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Our $50 July Grocery Budget Challenge – Results!
$50 grocery budget? Sounds crazy. We did it! It was rough at times, but it was worth it.
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The July $50 Grocery Challenge – Half Way Done!
We are officially half way through our $50 grocery budget Challenge for the month of July. I must say that it has really opened our eyes to many things including how much food we waste on a regular basis and how much time we use preparing food. Our meal plan deviated slightly for the best reason: my grandparents’ garden was overflowing!! They graciously sent us home with acorn, butternut, yellow, and zucchini squashes, okra, green beans to feed an army, garlic, cucumbers, tomatoes and some peppers. We are beyond blessed to have green thumbed family that is willing to share. Every thing we knew we wouldn’t eat before it spoiled…
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The July $50 Grocery Challenge
The July $50 Grocery Challenge I am all for saving money. It’s kinda our thing. But only spending $50 on a month’s worth of groceries when we normally spend $200? You’re out of your mind! Or is it actually possible…? July is going to be a rougher month for us financially as our maternity and family leave will finally catch up with us and we’ll be missing a few paychecks. We’ve planned to strip our budget to the bare bones – required bills (mortgage, utilities, phones, internet, etc – $1400), necessities (groceries, gas, pet food, etc – $520), and day care for Little Guy ($1000). This is a no spend…
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5 Tips to have a Successful No Spend Month
How to have a Successful No Spend Month A month of no spending sounds quite daunting, right? No eating out, no shopping, no going to the movies, no wine… It can be hard to picture a full month without those things. But when you buckle down, whether it be for financial reasons or you just want to simplify how you spend time with your family, it can make for an amazing month. D and I regularly do no spend months. The primary reason was to get our emergency fund fully funded. The second reason was because we were expecting a new baby in May of this year. He ended up…
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4 Steps to Mastering the Cash Envelope System
4 Steps to Mastering the Cash Envelope System My husband, D and I have used the cash envelope system from Dave Ramsey’s methods for about six years now. We can finally say that we have mastered the art of cash budgeting! While we still put somethings on our credit card (fully paid off every month), we successfully use cash for our everyday expenses. I have previously posted on how we significantly slashed our budget after we first got married. The envelope system has played a HUGE part in that. As we are now preparing for baby number one, we have refreshed our focus and have become diligently tracking our expenses.…
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5 Tremendous Ways to Save on Your Professional Wardrobe
Looking professional can be stressful and expensive. here are five tips to help save you money!
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How to Win at Meal Planning
Have you ever wondered into your kitchen in the evening and asked yourself what do I want for dinner? You go about aimlessly opening and closing the pantry and fridge only to order out? I’ve been there too and all too often. When we realized how much we were spending on eating out and quick food, I started to really meal plan. Meal planning and list making is something that I have grown into. Maybe it’s genetic? My mom is a list making, organized freak who either has something on a list or it’s labeled. If it’s not labeled or listed, it just doesn’t exist (or at least that’s…
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The $25 Grocery Week
It’s the last 10 days of the month and it’s just that long until payday too. And guess what! We super over spent on groceries this month. Like way over what we had budgeted. Some of this was due to buying relatively expensive vitamins to help with the ol’ husband’s cholesterol and part of it was due to running out of really expensive staples in our diet (nutritional yeast is expensive ya’ll!). I keep telling myself that buying him a $20 supplement every 30 days is better than him being on more medication! Back to the budget… needless to say, our grocery budget to get us through the last 10 days…
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Hello Coupons! Part Two
Finally – a part 2 to my part 1 of couponing! Since the last time I posted, I was able to teach my father-in-law how to coupon (which was all about part 1). Now I’m going to show you how to actually save money and how to build a stockpile. Rock bottom prices: All the people that I have taught to coupon (all three-ish) have complained of spending too much money when they couponed instead of saving money and have eventually quit because it cost too much or took too much time. I struggled with this too when I was just starting out. I would see a good sale on cereal…
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Hello Coupons! Part One
Couponing is something that I started about three years ago. Not out of desperation, but because I needed a hobby and we needed to stop spending so much money. We could easily walk into Wal-Mart and spend $80 once a week on groceries. And those “groceries” were just processed junk that we didn’t need to eat! We were pretty low on the vegetable scale back in the day. I got started after watching the TLC show “Extreme Couponing”. Even though the people on the show seemed really weird and like hoarders, I felt that it was something I could do. Another influence was Consumer Queen! Her real name is Melissa,…
Save. Live. Be Minimal.
