Once again, Erin at Working for Financial Freedom is hosting the Reduce-a-Bill Challenge. To participate, all you have to do is pick a bill to reduce, and reduce it!
Last month I pledged to reduce my grocery bill using the Grocery Game. I ended up going over my grocery budget, because I spent so much money stocking up! Overall, I’m liking the Grocery Game. It definitely saves time in finding the best sale prices. I paid for another 8 weeks, and I will re-evaluate after that.
I’m going to change my strategy a little bit this month. Last month I bought bargain foods, and then tried to make a menu around what I had. Unfortunately, I quickly found that when I don’t have a firm menu plan in place, I tend to send my husband out to grab dinner too often.
I was looking for a new plan last week, when I came across this little e-booklet. The author suggests writing a menu plan, spending most of your grocery money on the food needed for that plan, and spending about $10 a week stockpiling. Then the next month, use the stockpiled food to make the menu plan, and repeat.
So that’s what I’m going to do. Sometime over the weekend, I plan on making a menu for a month. I’ll do most of the shopping on Monday, and I won’t go over budget. I’ll hold a little money out for weekly milk and produce trips. I may have to buy some meat halfway through the month, too, since we don’t have extra freezer space. And I’ll save a little money for stockpiling each week too. We’ll see how that works out.
What will help this month is that I have a $37 Rite Aid rebate coming my way, as well as $7 left of my Walgreen’s gift card and another $20 coming in rebates. I’ll add that to the money I use for stockpiling.
My goal is to stay under $400 this month, including cleaning supplies and toiletries. And since we won’t be eating out, it’s really going to have to stretch. Time for me to check out the Make it From Scratch Carnival. If you have any tasty, frugal recipes, feel free to send them my way! :)
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Hi! it’s me Heather from Not keeping up with the Jonses lol. I used your idea by using the initials from my blog :)
I like that fact that through these challenges we
realize certain areas where we could adjust to “try” something new, even if it is just one new thing to try.
I really enjoyed last months challenge and look forward to this months as well.
I am doing the no spend days again this month, I can’t wait to see how we all do! :)
I’m glad you told me who you were! I had to think for a minute about calling you that before! :)
And I agree that the challenges help us to think of different ways to reduce bills. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don’t. I can’t wait to see if the extra money I spent last month pays off this month!
There’s a few bloggers doing a November Meal Planning Month (including me!).
@Vixen – I will head over to your blog to check that out!
Thanks for e-book link, Lynnae. It has lots of tips and tricks I could definitely use.
The Hillbilly Housewife website has great frigal recipes using basic ingredients….
http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/
Hope this helps!
@Hilda – I’m glad you liked the e-book!
@Tracy – Thanks for the link! I used to have it bookmarked, but I lost it when my computer crashed last spring. I’m glad you reminded me of that site!
The e-booklet is great! Thanks for sharing!
I never knew people had such concrete strategies for grocery shopping. Very interesting.
Lynnae,
Thanks for sharing the ebooklet, I’m going to have to read that over this weekend. (I like that it’s free!)
I read the shopping book, some of her ideas were quite good but with food inflation heating up again I don’t think she’ll be spending under 200 amonth for much longer. Her idea of setting aside 30 a month 360 a year for meat is a good one, as you can buy a side of beef. Although we were first married we bought a side of beef but never ate it so we gave away. The biggest surprise was that she doens’t advicate using a price book. A price book is in my opinion the courner stone to furgal shopping budget. It won’t save you a ton of money (10-15% is about right) but it will make you a far more exfective shopper (even if you wince at every price increase) I find that I spend between 70 and 80 eruos a weeke on shopping while a small drop from before I find I get much better value for the money than I did before.
