Grocery Shrink

The largest adjustable budget category is food. Many families unknowingly overspend every month on food enough to buy a cruise ticket.

Here are my favorite tips to help you start shrinking your grocery bills.

1. Use cash. When the cash is gone you are done spending for the month.

2. Be familiar with using healthy low cost foods in different combinations to form your meals. This would include ingredients like carrots bananas apples oranges in season. frozen vegetables such as peas corn green beans carrot coins, broccoli. and meats like whole roasting chickens chicken breasts and canned tuna. If allowable on your diet whole-grain pasta 100% whole wheat bread brown rice and quinoa are also very affordable choices.

3. Some products are fairly easy and much less expensive to make it home. I’m thinking of products like Greek yogurt,  almond milk, bread, pizza crust, pancakes cornbread mix and seasonings.

4. Have a plan for when your schedule doesn’t go like you thought it would. this will save you from having to eat at a restaurant or grabbing fast food instead you can throw together one of the simple meals you already have the ingredients on hand for.

5. Reduce your budget gradually if you can so that you don’t feel the shock of it all in One month.

6. Know what regular prices on food items are. Then you will be able to recognize a really good sale when you see it and can stock up. Only stock up on nonperishable items that you use all the time and only buy enough that you won’t me to buy the item again until it goes on sale again.

7. Be gentle with yourself if your life is fairly stressful you may need to use more of mixes inconvenience and another person and that’s okay you won’t be able to stick with the budget that makes your life miserable.

There has to be more ways to save our there.  What is your tip?

Look where you’ve been without losing sight of where you’re going.

You’ve made it a whole week in a spending freeze!  It’s time to look back and check out your awesomeness.

I learned some stuff about myself in the last 7 days.  I thought I was a saver, but I’m a spender.  I get a rush from finding a good deal and getting pretty things.  It was emotionally harder than I thought it was going to be to turn down a good buy. I had to look for other ways to feel fulfilled–and honestly, telling myself it was only for 31 days helped a lot.

The glitter of pretty things fades for me over time, so if I tell myself to wait 31 days, I probably won’t even care by then.  If I still care, It’s probably something truly useful.

So far I’ve spent $4.25 for a head of lettuce, a stick of celery, and supplies for a baby gift.  I saved $45 by not spending on sale items that I normally would have snagged.  I took back items to a store and got $12 on a gift card–$8 was used for lunch, with $4 left over. My net loss for the month so far is $.25. I’ll need to get groceries at some point and gas.  I haven’t done it yet, only because I’m slightly lazy and there are a bunch of other things I’d rather do than leave the house in these frigid temperatures.

Interesting to note:  I mentioned last night that I needed to get groceries and oldest daughter said, “Are you sure?  Let’s dig in the freezer and scrape the bottom of the pantry.”  She’s really INTO this spending freeze and I love that!  I pulled a turkey out of the freezer to thaw and roast this week. I love when we take positive steps and our kids are affected it by it.

Now I want to hear about you.  Tell me positive experience from the week, what you are saving towards, or something you’ve discovered about yourself.

And another “reflection” picture just because.

P.S.  The French Pastry giveaway ends today.  There’s still time to enter:  French Pastry Giveaway

So how was yesterday?!  I’m hoping it was the hardest day of the challenge for me.  We had our friends over to spend the night for New Years and it’s our tradition to shop on New Years Day for organizing stuff.   She had returns for Target and had never been to Ikea before.  Getting to take her to Ikea was like introducing two of my best friends to each other.  I was sure that they were going to love each other as much as I loved them. It was perfect.

Throughout our day, I worked through a lot of temptations.  I’ve been in denial about how much I love to spend money and get new things.  If it’s a good deal, all the better.  Saving money erases some of the guilt.  Case in point: I really wanted a brass garden table.  It was real metal, a cool shape and marked down to $30.

I almost bought it.  I knew which envelope I could take the cash from, started to load it onto the cart, and then remembered the freeze.  Instead, I took a picture.  It’s a really great table…for somebody else.  When I start to feel sorry for myself, I remember that I have some awesome tree stumps in my garage waiting to become really great side tables. (Update: 3 years later and I never thought about the table again!)

Throughout this Spending Freeze we are going to face a lot of temptations and  you deserve credit for resisting them.   Here’s what I want you to do.  When you see something you are tempted to spend on, would normally spend on if you weren’t in a “freeze,” take a picture of it. Write it down on your victories page.  Then move the cash from the envelope you would have spent the money from into your goal envelope.  Then leave a blog or facebook comment and tell us about it. You win!

We’ll talk more about cash and envelopes tomorrow 🙂

You can download your victory pdf here: Spending Freeze Victories.

P.S.  At Ikea, I returned $12 worth of stuff for store credit.  After browsing awhile, we bought a meatball lunch–Heather got the kid size which was free on holiday special. The kid plate was pretty tiny so I shared my meatballs with her. The adult plate is HUGE. There were lots of things I wanted, but I decided I could wait until February. It has been my experience that if I wait awhile most times I don’t even want the item later.  I left with $4 more than when we came.

The spending freeze is here and I’m super excited!  Your task today, if you haven’t already done it, is to set a budget for the month.  Here are some tips:

1.  Budget every dollar of income you have, even if it ends up in a misc. or savings category.  Every dollar must have a name (or it will get lost.)

2.  Make a new budget for every month.  You can reference your old budgets as a guide, but each month comes with it’s own unique set of circumstances.

3.  If you are married: One spouse in the house can make the rough draft of the budget, but the other spouse needs to look at it and have freedom to make changes.  It will only work if both spouses agree.

4.  Plan monthly for big annual expenses like Christmas, Property Taxes, and insurance.

5.  If your husband doesn’t like to budget, check out this post.

We funded every category in our budget this month, but my household, misc., clothing, and blow money categories are going in the safe instead of my purse this month.  If we have a genuine need, I can get the money, but it won’t be easy.  At the end of hte month, whatever is left can go towards our goals.

Dave Ramsey has a great cash flow plan, that gives suggestions for budget categories and percentages of total income.  It’s just a rough guide, but will help you think if you get stuck.