Whew! We made it past the first week! Week one for us was adjusting to not buying the “extras”. It was hard not to buy a soda along with my coupons this past Sunday – I had gotten into such a habit. It was hard to not buy a snack at work when I had the mid-day munchies. I have to actually plan out my snacks!
An even bigger challenge was couponing. I couldn’t spend any money from our paychecks on coupon shopping unless we were going to use it in our meal plan for the week. So I cashed in all my rebates and utilized the ExtraBucks I had from CVS to get items for super cheap and free. I went to Crest, Homeland, and CVS this week. I ended up spending $20 total. and I still have $5 in ExtraBucks.
Another goal of ours is to drop our grocery budget tremendously. Recently it’s been hovering right around $280. In order to do this, we are going to eat through our stockpile as best we can and only use Bountiful Baskets as our produce.
This week we spent $53 on BB and got: 4lbs mushrooms, 8 Italian squash, 1 yellow squash, 3 pineapple, apples, onions, fresh herbs, watermelon, mangoes, strawberries, bananas, apricots, 3 bunches broccoli, pears, garlic, 10 tomatoes, acorn squash, and asparagus.
We bought from the store: cashew milk, vegetable oil, pizza rounds, OJ, sandwich bread, lettuce, carrots. This totaled $13 with tax between couponed food at Homeland, Crest, and a trip to Wal Mart.
For this current week, our meal plan for this week:
- Sunday – Sheppard’s Pie
- Monday – Mango Stir Fry
- Tuesday – Mushroom Tacos
- Wednesday – Pizza
- Thursday – Mushrooms with pasta
- Friday – Roasted acorn squash or acorn squash soup
Saturday’s dinner, I will be on my own. My husband is taking my car to my brother-in-law to be repaired (see last week’s post….). I will most likely do noodles from the stockpile or leftovers for dinner that night. I’ve been really good about bringing my lunch to work, but if I forget it one day I’m out of luck! So, I took some noodles and microwave meals from the stockpile to work in the event I forget 🙂
This past week, we celebrated my Grandad’s birthday! He’s super. AND he loves cookies. So instead of buying a gift, I made vegan chocolate mint cookies for him and gave him a birthday card I had bought previously (with a coupon of course). I probably shouldn’t have told him they were vegan – “they’re WHAT now?? Why???” They’re delicious; just accept it.
Hopefully we can keep going strong. We plan to do five more weeks of no spending. I’ll let you know how it goes 🙂
