$100/week to feed a family of four
6 weeks into the "project" -- successful 4 out of 6 weeks.
So I went over my weekly "target" budget (that is target with a small "t", as in goal...not Target with a capital "T", as in store in which I spend WAY too much money even if I just run in for one item). My goal has been to keep our grocery bill to $100 or less a week....this week we were at $122. Before coupons and in-store savings, it was $165, so that is considerable savings....but still over $100
However in my constant need to justify everything I think "well, I bought a case of beer which is about $17 of that extra money, and since soda was on sale I bought 4 cases for $11 (plus deposit) because I am a good wife who loves her husband" so there is my extra money right there. If you factor out the beverages, yes, we were under $100 for the week.
I have become a little obsessed with the Frugal way of living, however not in a "we will now use our tea bags 7 times" and a "bring home your sandwich baggie so I can rise it and reuse it" kind of way. No offense to those who do that successfully, but I think that is just a little too far over the edge of reality for us. I told D that my goal is to pinch every penny we can, without compromising our way of life to a noticible degree. So far we've been pretty successful. A few of my strategies have been:
So I went over my weekly "target" budget (that is target with a small "t", as in goal...not Target with a capital "T", as in store in which I spend WAY too much money even if I just run in for one item). My goal has been to keep our grocery bill to $100 or less a week....this week we were at $122. Before coupons and in-store savings, it was $165, so that is considerable savings....but still over $100
However in my constant need to justify everything I think "well, I bought a case of beer which is about $17 of that extra money, and since soda was on sale I bought 4 cases for $11 (plus deposit) because I am a good wife who loves her husband" so there is my extra money right there. If you factor out the beverages, yes, we were under $100 for the week.
I have become a little obsessed with the Frugal way of living, however not in a "we will now use our tea bags 7 times" and a "bring home your sandwich baggie so I can rise it and reuse it" kind of way. No offense to those who do that successfully, but I think that is just a little too far over the edge of reality for us. I told D that my goal is to pinch every penny we can, without compromising our way of life to a noticible degree. So far we've been pretty successful. A few of my strategies have been:
- I've been checking out the store circulars on Friday evenings, and then trying to spend some time menu planning that night/Saturday morning in advance of my grocery runs.
- I am starting to learn the sale rotation schedule at my store, so I know when to triple-stock up on essentials like chicken nuggets (normally $4 a package, but on sale can be between $2 and $2.50), mayo, snacks, etc. I have a large bookcase in the basement that serves as our pantry so I can store the extra twelve boxes of pasta and containers of oatmeal.
- I steal my mom's coupons (we don't get the paper delivered) and then rotate them in with the sale rotation, so last week I bought 6 boxes in the triscuit/ritz family and between the sales and the coupons only paid $3 total for all 6 boxes.
- I stopped buying the single serve packages of anything, and instead spend time on Sunday night dividing the kids snacks into snack size baggies, putting big containers of yogurt into smaller ones, etc (D laughs at me for this one)
- Spending far too much time at the store trying to concentrate on the "price per unit" price rather than the total price. I have practically memorized the amounts for the foods we eat most often, and am able to decipher what is really a deal vs what is a packaging ploy
- I still need to get my family to eat more veggies than we have been, but I've given up on too many fresh vegetables until they are better eaters. I tend to buy one "type" of veggie for the week (whatever is on sale) in addition to whatever I will be using in a recipe (onion, mushrooms, whatever). I will cook that up to have over a few days, but otherwise we are using bags of frozen vegetables because it pains me to throw out wasted produce at the end of the week.