Monthly Archives: September 2012

September in Review

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Blogging:  I am going to admit that I have really been pushing things this week to meet  the goal, but with this post I have met this goal again!  3 months in a row! Even if I met this for the remaining 3 months of the year. I seriously doubt I will increase the amount. It seems some days, I just don’t have the time or anything to say!

Goal: 15 per month

Devotions: On track again this month! Definitely now need to increase the goal next year! God is AWESOME!

Goal is 3 a week.
Groceries: I am actually rather confused this month on the grocery budget. One of the reason why is that I have been using cash to cover some expenses. This is not a bad thing but it just makes keeping track of the budget a bit different. Hind sight is 20/20 so in the future, my plan is to record cash spending on my budget sheet as well. I do believe that I am below budget for the month. The problem is that I am not sure if I am slightly below budget (less than $50 or way below (over 200). So I am going to be excited either way because this included our Zaycon chicken purchase of 80#. This is the 3rd month in a row that we have met budget!!!!!

Grocery Budget is set at $800 per month, this includes diapers, cleaning supplies, food and toiletries.

Financially:Officially became a full-time employee this past month. I am still not sure what that means totally for us but it is at least a start. During the past several weeks we have really been focusing on increasing/growing Matt’s website business.  Hopefully by the end of the year we can set realistic goals and be in a stable financially position. Goal: To be Debt free except for mortgage by the end of the year. This was established prior to our learning of the significant financial changes that are occurring so I am trusting God to provide direction in this area. Currently we are focused on meeting budget each month!
Weight: I have met my exercise goal of 3 x a week. So this month the focus will be again to met the exercise goal and to increase my water intake to a steady 6 to 8 glasses a day. Hopefully by November this will put me back in the ones.

Goal to exercise 3x a week and to be down to 150 by December by losing around 4 # a month.

As I had project September was a very difficulty month both financially and physically for me. I don’t think that October will be easier but at least it will be about the same. We are really seeking God’s guidance in the area of finances at this point, pray with us please!

Grocery Store Challenge Update 9/29/2012

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What is my challenge? Spend as close to $20 a week at Food Lion over the next 3 weeks while purchasing items we need or to add to the stockpile based on sales. I am also going to give myself $10 a week to spend at CVS to keep rolling ECB. So that is a total of $30 a week for the next 4 weeks to feed our family of 6.
I was doing so well,even convinced most of my family that we could do this. I bought a gallon of milk at Walmart on Monday, thinking that should last at least a week. My plan was to use my gift cards, rain checks and coupons to buy a couple more gallons at Harris Teeter and met the challenge. I even made it to Harris Teeter in front of the milk. As I doubled checked my coupons here is the problem, they have expired. So even using my rain checks I am going to have to pay $3.79 a gallon for milk.Grrrr, After discussion and based on the fact we needed at least 3 gallons at home, we decided to put back the milk at Harris Teeter and head to Costco.   I actually did very well only purchasing items that we were completely out of or on our last container of. So I ended up spending $95. on milk, juice, bread and cheese. So the third week of the challenge is a fail!  But my goal is to be back on track next week!  Finishing out with 2/3 weeks meeting goal. That is a major improvement from  my last attempt and still very helpful for my budget/

Free Friday Night Shopping

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Because of the storms in our area, Haley’s football game was cancelled; so we decided to head to Winston-Salem to use some coupons and things that expire on 9/30. I was able to leave two stores without spending anything!

First stop was JCPenny’s, I have had a jcpenny’s card for years. In the past they would reward you for spending $500 a year on the card as well as extra “gifts” throughout the year. This changed at the beginning of this year. I had not use my card at all. But when we got pictures made, I decide to use it so that I could easily track that spending. Good thing, because after much debate, JCPenny’s started their reward program again. For every $100 you spend on your credit card in a month, you receive a $10 off $10 gift card. I had two of these. So I was able to purchase an orange owl shirt for LIly, a pair of short for Zach(put up for next year), a long sleeve shirt for Zach and a short sleeve shirt for Zach. Two transaction and I spent $0!!!!

After some other quick stops, we headed to Harris Teeter, after yet another mistake with the Express Lane shopping, I received 2 $5 gift cards. I also had several rain checks with coupons that were expiring 9/30. So I was able to pick up 4 2L Diet Cokes, 2 bottles of Dawn detergent, 2 bottles of Lysol toilet cleaner and 2 dozen eggs. After coupons and rain checks the total was $8.09 so I still have $1.92 on a gift card.  We did make a decision to head to Costco as well due to the fact milk was priced at $3.99 a gallon. But I left Harris Teeter with no out-of-pocket!

Grocery Store Challenge 9/24/2012

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What is my challenge? Spend as close to $20 a week at Food Lion over the next 3 weeks while purchasing items we need or to add to the stockpile based on sales. I am also going to give myself $10 a week to spend at CVS to keep rolling ECB. So that is a total of $30 a week for the next 4 weeks to feed our family of 6.

