I wanted to update on a post I wrote,  Reducing Grocery Budget. My goal was to reduce my grocery budget by 10%. I have successfully dropped from $600-$700 to now $500. So YES I am doing great:

Here is what has worked:

Writing out my meals in advance. In July I created my menu board and it has been really awesome to plan ahead. Not only do I know in advance what items I can buy when they go on sale, but my kids can see what’s for dinner. I did create some variations of the board. For example, Mondays are now crockpot nights because we are gone from 9-4pm. I am looking to find new crockpot recipes, so come back to see what I find.

Second, Clean the Pantry Week has been a great help. This is the week I try to use what I already have in my pantry and freezer. Then I come up with a weeks worth of dinners. It is the last week of the month/first of the next month.

This week is Clean the Pantry Week.  I really only had to buy 3-4 ingredients for this whole week! The rest of my grocery budget I spent on sale items and things I don’t usually buy like guacamole dip and chicken tacos.

So here is my menu for this week’s Clean the Pantry:

Monday
Carnitas Tacos
Corn

Tuesday
Chicken Broccoli Bowl (adapt as need for gluten free)

Wednesday
Parmesan Chicken Legs
French Fries or Red Potatoes

Thursday
Eating out (I am running around town like a chicken with my head cut off so this night I don’t cook)

Friday
Chicken Cheddar Casserole

Saturday
Spaghetti

Next Step: I don’t want to buy processed food anymore so I need to find alternatives. Here is my starter list

Cream of soup mix (gluten free of course)
Taco seasoning
Mac and cheese
GF cookie mix
GF brownie mix
Granola Bars (my daughter eats gluten, and I want to make non-gluten granola bars)
Fish sticks

Hopefully I can post my recipes as soon as I find them myself.

Ligia

Once again, I am attempting to live mostly “Cash Only”. I read The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey many years ago. I bought all the gadgets to live on a cash only budget: the envelopes, the wallet, and an envelope system. My problem was always the same: I’d forget to write down how much cash I was taking out of the envelopes and even forget to get the cash out of the bank. So, without a doubt I would run out of money and end up using my card.

Why am  I coming back?

For me the benefits are as follows:

• I have to restrict myself to what cash I have
• I can visually see how much I have to spend
• I can track how much and how quick I am spending my money
• It gives me a sense of accomplishment when my wallet isn’t completely empty by the end of the month!

So how am I going to do this differently?

1. Organization: I bought an awesome wallet on Amazonthat my sister showed me (she has been using this system for a few months and she has been able to pay off alot of bills). I labeled each category on the tabs and fill it with money every 2 weeks.

2. Accountability: I have a great app that helps me to organize my money digitally! Its called Spend. I have organized each category to reflect my envelope system.

3. Getting the cash: This is where I’ve gone wrong in the past. My goal is to go to the bank the first monday after payday and withdrawal the amount I need for two weeks. I only put in my wallet the money for 1 week (would hate to lose it) and then fill on the weekend.

4. Spending too much in one category: Another problem I have is that I overspend in one category (usually food) and I end up grabbing money from my other categories. Now, I transfer on Spend so I can also have a record of how much I moved over and how much each category should have left.

How I’ve determined the amounts for each category is that I keep track of how much I spend in each category for a while and average it out. Also, there are some categories (like eating out) that I have to restrict so I pick an amount and try to stick with it.

With the holidays coming its REALLY important that I budget.

Oh, and by the way, I use my Spend app for Christmas too. I’ll tell you about it later!

Ligia