Category Archives: Budgeting

Grocery Budget/ Shopping Update 10/25/2012

Posted on by
Reply

As the month of October comes crashing to an end, I am thinking toward debt reduction and our budget for the coming year. This year has seen some major financial changes for us, but my God is bigger than any of those!  I will share in more detail very soon the evidence of this! However in the mean time, I have been focusing on readjusting the budget. Our biggest spending area has always been the grocery budget. In reality, I have fed and providing our items for personal use for about $31 a person a week.  For the past 3 months, including this one I have been below budget. Looking back at the entire year to this point I am 50% for meeting budget and on average spend $756 a month. My thought is that with diapers and formula no longer being needed at all, I should be able to reduce this amount to $600 a month. Starting in November, I am going to use this as a stated goal. in addition to this goal, I know that I need to start using cash for grocery purchase. But in order to do this I have to be able to limit shopping for several weeks so maybe November will help in this area also. This month I have spent $725 including my shopping today.

We decided to head to Winston Salem today in order to use one of the gift cards I won at the Fall festival and combine it with an awesome,kids eat free coupon at Olive Garden. Combining both deals we (5) ate for $20 tip included, I also brought home enough left overs for Haley’s dinner and at least 2 lunches tomorrow!  I am really pleased with this deal and combined with the fact we order and ate a free pizza at lunch, no eating out should not be a problem this weekend.

I had read earlier that Harris Teeter was having a really good sale this week, so when I settled on the fact that we were heading to Winston, I decided to plan a coupon trip. To keep things real, I spent approximately 1. hour looking at the sales and pulling out coupons. I spent $31 and saved $63 or 67%!! Even better, I purchased eggs and milk that should last us for a couple of weeks. We will be leaving in 3.5 weeks for Michigian for a week. I would like to clean out some of the food from the freezers. Just in case the electricity goes out while we are away. I hope that will all the items we have been stockpiling, I will be able to avoid shopping  except for trip supplies until after our return.

Grocery Shopping 10/20/2012

Posted on by
3

For the past several years we have been working to reduce our grocery budget. One of the suggestions that Matt made was that I start really  keeping track of what I am spending and saving at each store. Over the past several weeks, I have been doing just that.  I am thinking that by sharing at least once a week,it will build more accountability in as well.

This week I stopped in at Food Lion on Monday to pick up the ingredients for Paula Dean mac and cheese. I discovered that pasta was on sale as well. However, I spent nothing out-of-pocket because of one of the items I won was a $20 Food Lion gift card. I still have around $6 left on the card for future use. I am not counting this in the total saving or spent because it truly was free!

The second store that I have shopped at this week is CVS. I ended up making 4 separate trips. One of the main reasons was Diet Coke 2L are on sale for 0.97 each. This is the lowest I have seen in about 6 months so I was going to make sure I have a stock pile. I did end up finding other deals including deodorant, razors and make up wipes to add to each trip. Overall this week I have spent $76 at CVS and saved 50%. Not outstanding saving but because it is on things we use regular, I am not too upset. I am a bit surprised on the overall total, but it does explain where part of my grocery budget is disappearing to!

 

Shopping

Posted on by
Reply

This was a pay week for us which means that  most of the shopping gets done on or around Thursday,  I have been trying to reduce our grocery budget and have avoided going to Costco most of the month. In addition to keeping a list up this past week of items that we were running low on, I realized that  I was going to have to go to Walmart  as well. I really dislike Walmart. They are easily offended with my coupons and usually I can get better deals by driving out of town. However this week Walmart was not to be avoid as Amanda wanted makeup and picture frames for her birthday. So I spent about 45 distracted minutes planning a trip which not only included coupons but price matching as well. I am pleasantly surprised. I was able to save $40 or 25% on a trip of groceries. The cashier was very nice and did ask if I had an ad to price match to when I replied no, she started price matching.

Next on Friday night, we headed to Costco with our list that included cat food and dog food. After much debate, we added 25# of rice to the cart. We spent $332 which brings me to around $550 for the month. My plan is to stock up on Diet Cokes on sale at CVS this next week, but otherwise try to stay under $600 for the month!

Finally Saturday, Haley, Lily and I went back to Winston to find some need clothing items. My best deal was a shirt at JCPenny’s for $1.07, they sent me another $10 certificate this month for an unknown reason!  So I am finished shopping for a while (hopefully).