One thing I have noticed is that those who spend very little on food (like the forementioned lady who spends less than 200 a month on food) are very good at cutting courners on cooking. Let give me yoiu an example a recepe I picked up from a friend. Compare the ingrededanits list. the first is from someone who spends much less than me on food and feeds a family of 4 (vs just the wife and I)
The food strecher way
Chick Peas 3 jars
tomatoe frio 1 tin
2 slices bacon
half a Chirico
Mine
chick peas 3 jars
tomato frio 3 jars
diced tomatoes 1 tin
2 packs bacon
2 chirico (Spanish sausage)
Snow peas (or beans not sure what they are)
As you can see my shopping bill is higher because I love to stuff my food full. But inspite of that I’ve manage to cut down my shopping budget quite a bit.
@Rob – Thanks for your comment. I completely agree that she’s probably not able to keep her grocery bill under $200 these days. And I don’t have a freezer, so buying a side of beef is completely out for me. But I do like her strategy. I think she provides a good basis for making a shopping plan that you can customize to meet your own needs.
And thanks for bringing up the price book. I haven’t done that yet, and I’d love to. Do you have any advice? How do you maintain yours? Excel Spreadsheet?
I use excel to keep track of my bills so I simply added a tab where I keep a shopping list. I shop mainly at two stores (Carrefour and Plus a German discount chain) so I’ve got a list of things I buy at each store. It takes a bit of work to write the prices down the first few times. I found that I tended to the same things each week. The hardest part is remembering to take a pen and paper to update the prices. You’d also be surprised at the price spread between stores. For example a pineapple at Carrefour runs almost 5€ where as a slightly smaller one (but just as good) is usually less than 2€. Quite a savings. One that I wouldn’t have been aware of before having a price book. I’ve been using a price book for a while now and can usually shop off the top of my head. Occationally I’ll print off my list to see how close I can come to predicting my spending, usually within a euro or two.
One other trick I learned is to take things I buy regularly (anything from toleit paper to jogurt) and by the cheapest no name product and work my way up the foodchain unitll I find one I like. About 75% of the products I buy are store brands, the rest are brandnames. There is a bit of waste, I threw out alot of yorgurt unitll I found one I like. Recently I found a store brand that I really liked, less than half the cost of the brand name one I used to buy.
The other advantage to a price book is less waste. You tend to buy things you’ll use. As well you can plan out purchases. I may leave some stocking up if it’s a large shopping week.
The only real negative to a price book is you really really notice price hikes. Food inflation really takes on a new meaning when your aware of prices.
@Rob- Thanks for the info. I’m definitely going to try to get a price book started this month. Though I’m not sure I want to notice food inflation anymore than I’m already noticing it! :) I know which store around here is less expensive most of the time, but sometimes other stores have sales that beat the “cheap” store, and I’m not always sure. It would be nice to have a reference point like a pricebook.
And I do the same thing with the store brands. I buy a lot of store brands, too. Most of the time there’s not a big difference.
Hi Lynnae
I know what you mean about price inflation, good lord, everythings gone up. Somethings like cereal by 5 or 10 cents, other like my favourite coffee took a 50% hike (from 1.06 to 1.62) than went onsale this week at the old price.
a price book at it’s simplist is a shopping list with prices. Very simple and surprisingly quite effective. Simple make a list of 30 or so most common things you buy and note the prices when you go shopping.
Thanks, Rob. I’m going shopping tomorrow, so I will take a pen and paper with me and start writing things down!
I never thought about a price book…great tip Rob :)
After several years looking for a solution for our simple tastes and trying to keep the food budget under control we purchased a 7cf chest freezer (more energy efficient than the uprights) and started shopping at Sam’s Club. I buy meats that are reduced with a soon to expire “sell before” date, separate into single meal packages and freeze. I also do this with dry goods that are freezable (spices, coffee, sugar, flour, berries, etc.).
I keep a food price log for 3 stores; Sam’s, Wal-Mart and our local supermarket. I always check the sales prices at our local supermarkets to be sure Sam’s is the better price–it isn’t always.
@Kathy – that’s a great idea. We don’t have a freezer yet, but I’m trying to figure out how to fit one into our house. We need to get rid of the piano first. Unfortunately we don’t have a garage to put one in. I know I could take better advantage of deals if I had more freezer space.