Get your Game Face on! It's savings time!

I got my Game Face on and am ready to start saving! We've had family huddles this week to focus on what we can do to lower our food bill and we're ready to take put it all on the field! I'm looking for a game changing performance this week!  Keep reading to see what our game plan is!

So, yes, I'm a major college football fan and my excitment for the first game of the season today may be overflowing a bit!  (Go Hokies!) 

Before I go over our game plan, I just want to thank everyone for checking out my blog! It was quite exciting to see all the reports showing how many hits it got!

I also really enjoyed hearing from you all! It was encouraging to know that I’m not alone in this! Several people have told me that this prompted them to take a look at what they were spending and they were equally surprised with their totals! I loved hearing from so many of you and appreciate the support and encouragement I have received!

I do also want to make clear, I have no qualifications as a financial planner, ‘budget’er, chef, or anything else!  I’m just an average mom trying to improve my families spending & eating habits. I am NOT an expert! I will honestly share my failures and successes with you and report how different tactics have worked for me and my family.  I’m not looking to re-invent the wheel here, just to share my progress and maybe inspire you to make your own steps towards frugal living J  I look forward to hearing your advice, tips and stories as well and really hope you will share them with me!   

So here is what I’ve been doing this week:

1.     After getting over the sticker shock I decided it would be best to take a look at the previous two months as well using my same, although not exact, method of adding up all money spent at fast food joints, grocery stores and convenience stores (excluding gas, at least as much as I can tell) as shown on my bank statements to get a better picture of what our ‘normal’ spending is.  Shock again! I really thought our August total of $1,138.02 was out of the ordinary, but much to my disappointment, it was pretty much right on ‘target’ with the last few months.

·         For July, total grocery, fast food and convenience spending was $1145.54.

·         For June, total grocery, fast food and convenience spending was $1354.67.

2.     While I don’t like seeing these numbers, being armed with the information at least gives me some where to start. No more head in the sand, it's game time baby! I’ve sat down with my family and we determined what we feel is a reasonable dollar amount to set for our grocery budget.  We feel like $250 per pay day (every two weeks) is sufficient. 

·         You may look at the number and say $125 a week is outrageous, especially for someone claiming to be ‘frugal.’ However, please keep in mind; we are not planning to overhaul our lives overnight. This is not where I want my final goal to be, but it is a starting point and less than half of what we have been spending.

3.     I have done tons of research, recently and throughout the last few months and found tons of information on ways to lower your grocery cost.  Throughout the coming days I will outline some of the site I have used and love, but for now here are some of the things I am considering that are all things I have always known, just never taken the time to do.

·         I have a budget sheet I downloaded some time ago, I believe from Microsoft office (Excel) and have used for some time.  You can personalize it with categories and I have always included my bills and made sure those were covered. However, I’ve never budgeted for gas, groceries, prescriptions, co-pays, etc. I have revamped my budget to include these costs.

·         I will move to a cash only system for all expenses that are not bills so that I can earmark the money rather than trying to keep it separated in my head in the bank. When I run out of grocery money, there is no more to spend. When I run out of gas money there is no more to spend.  Because this will be my first time doing this, I am planning to have a week 1 set and week 2 set, so that at least if I do mess up, we won’t have spent all the money for the two week period at once! Still gotta get to work and feed my child at the very least! J

·         Menu plan!  This is really a common sense approach.  First I will inventory what I have at home, EVERYTHING! Freezer, Fridge, Pantry, etc.  You can search the internet and find free printables (a note about that later on) to document these items. Then I will shop the sale ads and plan menus around things we have at home as well as what is on sale. I’ll also look for coupons for items we will use. I know there are no flyers this Sunday, so I’ll look for print ones (see a note about that later on as well).  I will be sure to account for enough meals for breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks etc. for all 3 of us for a full 7 days.  

·   Hubby and I have a standing breakfast ‘date’ on Friday mornings. I work 4, 10-hour days so have Friday off. We plan to continue this tradition and it will come out of our grocery money.  However, this will be the ONLY eating out we will do for the next two weeks. 

·   I love cooking and baking and have begun making a lot of items from scratch.  I plan to continue and even increase this to help lower our costs.  Yes it takes time and commitment. However, you are going to pay for your food one way or another.  It will either be at a premium dollar amount at the register or a premium on your time. While my time is limited, I have more of it than I do green! J Plus, it’s satisfying and gives me peace of mind knowing I’m giving my family healthier meals!

·         This should go without saying, but I know I have been guilty more often than not but DO NOT WASTE ANYTHING! That is just like throwing away cash.  If fruits, veggies, bread, yogurt, whatever, may be going bad before you use them, FREEZE them!  If you are not sure if can be froze, Google can help you out! When cooking whole chickens, make stock rather than throwing away that liquid. The less waste you have, the more savings you rack up!

4.     I did also go through the last three months to see what we have been spending on gas and medical expenses and included those in my budget. Even including things such as lunch money for my daughter and what we can spare out of our budget to go towards our hunting supplies for the upcoming season. 

·         This is something else to mention. We hunt for squirrel, deer and turkey. There is cost involved in hunting, which I have not at all included or priced out and really am too far into what we’ve already gotten to even try at this point. However, whatever we harvest will be essentially, ‘free’ meat.  And tasty. And so much better than the processed, hormone filled stuff in the store. 

5.     Future planning:  We are looking at even more ways to reduce our costs in the future, including starting a garden next year and possibly even getting some laying chickens.

 

Okay! So this is my game day plan! I'm excited to get started! Once we get back home from our breakfast ‘date’ I’ll get going on the menu planning and grocery list. I strongly believe in shopping with a list. I know I’m outta control if I go to the store without one! 

I’ll detail what I’ve done and how the shopping trip went along with totals of what I’ve spent later this weekend.  Thanks for taking the time to read my post.  I hope that maybe some of these tips can help you as well!!  I look forward to any tips and advice you can offer to us also, especially you ‘coupon’ers!! J

Note about Printables and Coupons

In the spirit of being frugal, I personally do not use printables for lists, such as kitchen inventory, etc. I use Excel daily and am VERY familiar with it, so for me, I find it easier to use a template or make my own charts.  This allows me to add categories, sort and filter, include functions to automatically calculate totals, etc. Also as my list changes or updates (especially inventory lists, etc), my spreadsheet can easily change with it and not have to re-print anything. This is a great way to me to help save on printing costs!

For some people you may not have Excel on your computer so printables might be your best option.  If you have Excel, but just aren’t familiar with it, check out Microsoft Office’s website. They have tons of free training guides for Excel and all of their products.  

For coupons, if you print, make sure you only print what you will use. If you print a bunch of coupons that you don't use, it's a big waste of paper and ink and what you save may be ate up by printing costs. J When I first started printing coupons, I was very guilty of this!  Also , as tip, for your coupon flyers, it can be a big help if you can buddy up with some of your friends to bring your extra coupons together and share with each other the ones you don't use!