All You Grocery Challenge Week in Review

Sunday - Day 7

So, it's Sunday and the end of week 1 of the All You Grocery Challenge. Today we had a late breakfast of pancakes, eggs and toast, and milk. For lunch we had turkey sandwiches, made with the turkey and rolls that were given to us, a slice of watermelon each and chocolate milk. For dinner I plan on making Chicken and Biscuits (the kind I make has mixed vegetables in it), fruit for dessert (choice of strawberries, blueberries, or grapes) and juice (100% fruit juice) for our drinks.


A Week in Review

Well, we made it through the first week under budget. We would have spent a lot less but life got in the way. With the water being turned off on Wednesday, we ended up spending $20 on a sheet pizza. Then on Friday, my husband and I celebrated our anniversary. We ended up going to Olive Garden and spending $38.02. If you subtracted just those two things, we would have spent almost $60 less. Isn't it crazy how much you can spend just eating out?

Here is what my spending log I use looks like. I used all those wonderful skills I learned in my Advanced Spreadsheets class. You can click on it to take you to a larger picture of it.

I track each day's spending on food for each week. I also have a drop-down menu to use for my category - they are sorted by food, eating out and snacks/coffee. I then added each category up and did a nice pie chart to help me see where I am spending my food money.

I did a screen shot so that you can see how much I spent this week. Here is Week 1's Totals and chart. You can also click on the this picture in order to get a bigger picture.

As you can see in the above chart, I spent $67.90 on eating out (pizza and anniversary), $4.23 on snacks and coffee, and $20.38 on groceries. We still have $32.49 out of our allotted $125 budget for the week. The pie chart shows all $125 of our food budget, blue is eating out, red is snacks and coffee, green is groceries and purple is what we have leftover.

So, we did pretty good, all things considered. Next week will only be better. My local grocery store does have a few good deals so we will be stopping there sometime during the week.

Spending Update

So, this week we have been trying to spend as little as possible. We have done well so far with only spending money on a gallon of milk($1.99). I went to Walgreens and Rite Aid Sunday and only spent a little over $10 out of pocket - after rebates and register rewards, they paid me to shop.

We still have to go buy a few things that are on sale at the grocery store this week. Tops has a few good deals this week that when combined with coupons is going to save me mucho money. We will also have to run to Wegmans to get corn on the cob, strawberries and potatoes. I have $30 budgeted for this trip but I'm hoping to spend a lot less.

We're trying to get things sold on Craig's List and Ebay, but no luck yet. One of my biggest pet peeves with Craig's List recently has been all the spam. I posted three sets of clothing and get emails asking me if I am still unemployed! From 3 separate people, supposedly. It really makes me doubt whether I want to sell on there anymore. This is the second time I have listed these lots of clothing and I reduced the price of each by about $10. Know anybody who is needs to buy 6-9 months or 12 months boy summer clothes, or 18 months girl summer clothes? We are also trying to get rid of some of hubby's mics, our treadmill, the bowflex (which was seldom used) and a body by jake machine that works the tummy. If we could sell these things, it would improve our finances dramatically.

Starting next month, I would like to start tracking our expenses on here, on either a weekly or monthly basis. Not sure how I want to do that exactly, but I will decide by next week. Maybe it would help us stay within our budget a little better. Of course, if I was actually offered a job that might help too. LOL. If anyone knows of any employers needing to fill a position for administrative assistant, bookkeeping, it help desk, etc, in the Twin Tiers, please let know.

Have a wonderful and safe day!

Envelope System for Budgeting

We have decided that we are spending too much money 'here and there'. Well, actually I decided. LOL. Although my husband does agree we are getting low on money. A few bucks a day really add up.

So, we have decided to start the envelope system for our expenses. These would only be for things like groceries, gas and we have a miscellaneous category. All our bills (except rent) are automatically sent out each month. If you haven't heard about the envelope system it is a way to budget your money where you have envelopes marked with each expense. You put the amount you have budgeted for the week (or month) in cash in the envelope and when the money is gone, it's gone. Dealing with cash helps people because they can actually 'see' how much money they have. With a debit card or even a check, you sometimes don't realize how much you really are spending until later.

