so... how did the month go?

It's the 30th, it's Saturday, and it's time to face the music. I know I have a bit of shopping to do today, but our accounts should be more or less at their limits for the month, so I'm sitting down with my mint.com account and taking a good look at how we spent this month. Did we meet the budget? Umm... no. We had a lot of expenses I hadn't budgeted for, including medical bills and twice as much gas as I thought we'd use. Looks like I'll be tweaking numbers for next month for sure.

But, most importantly, how'd we do on the food budget?

$762 groceries (includes health & beauty, household cleaners, toiletries, etc)

$5.67 Starbucks (hmm... apparently Tom snuck in a visit when I wasn't looking!)

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October's grand total: $767.67

I'd budgeted $600 for the month for food, including $50 a couple of meals out (with kids eating free of course). THAT didn't happen, but probably since I was looking it as "$150 a week" not realizing that the month was 5 weeks, not 4. But let's look at last month's food and grocery spending, shall we? Hold on to your seats... this is going to blow your mind.

$849 groceries (MORE than this month- and yet we still ate out. a lot. you'll see.)

$615 restaurants hooooooo-lee. But wait.

$288 fast food not restaurants! Different!

$49 alcohol & bars mmhmm.

$31 coffee shops I love coffee. No lie.

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September's grand total: $1832 Please excuse me for a moment. I need to go have a heart attack.

OK. I'm back.

Ready for the final number of "savings"? And really it's the final number of "money that we spent that we never had in the first place, thus digging ourselves into a hole that will take us months to get out of".

$1832 - $767.67= $1064.33 "saved" on food this month.

I'll say it again... it's not like we have that much to throw in the bank. It's money we were spending that we didn't have in the first place. But that's $1k less that we're in the hole this month. I am so proud. I asked Tom if he felt like we'd missed out on $1,000 worth of food by me cooking all our meals, and he laughed. "$100, maybe. Not $1,000."

Today shall be known as pat-myself-on-the-back day. I doubt we'll ever have another month with such a big difference in money going out. It looks great on paper, and it feels awesome.

It's been really tight the past couple of days. We are still working to dig ourselves out of the hole we dug. My car is on empty, but we had to wait for a paycheck to get any gas so I've been using Tom's car. I hate feeling stuck.

Food for the past two days has gone well. The wild rice soup was delicious, though I'm not sure why it used Velveeta instead of cheddar (and the Velveeta was twice as much!). There was enough leftover for lunches for the grown-ups the next day, and I believe there's still one more serving in the fridge.

The Ritz cracker chicken... it smelled great, it tasted good, but the recipe felt really wasteful. I ended up making WAY more "bread crumbs" than we needed, and since I couldn't re-use them after putting raw chicken in with them, I had to toss the remainder. The recipe called for A CUP of melted butter. A whole cup! To dip the chicken in before coating it, and then to pour over the coated chicken pieces. Pfft. I used 1/2 cup instead and it worked out just fine TYVM. The chicken was super moist, and the butter was good, but from the great smell I was expecting more flavor.

This weekend is Halloween! I'm planning to bring the girls trick-or-treating at the Baptist Church and a shopping center Saturday, then they'll go door-to-door Sunday. I've heard we don't get a lot of trick-or-treaters on our street so hopefully when they go out, they'll find houses expecting kids. We bought our candy a month ago so we're all ready. We're having my family out this weekend, so it'll be interesting to see how well I can feed everyone, but I'm sure it'll work just fine.

Yesterday was grocery shopping day. I waited until Mia and Charlie were in school. I planned carefully with my meal list, staples list, store circulars, and my coupon binder. I worked REALLY HARD. My grocery budget includes household cleaners, health & beauty, etc. so I had some good coupons for various cleaning products that we use a lot.

I spent $27.72 at the first grocery store (they double 5 $1 coupons but you have to spend a minimum of $25) and got dish detergent, toothpaste, Windex, granola bars, and a $ bottle of hair spray. Then off to Shaw's, hoping to only spend $125 or less.

Unfortunately, I bombed. $141.87 for a grand total of $169.59- and I still need to pick up milk today (cheap milk day!). I'm frustrated. I guess my issue is this... either you can have a cheap weekly bill, or your can stockpile various dry goods and other items when they go on sale. But I don't think you can stockpile and end up with a low bill that week. So sure, I won't have to buy Windex again for at least a year... but that didn't make the bill look any better. I'm hoping that once I get a good stock of items, it'll start to show in my grocery bills.

