Homemade Iced Coffee - Easy Peasy!

I don't know about you, but when when the warm weather comes, I instantly become addicted to Tim Horton's Iced Coffee.  Now, shelling out money every day for an ice coffee really adds up fast.  Having to budget my love of Timmy's into my monthly financial plan made me realize I was spending WAY to much money on this chilled-caffeine-infused goodness.  I decided to try and find a way to make my own.  The only problem is, if it's too much work, I won't stick to it.  Coffee to me, should be a grab and go item, so I honestly don't like to put much effort into it.  I played around with a few different ingredients, and then I finally mastered it!  It's simple, cheap and delicious!!  Are you ready?  It's just so easy I don't want you to miss it.  Here it is:

1 part brewed coffee (I put the left overs from my morning brewed coffee in the fridge, then use that)

1 part Vanilla Almond Milk (I use Silk brand)

Ice cubes

Directions: Pour all ingredients in glass, stir & enjoy!


THAT'S IT!  No need to add sugar or cream, or anything!  It's so beautifully simple!

A variation of this could be to freeze left over coffee in ice cube trays.  Place a glass full of frozen coffee cubes in a cup and add vanilla almond milk.  However, I find you have to let the coffee ice cubes melt in the almond milk a bit to get the full flavor, so I prefer keeping the coffee a liquid.

Let me know how it works for you!  :)

New Goal: Saving money in DISNEY WORLD!

I've wanted to go back to Disney World for years. The last time I was there was about eight years ago, and I've been longing to go back ever since. After years of suggesting to DH that we go, he's finally agreed. We've booked for nine nights, starting the last week of February!

From what I remember, everything in Disney is expensive. We chose to stay at a non-Disney hotel, which is on Disney property, (one of the few that are in the Downtown Disney area). The price was excellent and I will have family staying there at the same time for part of our trip. Since the resort we chose doesn't offer the Dining Package, we will be on our own to purchase food. This scares me a bit, because I remember the price of a hot dog being unreal.

I'd like some input on money saving ideas in Disney. Does anyone out there have any tricks or tips? I'm looking for money saving ideas on everything from transportation from the airport, park tickets, to most of all food. We would like to also take in Universal Studios, but aren't sure of the best way to get there.

I'm so excited for this! We've been saving for awhile, and now it's finally in motion! Any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

The Family that Lives (Close) Together, Surfs Together.

I live in a rural community in NS. We have one option for high speed internet, and it's pricey. The monthly bill is $55.00 (taxes included) for mediocre internet that stops working at least once a day. It isn't blazing speed, but it sure beats dial-up.

For a few years I gave in and subscribed. I wanted to keep up-to-date with the world and to keep my sanity. I do enjoy it, and would hate to live without it.

I recently moved. As it turns out, my new neighbors are my parents! (Oh, rural living...) This is both convenient and not convenient at the same time, (since they now can know everything I do). However, I must say it does come with it's perks.

Last spring they too decided to get with the times and get high speed internet. Knowing less about internet set up than I do, I was given the task of purchasing the wireless router. Knowing my father, I made sure to get "the best of the best" out there, otherwise he wouldn't have been satisfied (and probably would have made me return it). Luckily I found one on sale, and for $80.00 he was happy.

Fast forward to last month, and I move in next door. We had to disconnect our internet at our old home, and to have it connected at our new home would cost another $99.00. This is the same price as the initial set up. A little peeved about this, I decided to cancel the internet account altogether. My thought was that I could always change my mind in a month or two once we get settled in, and it wouldn't cost me anything extra. Actually it would save me the $55.00 that I didn't spend for that month of internet service. We'd be unpacking most evenings after work that month anyway, so the chances of us missing it were slim.

Just for the fun of it one day, I opened my laptop to see if there were any signals that I could pick up. Low and behold, my parent's signal was a whooping four out of five bars! More than enough that I would need to check my Facebook and email once a day. Now I'm thankful that my father required "the best" router!

