes about two minutes, and then they eat together. The soup can just remain on “warm” until everyone eats and an adult has time to store the leftovers. It’s a dinner that costs perhaps $1 per person. Compare that to the cost of getting takeout food.

Although the slow cooker is our most useful strategy, any strategy that involves doing most of the meal prep work before the crazy hours of the evening is a valuable one. We’ll pull a prepared meals out of the freezer (one we made the weekend before) and cook it in the oven for two hours, with the meal ready to eat at the time needed by the most people and the other members eating “leftovers” from the fridge, for example.

Strategies like this keep our food costs in check during the busiest times.

Strategy #3 – Make a thorough plan for the week and keep it in a central place where everyone can always see it.
At the start of the week – usually on Sunday afternoon – we take down the family whiteboard and write up a full plan for the week with as much detail as possible.

What events are on each day? What time are each of those events? WHERE are those events? Who needs to go and who needs to provide transportation?

I usually will write something like “5:30-6:30 – [Child] soccer practice @ [town] [field], cleats + w. bottle + shinguards, D: Trent, [child] also goes” as a single line under Thursday, for example. This tells me that there’s a soccer practice starting at 5:30 at a particular field, that I’m driving, that another child needs to go along, and that the child going to the practice needs cleats and shin guards and a water bottle. (I’ll also include meals on this plan, of course, and note the time it needs to be done and the preparer along with “SC” if it’s a slow cooker meal.)

The reason for doing this is to move as much of the active thinking required for the week to a time when there’s less stress involved, less urgency, and less of a problem created by remembering something at the last minute.

I usually move any events that directly involve me to my own personal calendar on my phone and add a notification so that I’m alerted well in advance of that event. That way, again, I’m not caught by surprise. I’m ready to go. My phone will beep at 4:30 telling me that I need to take a child to soccer practice in an hour and that I should probably leave at about 5:15, and then usually it’ll beep again at 5:00.

This takes some time, but it greatly increases the chances of busy evenings flowing smoothly, and it’s when things don’t go smoothly that we end up in difficult situations and throw money at a quick-fix solution.

Strategy #4 – Consider all supplies needed for the week on Sunday and get them all ready to go then.
This goes hand-in-hand with the scheduling above. Once that schedule is in place, we’ll go through and make sure that we have all of the supplies we need to pull it off.

Does everyone have their soccer socks? Cleats? Shin guards? Baseball gloves? Gear bags for martial arts?

Do we have all of the food items we need for those meals? This is basically the point at which we turn a meal plan into a grocery list and then go grocery shopping. What about other household supplies?

Does everyone have adequate clean clothes and outfits for the week? This ensures that there doesn’t have to be any laundry done until the weekend and there’s no last minute clothing emergencies.

We’ll even try to organize this to a small extent by making sure everything is in the right place. I often make stacks of outfits for myself for the week so when I get up on Tuesday morning, for example, I can just immediately grab the clothes I need right off of a stack of outfits already folded up and ready to go.

The benefit of this is that it reduces the chance of an unplanned bump in the road during a busy evening, because a bump in the road almost always leads to unexpected stress and unexpected costs.

Strategy #5 – Move as much effort as you can into time periods where you’re under less of a crunch.
If there’s something I can do earlier in the day when I’m on a work break that will save time later in the day, I tend to do it during my work break. I’ll do a load of dishes early in the day, for example, and let it run then. I’ll do the same with laundry. I’ll spend 20 minutes laying out everything that will be needed for everyone to go to their events later in the day, or have the kids do it right when they get home from school. I’ll fill up the slow cooker early in the day or put something in the oven to cook slowly in the mid-to-late afternoon.

The fewer “last minute” tasks that we’re facing during overbooked periods, the more likely those events are going to go smoothly. The smoother everything flows in the evening, the less likely it is that we’re going to run into some unexpected event that we have to throw money at to solve.

If you find yourself unable to do this in the morning, my suggestion is to just get up a little earlier and do a lot of these tasks before leaving for work. Start a load of dishes or a load of laundry. Put a meal in the slow cooker. Put out everyone’s gear for this evening, or make sure everyone has their gear ready to go.

