From Dani: Reducing Your Grocery Bill

This week's goals are:
1-To reduce your grocery bill


Tips to save at the grocery store
Make a list: Making a list and avoiding impulse purchases adds up to hundreds of dollars in savings annually

Try couponing: Stick to the items you purchase regularly.

Check your receipt: Make sure you weren’t overcharged.

Write prices down: Keep track of the best prices for your weekly staples so you know which stores have the best deals. Look at the weekly supermarket advertisements to see if the items you purchase frequently are on sale. Shoppers who watch prices and stock up during sales report saving 20% or more.

Avoid snack food: Make your own bulk snack mix when items such as raisins, nuts, chocolate chips, mini marshmallows and dried fruit are on sale.

Stretch protein: Protein often is the most expensive part of a main portion. You can stretch your protein in casseroles, stews and sauces. Or try bulking up casseroles with extra protein by adding beans or lentils. (can order from the cannery this week still! deadline moved to March 15th)

Order in Bulk: hamburger (91% lean) can be purchased at Sam's in 80-lb boxes (8- 10lb rolls) for much less than normal (ex: $2.00 lb prices change sometimes less) - you can split with others and freeze.

Pack your lunch: Avoid pre-prepared meals- you can make your own for those rushed days. I like to freeze left overs rather than eating them later that week. Freeze and reheat for a quick, convenient meal without the cost of prepackaged food or eating out.

2- Put 1/6th of your 72 hour kit $ goal into your kits- you should now have half your goal- Way to go!!

"Plan and work in a way that will permit you to be happy even as you do without certain things that in times of affluence may have been available to you. Live within your means and not beyond them. … Purchase your essentials wisely and carefully. Strive to save a portion of that which you earn. Do not mistake many wants for basic needs.

Let us as individuals, as families, and as wards and stakes learn to live within our means. There is strength and salvation in this principle. Someone has said that we are rich in proportion to that with which we can do without. As families and as a Church, we can and should provide that which is truly essential for our people, but we must be careful not to extend beyond that which is essential or for purposes which are not directly related to our families’ welfare and the basic mission of the Church."

Chapter 11: Provident Living: Applying Principles of Self-Reliance and Preparedness,” Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball, (2006),114–23

From Dani On Budgeting

Here's some words of wisdom from my friend Dani on budgeting:

Sitting down to review where you spent your money is not something we think of as fun....but it can be a very useful tool. When you regularly sit down and see where all your income is going, you:

1. are able to see where adjustments need to be made
2. are more likely to think before spending
3. have more money (true)- it is amazing how much can slip through our fingers in small unplanned purchases
4. have a sense of control over your money rather than it controlling you
   

So sit and either make or modify a budget for your family. Try having a little "mad money" in the budget that we can spend on anything we want. It will make the budgeted life not feel too restraining.

Put 1/6 of your cash for your 72 hour kit goal in your kits this month. (We should now be 1/3 of the way to our goal! Way to go!)

From One for the Money By Elder Marvin J. Ashton:

"Teach children to make money decisions in keeping with their capacities to comprehend. 'Save your money' is a hollow pronouncement from a parent to a child. 'Save your money for a mission, a bicycle, a doll house, a trousseau, or a car' makes understandable sense.

"Family unity comes from saving together for a common, jointly approved purpose. In our home we found it unifying to have a child save for a major project and then, when the amount was achieved, we matched it with a predetermined percentage, similar to what the Church does with the wards and stakes in building and real estate matters.

"God help us to realize that money management is an important ingredient in proper personal welfare. Learning to live within our means should be a continuing process. We need to work constantly toward keeping ourselves free of financial difficulties. It is a happy day financially when time and interest are working for you and not against you."

Last Week's Challenge: Keep Track of Spending for a Month

When we first got married and money was tight, I was an obsessive budget-er and money tracker. Rich would go buy something at lunch and I'd be asking him the next morning what he bought at Home Depot for $27 (really no fun when he was trying to surprise me!). Unfortunately, as cash became less tight we stopped tracking it so closely, and then we moved overseas and the whole thing just fell apart. We were dealing with two currencies and lots of reimbursement, and were doing a cash-only accounting. We had sold both of our cars and had our housing paid for, so we always had a lot of money in our bank account when we went to the ATM, so we didn't feel like we needed to bother with a budget.

Gone are those carefree days now that we are back in America and don't have the cushy perks of the expat life. We had been back for six months when we decided it was probably time to set a budget and stick to it. I spent nearly a full day over Christmas break entering into Moneydance (a money management software program similar to Quicken) and we took a hard look at October, which seemed like what might be a typical month for the rest of the near future. We spent a massive amount of money! And not just on noble things like home improvement or food storage. No, masses of money went to fast food, clothing, books, entertainment, and that ubiquitous category I labeled groceries (that really included all the random stuff I felt like we needed from Target, Walmart and Costco).

As I was looking at the history, Rich was looking to the future, trying to figure out how much money we need to save for things like a second car, a bigger house, the kids' college tuition, missions, my grad school tuition (when I go back to school someday!), etc. Let's just say if we saved the amounts we would need for all of that stuff, we would barely bea ble to eat every month. This was a very sobering realization after feeling for so long like we had a lot of cash to throw around. So we decided that the kids would have to pay for part of their college and missions, and we would wait a while for that second car, larger house and grad school. We came up with a budget based on our spending in October that included savings for vacations and gifts, date night and entertainment, while cutting back on the throw-away stuff we were spending our money on. So far so good. Rich had to stop his attic project he's been working on because he spent his home improvement budget the first week of January. And I have stopped myself from buying stuff we don't really need at all those dangerous "grocery" places to stay within our grocery budget that is much less this month than we spent in October! I'm anxious to see, when I have a minute to sit down and figure it out, how we've done so far in January. I'll keep you posted.