Oh Yeah...It's ON

We had our yearly "business meeting" where we sit down and think of all the things that we want to do in the next calendar year (trips, kid activities, stuff for ourselves, for example my triathlon expenses) and we make a "wish list". Next we decide what is affordable and what can wait until another time, or potentially for gifts (hey folks, camp and piano lessons are GREAT gifts for J's birthday!). This is usually done with a bottle of wine to make it more endurable and to ensure there is no fighting or statments like "you don't support my dreams!" (okay that was me...and it was only once after I came home excited about my triathlon and all he could do was tally up the equipment expenses in his head).

So then we tallied up all of our expenses (bascially all bills) and came up with a number that would cover everything else: groceries, dining out, gifts, clothing...whatever. That number is on the bottom of my spreadsheet (I keep a monthly spreadsheet where I list every day all of our purchases) so every time I enter in a purchase I can see it automatically subtracted from the bottom line.

We've only been doing it this way for a few months and I have had the joy of watching our number go to zero, have two weeks still left in the month and then watching the negative balance grow. What fun!

So you know I've been on the couponing bandwagon and reading frugal blogs like this one where she spends $35 a week on groceries for a family of four, so I was inspired. Surely I can reduce our grocery bill. I was even more inspired when I realized that she bought organic milk and eggs, and generally ate very healthy food. I always justified my larger food bill because we try to eat healthier foods and not any of that prepackaged or frozen crap. Our organic milk alone costs us $50 month.

So I tallied up our January food bill and it came to well over $600 for the month. Aack! Are we eating like kings? Have I been feeding 10 extra kids and not knowing it? We're not even big meat eaters and generally don't buy a lot. So what the frick is going ON?

Granted I started couponing journey in January and therefore stock piling stuff we use when it goes on sale, so therefore we have spent more than we actually need in that month. But still, that does not even include toiletries beause I buy all that at Target.

Aye Caramba.

So you may be hearing me talk more about our transition as we try to cut our food bill in half. For me it is kind of a fun challenge. And in reading all of these blogs the one thing they've all done that really helped the bottom line is CVSing (oh yes, they've turned it into a verb). They have all figured out frugal (and most importantly ethical) ways to really buy a lot of toiletries for little or no cost using coupons, ECB's and other promotions. One blogger has even set up a tutorial to learn how to do it.

I honestly see no way for us to eat on $35 a week because we love to cook and we're not about to give up our ethnic ingredients. But if I could cut that $600 in half, I'd be pretty stoked.

I'll keep you posted on how it is going!