Last night we had teriyaki chicken with pineapple, yellow rice, and salad. The chicken was a hit with Charlie and even my husband liked it. Mia preferred the pineapples! $11.08 for the meal, no leftovers but the salad.

Monday night we had delicious burgers & fries from a recipe we saw on America's Test Kitchen. Tom ended up paying just under $11 for the steak, potatoes, and buns he purchased to make the meal. It felt like a splurge (we haven't had burgers in almost a month) and it was SO good.

On another up note, we've both been losing weight since we've stopped eating out. Not a ton of weight, but I'll take it! I'm averaging about 2 pounds a week. What a great side-effect!

Unfortunately, we're still very much in the red for the month as we try to catch up from our habitual overspending. I need to take a look a mint and see if I can compare this month to last, to try to feel like we're making a dent, because often it just feels like we're treading water. It sure feels like we've been doing this for months, not weeks...

My hope was to have enough in the grocery budget to pay for 2 meals out each month, but that's not going to happen. Boo.

it's Menu Planning Monday!

I'm not sure yet if I'm grocery shopping today or tomorrow- it's so much easier to do without a 2 year old jumping in and out of the cart- but at least I'm in pretty good shape when it comes to meal planning and coupon organizing.

Monday- Old Fashioned Burgers and Easier Fries (we've made these 3 times and even though it's not a budget meal, it's sooooo good and we deserve it after not eating out once this month!)

Tuesday- Teriyaki Chicken & Pineapple, yellow rice, and salad

Wednesday- Wild Rice Soup, pita crisps, cantaloupe

Thursday- Crunchy Chicken, thai pasta, sugar snap peas

Friday- Crab Melts, salad

Saturday- Jambalaya, french bread

Sunday- Stuffed Manicotti, salad, bread sticks

Last night's dinner was a labor intensive chicken stew from Cook's Illustrated. It was made primarily in a crock pot, but don't let that fool you- it took me over an hour of prep and cooking various ingredients before everything was settled into the slow cooker. But Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen/Cook's Country is always right, so the stew was incredible right? Wrong. After all that work, it didn't taste like much of anything. What a disappointment.

Lucky (I guess) we had enough leftover to freeze one meal and put some in the fridge for lunch for the grown-ups.

Tonight's another e-mealz creation, called Slow Bake Burritos. The girls aren't fans of anything spicy so I'm not making it with the chilies in it. Unfortunately I realized last night that the bag of onions we had was past it's prime (and it was a couple of months old so I can't be too upset) so that's one more thing we don't have on hand for this recipe... maybe some Pampered Chef Onion Onion seasoning will make it so nobody can tell the difference?

I'm getting burned out on cooking all these meals that nobody is really enjoying. I hope tonight will be a home run, and I can feel like I'm doing something good for the family again.

In other news we got a new stove, woot! We'll be getting reimbursed for it so right now it makes our budget look pretty bad, but I'm hopeful that the refund for it will come quickly.

Tonight's dinner was... well... a hot mess. It sounded pretty weird, but I figured I'd give it a try, and let me just tell you, if you ever see a recipe that calls for crushed potato chips on top, RUN. Your kids will not be fooled.

I liked it, actually, but the girls wouldn't touch it once it hit their plates. Into the fridge the plates go...

Meh, today wasn't so hot. I looked over both of the circulars for the grocery stores in town and decided to do my weekly shopping at the higher-end store, since they were having a good sale on meat. Unfortunately I realized about halfway through the store that they didn't carry the brands I had coupons clipped for, and the prices on my staple items were more expensive than I normally pay. I ended up spending $150 for the week, which is the max of our budgeted amount-- and I still need to pick up milk (cheapest on Tuesdays so I buy 2 gallons then). I know I did OK this morning, but between that and only clipping 2 coupons from the Sunday paper this morning, I'm feeling a little deflated.

We had to run some errands after Charlie got out from school and got back at 5, when I was informed that "everyone is starving". I'd planned to do a beef & rice bake from e-mealz but I soon realized that it'd take about an hour. I ended up making frozen pizza (which we also had yesterday... ugh...) and still working on the main dish so I could pop it in the oven to finish up tomorrow.