I talked to my mother, and told her about my discovery. I suggested that I would gladly pay half of her internet bill if she would give me the password (which truthfully, I remembered anyway since I set it up). She was thrilled about it, since $27.50 a month for moody internet sounds a heck of a lot better than $55.00! So that was that, we both had internet.

Mind you, there are times that this set up isn't ideal (if I wanted to use the internet in the far end of my home, or during a huge storm), but I remind myself that for $27.50 a month in savings plus the $99.00 installation fee, I can learn to deal with it.

Saving Money with Laundry!

My power bill is something I dread. In Nova Scotia, it is not uncommon for someone to get a $900 power bill in the coldest months of the year. There are many things that you can do to cut the steady flow of money being handed to Nova Scotia Power. Our biggest money saver is that we have wood heat in our home, so we don't have to use the electric heat. This cuts the bill in half, if not more. We've had this type of heat for years, so I started wondering what more I could do to lower this horrible drain on our finances. We've replaced the fridge (which you can read about in an earlier post), switched to energy saving light bulbs, starting doing laundry in cold water, etc. However, the biggest savings I have seen since we switched to wood heat has been the use (or lack of) of our dryer in the winter.

The month of January and February I decided to stop replying on the laundry dryer. Normally we would do one load of laundry per day, so it was on for about 45-50 minutes each and every day, when it was too cold to hang clothes outside. I went to my local hardware store and picked up two clothes drying racks, for $14.99 each, plus tax.

Every evening I would do my one load of laundry, and when it was done hang the clothes on the racks before I went to bed. We made sure to put the racks in the same room as the wood stove for faster drying (obviously a safe distance away from the wood stove). When I woke up in the morning, the clothes were 90% to 100% dry. I took them off the rack, and put them in the dry for 10 minutes with a dryer sheet for a "touch up", so they still were warm, wrinkle free and smelling lovely.

When my latest power bill arrived, by only making this one change we figured out the savings to be approx. $60.00 (for two months). Not only did my clothes racks pay for themselves, they doubled their value in the first bill alone!

A good read!

I just finished reading "The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom" by Suze Orman. It's a very good and eye opening read. Although the information is based on American finances, there is alot of good information in here for Canadian's too. It covers everything from being honest with yourself about money, planning your estate,ways to get out of debt and investing. I'm starting to look at money differently now, and have started making some changes of how I spend and how I invest.

It's an easy read book, and I really recommend it!

Stocking Up When the Price is Right Keeps Me From Going Over the Edge! :)

I don't know about anyone else, but there are a few select household items that I just HATE buying at full price. Toilet paper being my number one, paper towel, cleaners and laundry detergent. I know that these items go on sale cheap, and usually have coupons floating around. However, there are times when I run out before the next sale begins or coupons are available. I almost cringe when I go through the check out and pay $7.99 for a bottle of laundry detergent.

To my surprise and pleasure, this week my local Sobeys grocery store is selling Sunlight Liquid Laundry Detergent for $3.99. Being the couponer that I am, I have in my possession five $2.00 off Sunlight Green Clean Laundry Detergent coupons. This means, I can purchase five bottles of 32 use Sunlight Laundry Detergent at $1.99 each (total $9.95). For less than $10.00 I will get 160 loads of laundry (roughly $0.06 per load). This will be an entire years worth of washing, since I usually do a few loads per week. My laundry cupboard will be stuffed to capacity, and there will be a smile on my face.

Couponing can be so exciting sometimes!

Update on my Cell Phone Switch!

So, I had mentioned in my last post that I would update you and let you know how my cell phone plan was holding out now that I put a $100 car on my pre-paid cell phone. I updated it on July 5th, and as of today August 31 (almost 2 months later), I have a balance of $116.00. Again, the only extra feature I have on my cell is the 250 text message package, and I have definably been using them.

So, I must say I am impressed with this! This seems to work out very well for me. It seemed I was always adding money to it before so I didn't lose my balance I had remaining. Since this doesn't expire for a year, then I don't have to worry about that.

I'm pretty sure this will be how I will keep paying for my cell phone. I'm very happy with how little it is costing.