Thursday, April 1, 2010

Money Saving Mommy, Part 1.......

Oh how I love Wednesday's and Thursdays! Why you ask? Well let me just tell you! I love Wednesday because that's when the sales papers for the groceries stores come in the mail and I love Thursdays because I get to go to the store and buy the groceries! Crazy, huh? Someone actually LOVING to go grocery shopping, but I do, I absolutely love going and saving money! I have to admit that I use to HATE going to get groceries. This was, to me, worse than going to the dentist(and I hate the dentist!). I hated it until recently when I woke up one day and had 3 children, all under 4, and a budget to work with. I started thinking how are we going to do this? Enter the world of coupons and the Internet. I started to clip coupons on Sunday's and started using Google for ideas on how to help me save money. I came across several websites like: Southern Savers( http://www.southernsavers.com/) and Hip 2 Save(http://www.hip2save.com/) where they gave brilliant ideas and a break down of what was on sale where and how many coupons you could use to get the cheapest price possible! Jack-Pot!!! I started using a 3 ring binder to store my coupons, which has saved me time and so much money over the past 2 months. I also took the lead of a blog I follow called Trenches of Mommy hood(http://www.trenchesofmommyhood.blogspot.com/). She gave herself a budget of $75.00 for her family of 5. At first I thought that is impossible to buy groceries for 5 for only $75!! Then I thought, Challenge:EXCEPTED!!! So this week I planned out my menu, for the next week,(which I find very frugal, you'll save more money if you know what you need to buy opposed to just buying whatever you think you may need in the future.)by what was on sale. So 95% of the items I bought this week were on sale. I also went to the ATM and got out only $75.00 so that it would be easier for me to stay on budget. I combined coupons with items on sale and the result was: Groceries bought for a family of 5 for only $76.65!! I am very proud of myself! Only $1.65 over budget, and I had that in change in my wallet, so I still didn't have to use my debit card! Go me!;)


My Menu for the week of April 1:


-Pizza(homemade)


-Easter dinner(Ham,mac&cheese, dressing,deviled eggs,rolls)


-breakfast for dinner


-salsa(to take to my parents for our Easter get together, I already had the ingredients needed for this)
-leftovers


This is all of my "cold" items



This is the rest of my groceries,except a bottle of vinegar that ended up in my mom's bag! I don't have any produce this week because I still have some left from last week.(So yes we do eat healthy food;)

My total grocery bill for this week was: $76.65.

I saved a total of 64.17!

I think I did a pretty good job of staying on budget! So until next week, I hope you have fun and save lots and lots of cash!:)

HAPPY SHOPPING,

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