Grocery Store Challenge Final October

Posted on by
2

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 is the third and final week of the challenge this time. One of the most exciting parts of the challenge was going out to our building tonight to  shop in the freezers. We will be picking up our 80# of chicken breast in 3 weeks and are really trying to make space for it. So tonight we pull out 2 weeks worth of meat items, I think* that this will leave enough space for the chicken now.

Now on to the shopping. I have not been really impressed with CVS lately and for the first two weeks of the challenge was simply using a gift card to purchase some items. So for this week, I had $30 to use at CVS. This week the were running a P&G promotion which included my only brand loyal item “Tide”, so of course I decided to stock up. I spent $21 and saved $38 or 65%.  Harris Teeter has a couple of awesome sales this week on cereal, so instead of Food Lion, I placed an order there. I also had to go to CVS because Matt and the kids have been sick all week and the medicine cabinet was empty. I ended up spending $35 between the two stores, saved $98 or 74%!  This week I have spent a total of $56 on grocery items so a fail again with the challenge!

I seriously doubt I will attempt another challenge for the rest of the year. We are currently planning a trip to Michigan in November as well as travel at least one weekend a month between quizzing and cheerleading. But I am hoping to continue to lower the amount we are spending on groceries so that by January, I can reduce our budget for groceries overall.

Grocery Store Challenge 9/24/2012

Posted on by
Reply

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)

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
2

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

Posted on by
Reply

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?

August in Review

Posted on by
Reply

Great way to start a new month..2 days late but hey at least  I did not totally skip it.

Blogging: Finally over to the new site completely. So if you are still being redirected the address is www. teenstotsandeverythinginbetween.com   I have now met my blogging goal 2 months in a row!!! Go me! Go me!  Goal: 15 per month

Devotions: I have met this goal again !!!! I am excited already thinking I need to up the goal next year to 5 a week! Goal is 3 a week.
Groceries: Our actually grocery spending for the month was $733, but this is a lot off simply because there were 5 Fridays and 3 paychecks during this month. So  I can say without a doubt we are beginning to reduce our grocery spending! I did recheck our average for the year and it is down to $797 a month. Now to stay focused for the last 4 month! But for the first time ever we have been below budget 2 months in a row. Grocery Budget is set at $800 per month, this includes diapers, cleaning supplies, food and toiletries.

Financially:Still waiting for the changes to take effect at work. No real news in this area.   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 finally got on a scale this month and it ain’t pretty! So this will become a renewed focus for me in the coming months. I was able to exercise  3 x a week for 2 of the 5 weeks. That is an improvement. I have also found an app to help me count calories. I plan to go back on plan by Tuesday. Goal to exercise 3x a week and to be down to 150 by December by losing around 4 # a month.

Overall a really positive month with staying focused. I do know that September will be the greatest challenge in both finances and weight for me so can you pray for me? Thanks

Final Renovation Update 8/25

Posted on by
Reply
  1. Haley’s new room .
  2. Lily and Kendall move into bigger room
  3. Zach gets his own room and closet.. 
  4. Matt’s office-  He has moved in!

The desk is a perfect example of re-using things in order to complete projects without spending additional money. First the base is a closet door from one of the bedrooms. It was really beat up and we did not want to re-hang it as a door.  The wood section is actually left over boards from when we installed the floor in our master bedroom and office.  The blue paint is one of the dollar mis-tints that we picked up to use at the beginning of the renovation. These can not be return so this was a great use for a “waste” otherwise.  Cords are always a issue with computers and desk. Matt made the door knob hole bigger and salvaged a plastic ring from the bed we got rid of to make a nice cord compartment. To mount to the wall, Matt used scraps of lumber he had from building both Zach and Kendall’s bed. We did end up purchasing molding to finish out the top, the keyboard tray and one leg. Less than $20 for a desk that is big enough for a lot of stuff.

Spending Totals for Renovations

Budget information:$1000

Total Spent $1049

As I stated at the beginning of this project, when the money runs out we are finished. I am really pleased with how far we were able to get with this project. Zach will still need another dresser for his room and Matt definitely needs “storage” cabinets in his office along with a message center/ white board. But these are all things that will have to wait until we can afford them.  We actually have complete much more than I anticipated in fact, I now have a “scrapbook/couponing” desk of my own. Pictures to follow of course!