Cut the Grocery Bill Challenge

Many moons ago, before my TBI, I followed Dave Ramsey's financial baby steps, and I'm so grateful I did. Before my accident, I was on step 3, building up an emergency fund of 6 months. I was already debt free except my house. Even though I still ended up losing everything, not having any other debt and some money in my account helped me make it a good while.

It's taken awhile to get back on my financial feet, and that's why I've been reading a lot of books on frugal living. It's not that I don't want to have fun or spend money, it's just that I want to be mindful on what I spend, so I can use our money for the things that are really important to us.

I've also been reading about healthy eating, so it's been interesting reading from two trains of thought. I could probably cut our grocery bill in half if I wanted to eat processed foods and meals in a box or bag, but quality food is important to me too and really, now that I have a fully stocked pantry and freezer, I can make most anything I want without having to spend much money at all.

I mentioned before that the average American family of four spends $771/month in groceries. Our family of 2 and a toddler spends about $500 a month, including diapers and household items. I think we can do better.

Last week, we didn't do any grocery shopping, other than 3 gallons of milk, for my son, since he doesn't get to vote in the family financial discussions yet. We spent $6. And we had more than enough good food for the week. Even more if we needed it. So we will continue our new tradition of shopping out of the pantry for the first week of the month. I think it will save us money and force us to be creative.

One of the discussions I frequently see on blogs that discussion average monthly grocery spending is whether or not the average amount includes household items or just food. I've been too lazy to separate them out, but I'd like to try to hone it on that for awhile.

So here are the rules for our new Cut the Grocery Bill Challenge.

1. Our goal is $100/week ($400/month) for groceries only. We'll move on to household goods another time.
2. We will start using cash to pay for groceries. It will be a little awkward, but we'll pay for the food items first, with cash, then any other items with our debit card.
3. At the beginning of the month we'll take the full $400 a month out of our bank account, in order to take advantage of any surprise deals on our staple items.
4. When the money is gone, we stop spending. This means that if we do find some great deal and spend ahead, we need to make sure to reserve money for our son's milk.
5. Whatever money we have left at the end of the month gets deposited into our savings account.

Here's where we are so far:

Week 1: spent $6.02 $393.98 remaining

Week 2: spent $151.30 $242.68 remaining

What kind of grocery challenges have you done?

Shopping in My Pantry (and Frig and Freezer)

I just finished reading an excellent book by Jeff Yeager called The Cheapskate Next Door. It's full of lots of great ideas on how to save money and live green. Two values the hubs and I are learning to embrace.

I wrote down a whole page of thoughts and ideas while reading the book, but the one I'm really looking forward to trying is The Fiscal Fast. The idea is to go for a full week without spending any money. A few things that come to mind as potential challenges for us would be milk for our son and gas for my hubs. The latter actually shouldn't be too much of a problem because he could always use my car, which is only filled up about every two weeks, or he could carpool with a colleague.

The author talks about an annual hard-core fast, I'm thinking about a monthly/bi-monthly moderate fast. Basically, it means we make meals out of what we have in the pantry, frig or freezer. We have a pretty well-stocked pantry, a good number of leftovers in the freezer, and lots of extra meat in the big freezer. Dairy and produce would be a challenge, but I bet we could do it.

When the hubs and I were first married, we had No Spend Wednesdays. It was a good way to make sure we were purposeful about our spending. We got out of that habit, but maybe it's time to start it up again.

Look for some interesting menu planning ahead...and yes, that really is my pantry last summer. It's a bit more crowded now and has less processed food...or cleaners.