Could have been worse... I resisted some VERY strong peer pressure to go out to eat. But I DID resist! We're now at 18 days of no outside meals, no stops at Dunkin', no nothing.

Long, complicated day today. I owe a baby sitter $10 so I'm not sure if, technically, we went the whole day without spending any money. Frozen pizza for lunch, and we took home finger foods from a party for dinner. I am starting to see church functions in a whole new (free food!) light.

Normally tomorrow would be my grocery shopping day, but I have a long appointment from 10:45-2:00, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to swing the shopping trip. I'm underwhelmed by the e-mealz menu for the week, too. I haven't gone through the sunday paper to cut the coupons yet... did I mention it's been a long day?

I thank you, Target.

This morning I needed to shop for presents for two upcoming birthday parties. I headed to Target, hoping I'd walk out of there without spending $100- my normal Target bill, even if I only go in for a few things. It's hard to resist all of those great prices, and they add up so quickly, you know?

With my newfound frugalities, though, I wanted to do better. I had a coupon for a b1g1 Littlest Pet Shop toy, so I picked out two of those ($4.99 each) and then a larger playset, figuring the three together would make a nice gift. I also grabbed a Handy Manny playset for the other party. Combined with .99 birthday cards and .48 white gift bags, I felt like I got some nice presents at a decent price.

Imagine my surprise when the Littlest Pet Shop coupon scanned in for $10 off instead of $4.99 off! Woo HOO! All in all I spent $43 on the above plus carpet cleaner, band aids, nail files, carpet cleaner, and a couple of other little things. It almost felt like Target was paying ME to shop there.

Once I got home I had the girls decorate the white gift bags- now they're cute and personalized and way more meaningful then a $2 or more printed gift bag.

Today was our 16th day straight of no restaurants or coffee places. Tom & I had leftover soup from last night for lunch, and the family had some defrosted meat sauce and some pasta I got for $1/box a couple of weeks ago. Cheap, yummy food once again!

I had to get gas today. Yuck. We waaaaay underestimated gas charges in the monthly budget. That'll change next month!

Lots of visitors today- my parents came for lunch & dinner and one of Tom's friends stopped in for lunch. I explained to my parents about the budget we're following, and even though I found myself apologizing over and over for not bringing them out to eat or feeding them a fancy meal, they're very proud of us and were happy to eat whatever we served them. Lunch was tuna pitas and some leftover Mediterranean chicken with couscous from a couple of nights ago. No complaints.

For dinner we had easy potato cheddar chowder with some modifications- I used tater tots because we had them in the freezer, and also fresh onions instead of frozen. It was good! I was surprised! With some garlic bread, it was a nice, comforting and cheap meal.

Today was shopping day! I went to 3 stores and spent $117 including all of our Halloween candy. Some of my personal faves were bananas for .44/lb and a dozen organic eggs for $2.20. Oh and the Halloween candy- it's the good stuff and I got 3 bags, normally $15.96, I paid $4 total.

I think the grocery bills will be better once I'm well stocked on pantry "staples" that I'm buying as needed now since I never had them around in the past.

I'll have to look to see what we spent on food on the 2nd week of last month. As for the past 11 days- still no take out, restaurants, or fast food.

So Oct. 1-7 we spent $137 on groceries including a $20 trip to the farmer's market. I'm pretty impressed by that! And honestly I can't tell you the last time we went a whole week without getting take out or eating at a restaurant. Really, maybe never in our whole relationship. Unfortunately we did run out of stuff after my first $105 food trip... fruit, milk, bread. Staples. But that was simple enough to make a run for that didn't break the bank.

Yesterday I signed up for e-mealz.com which is basically a menu service. You get a list weekly with 7 dinners, recipes, and a shopping list, that should average $75. It's pretty cool because you can subscribe to all these different lists (meals for people on WW, gluten free, low carb, meals for 4, meals by the grocery store you use, etc etc). It's $1.25 a week. Anyway my point is I printed out 2 weeks' meals and I got some really good ideas for the upcoming week so I'm feeling encouraged by this whole thing.

I shopped today and spent $105 including a $10 roast for the crockpot and 10 pounds of ground beef & turkey to freeze. I forgot a couple of little things but I'm stoked! Now hopefully people will eat the food I make...