Hubby has given me a mission and should I chose to accept it there will be lots of cash to be reaped.
My mission... get a BUDGET and stick to it.
More specifically cut our grocery and dinners out bill way way down.
Last time we did a budget (FPU last spring) we found out we spend almost half of Hubby's pay check on these two things. In fact our eating out bill totaled more than our mortgage payment! OUCH.
So I will have my loving man create a run down of what we spent this month on groceries and dining out and post it later. Then I will try my darnest to make a grocery list that includes everything needed for the meals. This is my downfall really...tons of trips to the high priced market up the street cause "Hon, I am making tacos but I forgot to buy tortillas! Oh and while you are there grab cheese because we ate most of it already. And do you have to have salsa?! Might get that too!" This is usually followed the next day with another trip to the store because I bought 6 weeks of meat and veggies for dinners but nothing for lunch or breakfast! How do I forget those meals?! sigh
I was never taught how to make menus, shopping lists, or cook fast meals not from a box. I married a man who ate most of his dinners in restaurants growing up. It was a match made in heaven til the bank statements came and we actually LOOKED at them.
So if anyone has some websites to help me learn these new skills it would be awesome if you pass them along! It shouldn't be this hard to feed a family of five! *banging head*
I can attest to the fact that making a menu and then a shopping list from said menu can save you money! We have 6 in our household and I can get a week worth of groceries for a little over $100. The only thing we have to go to the store for between shopping trips is milk and bread.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the budget! It is hard at first, but once you get into the swing of it, it is wonderful! I don't have any advice other than planning a menu before you go to the store and making a detailed shopping list from the menu.
how are you eating though? lots of boxed pre-made food? or meat and veg?
ReplyDeletemy house is full of heavy meat eaters. dh insists on meat daily but will 'allow' a bean soup night occasionally and sometimes salad...with enough toppings and maybe meat
We usually get one boxed food meal (like Hamburger Helper) for a quick meal and the rest is home made stuff. We eat meat every dinner and usually it has to be 2 to 3 pounds of it at the very least. We go generic on a LOT of foods and look for things on sale. Lot of comparison shopping also. We mainly go to our Walmart for our regular grocery shopping (which saves us an average of $50-$75 a week) and sometimes have to go to our Albertson's to get meat if the meat at Walmart doesn't look good. We used to go to Sam's to get things like canned foods in bulk and that helped a lot. It can get tight the month that you buy your bulk stuff, but then the next month or two is easy because you don't have to buy those type of things.
ReplyDeleteThe biggest thing, for us, is that we tend to spend less when we have a list of everything we need (including snacks, sodas, etc) and write down the cost of each item on the list. It kind of makes you actually LOOK at the price of what you are buying. I know that I used to just go to the store and just grab whatever we needed and not look at the cost. By doing a menu, shopping list and paying attention to price (comparison shopping) we have cut our monthly food bill in HALF!
We allow one "big price" meal a week, like steak or something like that, and try to go budget conscience for the rest of the meals. Think things like spaghetti (we use the seasoning packets and tomato paste which saves us a few bucks), enchiladas, meatloaf, etc. You can still have the veggies in there too, but if you are buying fresh veggies, think of switching to frozen (which in my opinion are almost as good and quite a bit cheaper) or canned.
We also keep an eye out for new recipes that call for cheap ingredients to try out. If we like them, we keep them in our dinner rotation, if not we don't make it again. Also, our kids LOVE having breakfast for dinner....like pancakes, eggs, bacon, etc. And having breakfast for dinner is fairly cheap!
Well, I hope this helps some!