Once a Month Shopping

This month I thought I would try out Once a Month Shopping.  At the beginning of the month, I planned out the meals that we will be eating this month and planned out my shopping for the month as well.  My hope was that I would be able to do the bulk of my shopping at the beginning of the month and therefore use my budget better.  I know that I will need to go back to the store for foods that perish faster, like milk.  I also knew that I would be able to supplement my menu with the produce that I would be getting from the organic buying club.

To give you a feel for what I did.  I will recap my shopping trips thus far this month.

I started at Publix.  Here I bought many of the basics I knew I would need for the month.  I bought some frozen fish, canned tomatoes and artichokes, some pasta, eggs, salsa and canola oil.  I spent $70.12 (saving $20.02).

After Publix, I went to Whole Foods.  I went while the kids were napping on a Monday afternoon.  I was shocked at how busy it was.  I tried to go shopping, but when I was about to lose my mind and hadn't passed the produce section yet, I knew that this was not the time to attempt this shop.

From there, I went to Winn Dixie to pick up a couple items that I didn't get earlier, but knew we would need before I could get to Whole Foods.  There I spent $7.88 on milk, spinach and orange juice.

The next morning, I went to Whole Foods early and felt much better when I walked into the store.  Here I bought cheese, milk, rice, beans, a lot of veggie broth (10 containers, on sale with $1 off coupons), some produce, oats and quinoa in bulk, and some cereal (that I plan to use in recipes for other things).  I spent $164.84 (saving $22.45).  If I wasn't looking for organic dairy and grains, etc., I probably could have spent less.  However, with how I choose to feed my family I was happy with this.

So my major shopping for the month was at $242.84. This left me with 40% of my grocery budget left for the month.

We'll see how the rest of the month goes...

Let's Talk Budget

January Budget Recap

Well, as a whole, I feel better about our spending last month than I have in a while.  I think the fact that we were tracking our spending on an almost daily basis really helped.  I can tell you when I slacked at my record keeping at the end of the month, things did not go quite as well.  But I'm going to take that as a learning experience and make sure that I am better about tracking our spending.

The grocery and food budget had to be adjusted.  There was just no way that I could keep within the $400 budget for everything.  So it was adjusted to $400 for groceries and $150 for eating out.  As I have said that I need to be honest with myself, I will be honest with you too.  We spent $472 on groceries and $165 on eating out last month.  As I said before I feel better about our spending, but it's still not perfect.  I would like to stay more in budget so that we have more money to put into savings.  If we keep working at it, I think we'll do better.

What did I learn last month?

If I'm debating if we are going to use something or might need it in the future, it's not worth getting.  As someone told me "A deal is only a deal if you're going to use it."  I think I spent too much time and money convincing myself that we would use something and realizing later that we aren't going to.

I need to have a plan and know what I'm doing or dinner becomes a much bigger deal.  It also means that if I don't feel well, Jolly Green Daddy can help me out and make a meal.  I have a meal plan for the month and am hoping that it will help me out.

It is important to keep track of spending.  It is the only way to make sure we're spending wisely.

If one shopping strategy isn't working try another one.  I'm giving Once a Month Shopping a try this month.

February's Budget

As I mentioned above I had to amend the Grocery and Food Budget.  For February we have $400 to spend on groceries and $150 to spend on eating out.  Small Fry turns 1 this month and I'm hoping not to go over budget even with having a small family get together.  I do have a separate area of the budget set aside for birthdays and gifts, so some of the spending will come from there too.

I will post the details of these trips later, but for now, here is how our budget is looking.  Remember, that my plan for this month is to do the bulk of the shopping at the beginning of the month with small supplemental shops for dairy and produce later on.

Starting Amount $400

• Publix Trip 2/1: $70.12
• Winn Dixie 2/1: $7.88
• Whole Foods 2/1: $164.84
• Whole Foods 2/3: $22.94
• Target 2/3: $8.41

Remaining Budget: $125.81

As the first month of the year comes to an end, I am looking at the resolutions goals I made (mentally) at the beginning of the year and how I'm doing.  Wow, as January ends, Small Fry's 1st birthday is approaching quite rapidly.  I can't believe he's going to be 1 already!