This was definitely a most unglamorous trip for groceries this week. We ran out of milk and chocolate syrup on Sunday.  So with the fact that we also needed cat liter, we headed to Walmart.  The good news is that I only spent $22.89 on groceries which was 2 bags of cat liter, a gallon of milk, bottle of chocolate syrup, 4 boxes for brownies for a cheerleading fund-raiser and a pack of hoogie rolls for dinner on Tuesday. No coupons used but we did buy the store brand for cat liter, syrup and milk.  But I am counting this a success as long as we don’t spend any more on groceries prior to next Wednesday!

Grocery Store Challenge Sept (9/21/2012)

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What is my challenge? Spend as close to $20 a week at Food Lion over the next 3 weeks while purchasing items we need or to add to the stockpile based on sales. I am also going to give myself $10 a week to spend at CVS to keep rolling ECB. So that is a total of $30 a week for the next 4 weeks to feed our family of 6.

I spent about 20 minutes on Tuesday night, reviewing the Food Lion ad. I am finding that Food Lion is placing very different weekly ads in different markets so I definitely can’t base my shopping off Southern Savers right now.  I did make a huge change in my plan after getting to the store on Thursday for two reason. First, the price for 2 liter Diet Cokes were $1.99 instead of $1.79 I remember. I am going to recheck this price next week to see if it has actually risen that much. The second reason was a coupon that printed from the machine.$1 off 5 of chicken. So I quickly searched to find a ten pound bag of chicken quarter marked down to $5.23.  The picture shows just how much I was able to purchase. Total spent after coupons $19.94 SUCCESS!

 

Grocery Saving Part 2

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This has been one big shopping week at our house this week. We ended up with 3 trips to Harris Teeter during their Super Doubles event. We ended up spending $141, saving 57% or 190 in addition to $10 in gift cards remaining. The stock up items this week were mainly breakfast items which we use every day! So I was excited even after the trip that left us with the $10 in gift cards due to the POOR service we received.  I made a CVS free trip for 2 toothbrushes and 3 bottles of nail polish remover. Finally was the Food Lion trip, where I spent 20 and saved 23 or 53%.  In addition, the purchase of 80# of chicken breast is an added grocery expense this month. If you add up all that I have spent $675 on groceries already this month. So the first reason for doing a grocery challenge is that I need to keep the rest of the month spending as low as possible to stay in budget.  The next reason for the challenge is space related., in order to be able to freeze 80# of chicken breast in October, I need to clean out some space in the chest freezer. Finally, Food Lion has sent me 3 more $5 off $25 to use over the next several weeks. So I am again going to try this challenge

What is my challenge? Spend as close to $20 a week at Food Lion over the next 3 weeks while purchasing items we need or to add to the stockpile based on sales. I am also going to give myself $10 a week to spend at CVS to keep rolling ECB. So that is a total of $30 a week for the next 4 weeks to feed our family of 6.

I already have my shopping planned for tomorrow at Food Lion, hopefully with the iPhone I can get some pictures of what I am able to purchase!

Anyone joining me?

Groceries Savings Part 1

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If you follow much at all, you probably realize 2 things about groceries: 1. We tend to eat a lot! 2. I struggle each month to maintain a budget and groceries is probably the one area that I move and play with the most as well as the one area I overspend in as well.

One of the best/cheapest methods I have found is by buying in bulk. In March of this year, I learned about Zaycon Foods. I was able to purchase 80# of boneless skinless chicken breast for $1.99 a pound in March and $1.69 a pound this week. This is fresh chicken that has not been cut and needs some work before going into the freezer. The other downside to this purchase is that pick up is in a half hour slot and the closest “stops” to use are between 35 minutes and an hour. The good news is that in April (our last pick up) Matt took all three little kids with him,picked up the chicken came home and re-bagged all 80 in about 2 hours. We have been eating on that same 80# of chicken for 6 months now, at least once a week, sometimes sharing with friends or eating twice a week. When we pick up in October, the plan is to change only one thing. The size of the packages that we freeze, we have found that we can use 1 whole chicken breast for a meal for the 6 of us. We previously packaged 2 whole breast and end up with lots of left-overs.  I am not being compensated for writing about Zaycon foods but if you are interested and decided to order any of their products please either go directly through this link: http://www.zayconfoods.com/refer/zf71881  or simply fill in “Coffee Freak Designs” in the “Referred by” field. This will not cost you or penalize you at all however for each purchase you make, I will receive  a $1 credit for future use :)!

In the next post, I plan to tell you about my shopping deals this week as well as attempting the grocery challenge again and why?

Square Foot Garden

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It is my blog and I can change things as I want to!! I had all intentions of posting about my Square Foot Garden on Monday this week. I even took pictures to show it. But life happened.so here is a picture

  

I have not talked much about our Square Foot Garden this year. First I planted too early and frost killed most of it. I did replant a second time and we have received a small batch of veggies. However, while on vacation, I pulled up all the dead/dieing plants, since then we have noticed a huge change. We are currently able to get a dish of green beans a week (3 weeks), green peppers  (small but awesome) jalapeno, freezing these for use this winter and some really GOOD looking tomatoes. After thought and debate we decided that next year, the plan is to make the garden deeper. We are adding a second wooden layer around the entire box which in turn will  make use double the amount of dirt. I hope this helps as the kids are saying that things from the garden taste better so we want to foster and encourage them to eat as many veggies as they can hold. Any other suggestions?