We will be putting $50 a week in the envelope for gas (this is a little high but if the price keeps going up, we may be up to $50 to fill our tank again soon), $60 a week for food and $20 a week for miscellaneous. I am hoping that this will curb all the extra spending on coffee at the gas station and other spending.

How do you manage your money? Do you have any tips on budgeting or how you keep your spending now? Leave a comment for me and let me know.

Budgeting - Part 2

Last week I started the first part of my series on budgeting and here is the second part. You can find the first part here: Budgeting Part 1.

So, now that you have tracked your expenses for at least a week, you are ready to start working on your monthly budget. I have provided a spreadsheet for you. You can either click on the Word 2007 version or the 97-2003 version. The first page is the Expense Page, the second is the Expense summary which adds them all up for you , and the third sheet is the Monthly Budget sheet which we will be working on today. You can also do this on paper if you so choose. Just list your income for the month and total. List your expected expenses for the month and total. Subtract expenses from income and this is how much you have at the end of the month.




Basically what you are doing is adding up your month's worth of income subtracting the expenses and seeing how much is left over. On the spreadsheet, I put savings at the end, so that if you have extra money at the end of the month you can put it in savings. You may want to automatically put a certain amount in savings a month no matter what and I have provided extra space on the spreadsheet in case you would like to consider it an expense.

In case you downloaded my spreadsheet to use, I was going to walk you through how to fill it out. The first step is to fill in your income for the months. This is pretty easy if your income is steady. If, however, it changes, you may just want to approximate. You can always change it later. Other Income can include such things as income tax refunds, rebates, commission checks, bonuses, etc. The program will automatically sum your income up for each month.

The next step is to work on your expenses. Using your expense summary come up with how much you think you would like to budget for the month in each category. Take into account things that don't happen on a regular basis, like car inspection fees, car maintenance (oil changes, tuneups, etc), school expenses, etc. What I do with these expenses is figure out when I need to pay them and how many months until then, then I take the amount and divide it by the number of months remaining to get how much I should be saving monthly for these expenses. For example if I know I will have to pay my car registration in November I take the $70 and divide it by the remaining months, 7, and put away $10 a month.


The spreadsheet will total your expenses automatically and then it will show you how much money you have left each month. Fill in the savings and/or the vacation percentage if you would like to save for these things. The spreadsheet will also let you change the name of the savings if you would like. This is the percentage of the leftover money that you would like to save. If your Income minus Expenses is negative or you don't have a lot to put into savings, you need to start looking at your budget and finding ways to to trim your budget. The easiest places to start looking to trim are food, household, and leisure type activities. Also look at how much you are spending on eating out.

So there you have it. That is how you do a budget. Just remember that a good budget is constantly changing. If your expenses go up, make sure you change it on the sheet. If you have any questions or comments or anything you would like to add, leave me a comment.

Coming Soon!

I am currently working on the second part of my budgeting article and will have that for you soon. I wanted to work on it this weekend but we were busy busy busy (went to my parents' house on Saturday for a cookout and we got our garden tilled on Sunday). I am hoping to have the next part of it for you before the week is out.

In light of the whole swine flu and the possibility of a pandemic, I am also doing an inventory of my stockpile. I am not freaking out over the whole thing, I just want to be prepared. I want to have at least 2 months' worth of the essential foods and products. It will do no harm to make sure we have this, and it can only help. If money starts getting tight later in the summer, we will have a good stockpile of food and will only have to go to the store to buy milk. When I am done with my inventory count, I will share with you the numbers, and let you know what I plan to buy to increase my stockpile. I am wanting to get this done this week.

I am also working on getting you the deal list for Walgreen's, Rite Aid, and Tops. (I am busy busy busy huh?) I am working on them as we speak and will have all three done by tomorrow. I did look through them all and there seems to be some good deals. Jubilee also has some good deals this week, so I will also let you know what they have.

I am off to get what I can done of this stuff. Have a very wonderful day!

Budgeting - Part 1

Creating a budget is pretty simple, but following it is a little more difficult. I recently received an email from a new reader wanting to know more about budgeting. I emailed her back with quite a bit of information that I hope will help her. I decided that a post on budgeting may be helpful to many of my readers, so here it is.

