New Budget

This month I will trying out a new plan for my husband and my grocery budget. I have been trying to cut our grocery bill for a while and did great for a while on coupons but have found that I am lacking success lately. Or at least the success that I need to achieve to make my time cutting and organizing coupons worth it.

I was reading an article from my LearnVest email digest that showcased a couple different peoples' real budgets and one of them stuck with me. A young couple around the ages of my husband and myself spent around 100$ a week on groceries by planning out their menus each week. Right now I can spend up to $300-$400 a month on groceries, and our budget just cannot take it any more. So I am going to give this method a try.

Seeing as my grocery budget is the same as this couple, I am going to shoot for around $50 a week. I know its an ambitious cut, but I think it's manageable. Today is going to be my first trip and I plan on making sure I have what I need in my house for the next week of meals.

I think the most challenging part will be keeping my husband and myself to the meal plan we create at the beginning of the week. We have a tendency to do the impromptu dinner out.

I plan on keeping everyone posted as to how it goes. So wish us luck!

Ebates

I just signed up for this site that give you cash back for your purchases. We'll see how it goes!

Ebates

Have a nice day!
Ali

Google Calendar for Your Coupons!

Today we went grocery shopping and I always feel like I don't have a good system for making sure I use all my coupons before they expire. So I decided to try something new. I listed all my coupons according to their expiration date. I then printed out the month and took it with us to the grocery store. As we went around the store I check the list to make sure I wasn't missing anything that would expire soon. It definitely helped and here is my list for the month:

I also put together a shopping list of items we normal get in a word document. After printing it out I highlighted the ones that we needed. I think it helps to have a more complete list rather than trying to write up a list every time we go shopping.