Strategy #6 – Look at your social network for any opportunities for social cooperation.
Another great strategy is to look around your social calendar for people who have overlap with you and take advantage of that overlap. Can you alternate rides with someone else who has a child on a team? Can you synergize the trips by taking all of the stuff and people needed for several stops all at once? Can you squeeze in errands in the middle of a sequence of other things (if I have an item to get at the hardware store, for example, I often do it in the middle of busy Thursdays)?

For example, we alternate driving kids to martial arts practice with another parent, which means we have one activity per week that we don’t really have to worry about – our kids basically just walk out the door and go. In previous seasons, we found synergies that enabled us to share rides to and from a twice-weekly soccer practice. We switched to a music teacher recently that’s within walking distance of our house, so one of our children can just walk to a musical lesson.

Finding ways to minimize the amount that you’re driving in order to get everything done saves on gas, saves on wear and tear on your car, and saves on stress as well.

Strategy #7 – Eat healthy foods rather than junk.
Why is this important? The reason is that busy evenings utterly fall apart if someone gets sick. If one of the members of our family comes down with some kind of illness, it can utterly destroy the smoothness of our plans, and the best way to keep illnesses at bay is to eat healthy foods.

We make a conscious effort to include lots of vegetables and grains in every meal. I eat a vegetarian diet (due to advice from my doctor) and everyone else in our family eats a diet that’s led by fruits and vegetables. We chow down on carrots and apples and rice and beans and nuts and spinach and lettuce and kale and sweet potatoes and quinoa and tomatoes.

It’s actually quite easy to prepare meals with that in mind. I’ll often just prepare a quick salad on the side of whatever we’re having – I’ll take out some greens and toss them around with a bit of dressing and just serve it with whatever we’re eating, or I’ll include lots of vegetables in whatever’s cooking in the slow cooker, or we’ll eat a bag of steamed vegetables that were originally flash frozen. We’ll have bananas or an apple along with the meal, too. This adds almost no time to meal prep and moves some of our calorie intake away from unhealthy things and into healthier things.

In general, we try to avoid prepackaged foods unless we’ve really studied the labels and ingredients in them. I’d far rather hit the produce section or the DIY grain section or the refrigerator section of the grocery store than anything you might find in the middle.

The whole goal here is to put good stuff into our bodies so we’re less likely to get sick and have to deal with all of the challenges created by that – the expense of last minute changes in plans, the expense of doctor’s visits, the expense of cold remedies, and so on. The cost of not eating healthy blows away any extra cost that might come from eating healthy.

Strategy #8 – Prioritize sleep, even if it feels like things would be “easier” if you did stuff instead of sleeping.
If I have a choice between taking care of an “important but not urgent” task like vacuuming or sweeping the floor or doing a load of dishes versus going to sleep at a reasonable time, sleep is always the choice. The same thing is true if I’m choosing between watching a television show in a half-awake stupor or going to sleep. I choose sleep.

Why? An adequate night of sleep helps in countless ways in terms of making financially responsible moves.

For starters, if I have adequate sleep, I’m going to be well rested and simply make better decisions. I won’t be as prone to decision fatigue. I won’t feel the effects of stress as much as I might otherwise feel them. I will respond to difficult situations with a level head much more often. I’ll just handle a tight schedule more effectively and make better choices while doing it.

Another factor is that adequate sleep helps your immune system. You’re less likely to get colds, which make you a lot less productive and efficient and eat at your wallet in the form of cold remedies that get you through the day when you’re miserable.

A final factor: I simply feel better when I’m getting adequate sleep. I have stronger natural energy reserves and feel much more okay with tackling anything that comes my way. I’m far from alone in feeling that way.

If you find that your life is overbooked, don’t steal time away from sleep to “make up for it.” Treat adequate sleep as the vitally important thing that it is and put other less important and less urgent things aside. Don’t skip sleep to watch Netflix or to do a household chore that can easily be done on the weekends.

If you follow these strategies, you’ll find that periods of “overbooking” in your life fly by with far fewer expenses. You’ll spend less on gas (and car depreciation and maintenance). You’ll spend way less on food. You’ll spend less on cold remedies and treatments. You’ll be less prone to decision fatigue, so you’ll spend less on unnecessary purchases. You’ll also simply feel better along the way.

Good luck!

The post Eight Key Strategies to Help Keep Overbooked Families from Overspending appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Source The Simple Dollar http://ift.tt/2po3f9L

On-Campus Jobs Can Help You Pay for College — But Are They Right for You?