I've decided to put my goals for February in writing.

• Have fun celebrating Small Fry's birthday.
• Blog more regularly.  I have so many ideas, but for some reason I never share them with you.  I need to do that.  I sure need the "conversation."
• Continue tackling the budget.
• Complete the 28 days of organizing tasks from Get It Together Girl!: A 28-Day Guide to Practical NOT Perfect Home Organization (Get It Togther Girl!)
• Finish and utilize my Household Notebook.
• Create a better cleaning concept.  Probably creating a cleaning schedule.  
• Create more educational printables.  Anyone need anything?
• Create and stick to a workout schedule.  Maybe go back to use Wii Active and Wii Fit.

    

• Try to once a month meal plan and shop (maybe do 2 weeks at a time).
• Try to use more Love and Logic in parenting.

• Keep a positive outlook.

Where have I been?

Honestly, I've been a little overwhelmed by everything the past week or so.  I will say that we did a great job of sticking to our meal plan last week.  Then the weekend came.  This included Jolly Green Daddy's birthday.  This on it's own was enough to throw me off.  Though I knew it was coming, I didn't properly budget for his birthday, which meant that I was left looking for how we could make his restaurant of choice work.  Mind you, he really wanted to go to Texas de Brazil.  This would have been great, but for the fact that for birthdays the kids come along.  Small Fry is not really into sitting for long meals.  We are lucky to get him to sit through any meal.  I'm not going to say quietly because anyone who has met Small Fry knows that quiet is a not a word I would ever use to describe him!  We ended up at a local Italian restaurant.  The food was good as always, the kids were pretty well behaved, and as a bonus I got to watch the New Orleans - San Fran football game.  The only downside was that our waitress brought out the check before asking about dessert.  Jolly Green Daddy didn't want to deal with the hassle of trying to get her back, so we went home.  Sprout is still asking me about Daddy's cake...  He may not have had cake, but he did have these Cinnamon Rolls.

Picture courtesy of AllRecipes.com

Then came the Giants game.  I am a Giants fan at heart (even living in Dolphin's territory).  Now, if you saw this game, you might understand why I was distracted.  Especially, since, my meal plan for the week had ended.  I didn't have a new plan, and I'm kind of low on food.  Ugh.  I managed to feed the kids, but Jolly Green Daddy and I ended up with Five Guys.  Thankfully, we were on the cheap side for this dinner.  But now I am determined to eat at home for the rest of the month...  Wish me luck.

So the no food thing, and the 2 young kids at home thing have me thinking about the people who do Once a Month Shopping.  Quick and Easy Cheap and Healthy has a great tutorial on doing this.  I'm still trying to decide if it will work for our family.  And with what I have left in the budget for this month, I'm thinking that I'm going to try and buy food to get us through the end of the month.  We also have a produce delivery next week.  This will be the biggest help for doing this kind of shopping.

I'm currently trying to plan out meals for the next two weeks.  Jolly Green Daddy would like to make sure we have a variety of foods for lunch.  I guess Cheese Quesadillas, Grilled Cheese and Macaroni and Cheese is too much cheese for my carnivore husband.  Anyone have any suggestions?  I have a list of ideas and things that I would like to make and freeze for easy lunches (and breakfasts too).  Hopefully, I will be able to make these over the next 2 weeks.  I'm sure that Sprout will be happy to help me out.

Add into that the fact that Jolly Green Daddy and I have discussed possible changes to our diets.  We are wondering if making some changes to our diets might help our overall health and well being.  Honestly, the idea of changing our diet further is really scary to me.  I'm already a vegetarian and we already have a Kosher home.  Further changes could make things even more intense (or intensive for me).  I think I've decided that we will wait until I can sit down with a doctor or nutritionist to really decide what will be best for us.

So now to go plan out the shopping I hope to get done tomorrow...