The first step to creating a budget is to track your expenses. If you have a money management program that you already use, this would be a great place to start. If you don't track your expenses, now is the time to start. Whether you do so with a computer program or a spreadsheet, or even if you use a notebook and a pencil, start now. I would suggest tracking your expenses for at least a week to see what you are spending on things like food and gas. Remember, you can always adjust your budget as needed. Your budget is not set in stone, and it should change often. I have created an Excel spreadsheet for you if you would like to download it. You can get 97-2003 or Excel 2007.

You will also need to list all your regular monthly bills. These are bills like rent or mortgage, insurances, car payments, utilities, credit cards, etc. To make my life easier, I take advantage of the free bill pay through my credit union. There are numerous advantages to using online bill payment. I set up my bills to be paid once a month, once a week, or they have several other payment options. I can set up one-time or recurring payments. I save money on stamps and my payments are never late, therefore no late fees. I can put in bills to be paid (for example $83 a month to NYSEG) and not have to worry about that bill again unless the amount changes. It really is a win-win situation.

You will want to either use a spreadsheet program (like Excel or Microsoft Works Spreadsheet) or a notebook and a pencil. I prefer to use a spreadsheet because it is easier to change things easily, but you can use whichever you prefer. Now is also a good time to write down your goals. What is it you would like to accomplish financially? Do you want to pay off your credit cards or save towards a home? Put this in writing (or use Excel or Word). You can even keep your goal list on your frig to keep yourself on track.

After you have done all of these steps, you are now ready to start creating your budget. I will continue with Part 2 of Budgeting in my next post. Look for it, and please leave me any questions or comments you may have.

Budgeting Help

I will be starting a series of posts on budgeting. Part I will run this Thursday and will deal with getting everything around you will need to, in order to create a budget. So, if you would like to learn how to budget or just improve your current budget, check back in a few days.

Blog of the week

Each week I will be posting a blog that I find interesting or informative. I will add the link and talk about things I find particularly interesting. Please feel free to add your comments.

This week I chose 5 Quick Ways to Save on Money on Groceries on The Daily Dish blog.

The first way she says you can save money is to cook from scratch. This is so true, especially if you have a family. If there are 5 people in your family and you each eat a frozen dinner at $2 a piece, that is $10 for one meal. Many times I can make a dinner that will feed all us plus have leftovers for a day or two for around $5. I have heard that 90% of your food should not have any ingredients, they should be ingredients. My family is currently working on this, though I do sometimes resort to using a box of macaroni and cheese or a can of soup. An added bonus to cooking from scratch is that you know what's in it and you can control the amount of salt or sugar that is added.

The second way she talks about saving money is by using coupons. Coupons are great and in the past I have saved a lot of money. I would go from having to pay like $50 down to $30 or even less. Lately though, the amount of coupons in the Sunday paper have been decreased dramatically. Last Sunday I think there were 10 actual coupons in the paper. You can print coupons online but not all stores takes these, so you will need to ask them. Also with coupons you need to look at how much other brands cost. Sometimes it is not worth it to use the coupon, even when doubled. Lately we have been buying generics and shopping at Aldi's.

Buying in bulk is the writer's third way to save money. This is true sometimes. You have to be careful though. Just because it's a bigger box, doesn't mean it's a better price. I have noticed a lot lately that buying several smaller boxes/cans can often times be the same price or cheaper than buying in bulk. Check out the unit price on the shelf or use your calculator/cell phone calculator to find out if you are actually getting a better deal. To figure the unit cost all you have to do is take the price of the product and divide it by the ounces or pounds that are in there. I also sometimes divide it by the number of products if there are single things in there, like granola bars, oatmeal packets, etc.

Number four is 100% correct. Shopping on an empty stomach is just asking for trouble. If you're hungry, all those packages of chips and cookies are going to be really tempting.

Meal planning and making a list will save you quite a bit of money, especially if you can stick to your list. I meal plan for 2 weeks, since this I shop every 2 weeks. I take my list and next to each product, I write down where I want to buy it and an approximate cost of that product.

So, what do you think? Do you agree or disagree with what the blog says or with what I wrote? Let me know what you think.