Is it insanity or a new way of looking at things?

After the hustle and bustle of Christmas passed (BTW I got a Keurig machine – that thing rocks my socks…) and New Year’s slipped away – I was trying to adjust my pantry to fit things in (namely boxes of K –cups) and I was moving stuff around between our freezers and realized we could live off of what we currently had for a month…

Now I am pretty frugal and use coupons and shop with specials – but even so I end up spending between $75-90 every week on groceries…mainly due to coupons and sales…hey Chex cereal for $1.50 – load me up…Del Monte canned veggies for .30 cents each…throw them in my cart…

So all of this has ganged up on me…I have about 8 boxes of cereal…enough veggies to eat a can every day for then next three weeks, boxes of pasta and sleeves of Saffron rice starting at me when I open the doors…and don’t even get me started on the army of Chef-Boy-R Dee I have lining my shelves…

In addition I have chicken, shrimp, sausage, fish and a whole turkey in my freezer – a WHOLE turkey – do you know many meals a family of four can get out of a whole turkey…I won’t go all Forrest Gump (turkey noodle soup, turkey tetrazzini, hot turkey sandwiches, etc., etc., etc.) but it is A LOT…

So I have decided that January will be the month of $40 or less grocery weeks…I am going to attempt to spend no more than $40 a week for all of our household needs – I was going to set it lower – but we really love fresh fruit and veggies to snack on and well – heck enough to feed us for a week can cost $10 or more…add in bread and 2 gallons of milk a week and you are up to about $18 – thereby leaving just a bit over $20 for anything else we may need during the week

I do realize this will take a little bit of willpower from me not to stock up when I see a good deal…it may mean we run out of something and have to put off buying more for a bit of time…it may mean that by the end of January we are eating Pancakes every night (for some odd reason I have three unopened boxes of Hungry Jack pancake mix…must have been a sale + coupons…) and TC taking PB&J’s for lunch…(4 jars of peanut butter+ 3 jars of fancy homemade jelly) .

So far this week we have spent $12.12...but we are out of fruit and bread so I have to make a quick trip to the grocery tonight...

So we will see if I can actually pull this off or if I am a crumpled heap come Jan 31st whimpering “Please sir, let me use my coupons…”

As gas goes up....

my spending has become more frugal...of course we are getting ready to revamp our whole downstairs as well...so I have to become even more frugal.

I haven't always been great with money - saving and all that...then I saw an Ultrasound that had 2 babies on it...something like that wakes you up fast.

Last year my goal was to really set a GOOD budget for my family - to insure we had some money to pay the bills...some money to save away...and some money to have fun with.

A friend of mine passed along a great budget worksheet a few years ago and I haphazardly used it - then about a year ago I got strict and really sat down to figure out just where our money was going...and why we never seemed to "get ahead" when it came time to pay our credit card bills...don't get me wrong we were doing well when it came time to pay our credit card and we could pay the amount due but there would still be a few hundred $$ on it from charging for the current month...

My goal was that at then end of the month ALL bills would be paid - including the credit card in full...so that means if I pay the credit card on the 20th of each month then I have 0 balance on the 21st...

I found out a few things...like I figured our grocery bills were about $350...but they were closer to $400...that I wasn't factoring in the one night a week pizza/Chinese food/Mcdonalds - which was adding up to about $60 a month....the girls had started school and while the daycare bill was lower I was handing out $10 for this and $5 for that during the month for things for school...another $50 or so I hadn't accounted for...never mind a qucik trip or two to Target at about $30 a pop...so what i found was that over the course of a month I wasn't accounting for about $400 ... a nice chunk of change.

So I sat down and did out a budget...factoring in when certain bills fell and what months we might have "extra" breathing room in our budget...

Within 5 months we were credit card debt free...meaning at the end of the month all bills were paid up in FULL...nothing hanging over our heads for the next month... and better yet watching what we spent has in turn made us more frugal and we have actually managed to boost our savings quite a bit in the past 6 months...

So I am passing along the budget worksheet for you to use - it is totally customizable - put in your own numbers (oh how I wish that was our monthly income) and your own catagories...I try to account for everything during the month...but I don't plan out every little $ to a catagory because we all know things come up during a month and the flexabiliy allows me to add categories and budget items when needed (see the Goodyear bill category...)

Hope you find it useful - click on the link and choose download file...BTW it is an excel file so you will need excel to open it...It is safe :)

SIMPLE BUDGET WORKSHEET