This week I’m going to begin an ongoing challenge to get the grocery budget down. Currently, we spend between $400-$450 a month for a family of four. I know we can do better. We eat an awful lot of cold cereal for breakfast, If I would just take the time to make muffins ahead of time, we would have a less expensive and healthier breakfast every morning. We could stand to save on lunch and dinner, too. I’m addicted to Lean Cuisine lunches, and making lunch from scratch would definitely save money.
So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to set my grocery budget at $100 a week, but I’m going to try to spend less. After I do my weekly shopping (usually on Thursdays), I will transfer the difference between what I spent and $100 directly to my credit card. Hopefully seeing my credit card balance go down will keep me motivated to constantly work on my food budget. I’ll give you an update on Thursday or Friday after I do the shopping.
And for those of you wondering how last week’s challenge to myself went, I did pretty well. I line dried all but two loads of laundry. I do a lot of laundry on Monday, and I ran out of room on the line, so I had to throw a load in the dryer. And Friday I was just plain lazy, so I dried another load in the dryer. I’m going to keep up the line drying as much as possible. I’ll be interested to see what effect it has on our electric bill. Electricity rates just went up, and the average household is expected to see a $10 increase per month. If I can offset that increase, I will be happy.
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This is great! Good luck on your goals. We eat a lot of cold cereal here too so I only buy with coupons to make them $2.50 a box or less and then stock up on these as needed. We also make farina a few times a month as well as pancakes, french toast [to use up bread that is starting to go stale], eggs and toast. I also have a few lines in the basement to hang laundry on but lately have only been using them for delicates /shrinkable items. I try to do full loads as often as possible and only use as much detergent as needed and use cold water except for dirty towels and linens.
I line dried everything last spring through too cold to get anything dry and our utility bill was almost 1/2!! we were thrilled. Our grcoery budget is get only items on the list and use coupons for items you normally buy. Don’t buy something just becuase you found a coupon. I’ve also found an excellent spaghetti sauce recipe that cost less than a jar of Ragu and tastes better. My husband likes Asian cuisine and I’ve found a few receipes, tweaked them and he loves it and its cheaper than going out.
Want to change your belove iphone 4 form black to white? Hmm, yes, so am I. but when will white iphone 4 available?
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