Boost Your Budget – Week Three
Week Three and a new update to theBoost Your Budget Pantry Challenge series that I am participating in and posting about throughout the month of January..I sure hope I can stick with this a little longer!!
I am joining Shopper Strategy, Pary Moppins, The Frugalista Chick, Matter of Cents, Coupon Pals, Thrifty Divas, Frugal Mom of Two, How About Free, TheItMom.com, All The World Is Art, Sweeping The USA, Mommies Point of View, Mama’s Money Tree, Crunchy Frugalista, Fab Find Foodie, Making Time For Mommy, Adventures in Coupons, Full Price? NEVER!, The Frugal Navy Wife, Generations of Savings and A Savings WOW! and we’d love it if you’d join us as well.
Here’s the plan:
During January we plan to challenge ourselves to eat from our pantries – to use up all that excess food sitting in the back of the cupboards, hiding in the refrigerator door, in the stockpile and from out of the freezer – and limit our shopping to as little as possible. This is not a “no spend” month, this is a “make do with what you have on hand and spend as little as possible” month.
Everybody’s personal goals will be different and we can each set our own rules – the point is merely to challenge ourselves and start off the new year with a boost to our budgets! We’re also giving away a $25 Coupon Clutch gift certificate each week to one participant who either leaves a link to a challenge post or a comment about their challenge goals. Won’t you join us?
Last week’s winner of the Coupon Clutch gift certificate was Julie from Pary Moppins!!
I have quite a different goal than most of my other cohosts as I had started January with no food in my pantry or fridge and have set a goal of only spending $400 (rather than $500) on groceries and attempting to build a stockpile this month and ongoing.
I feel like this week that we either didn’t eat or didn’t shop or something because I struggled with writing this post. Of course, it didn’t help that I wrote this awesome post earlier this morning and then my computer froze and I lost it all. So, I’ll try to recreate it for you.
I mentioned last week that we have used $320 of our budget on groceries (including pull-ups, dog food, toilet paper, and a really great deal that Hubby found on body wash and deodorant). I also promised some transactions, but didn’t come through for you all…boo on me. So, this week I’ll start with my transactions from last week and then tell you about what little we did this week.
(1) Brookshire’s – Total $83.33 – Savings $5.05 (coupons) and $55.91 (card savings) or 43%
Last week was Brookshire’s “penny ad” where they have lots of sales that are Buy One, Get One for a Penny. We stocked up on chicken, roast, hot dogs, lunch meat, and hot links. We found other savings in the frozen veggies and soda.
(2) Kroger – Total $27.76 – Savings $10.90 (coupons) and $18.36 (card savings) or 51%
Hubby put together these two shops with coupons matched with sales and he was very proud. We were able to add to our body wash, deodorant, hand soap stockpile for about $2 (got two washes, 1 deodorant, 1 hand soap) and then found some great deals on meat. We bought sausage and spareribs for the freezer.
(3) Brookshire’s – Total 37.56 – Savings $4.25 (card savings) or 10%
Okay, this one doesn’t sound as large, but let me explain. When the Brookshire’s meat market marks down meat for Quick Sale (expiring soon or the meat isn’t moving fast enough) they mark it with a new bar code and the description on the tag says “Reduced for Quick Sale”. When this bar code it scanned, the register does not know how much the meat was originally so it cannot compute your savings. On this transaction there are 3 packages of fully cooked fajita meat that are originally $6.99, but we bought them for $2.50. If this had been computed during our checkout our savings would have been closer to 30-40% (I don’t feel like doing the math right now ). We also bought two bag salads which helped us earn a free bagged salad so there is a FreeBClub Free Item on this transaction!!
This week we only had one shop and that was due to Brookshire’s marking down some Smart Chicken half price (yummy..if you haven’t tried it, keep your eye out for it to go on sale AND get a coupon…it’s sooooo good!!) and we got some fat-free Cool Whip marked down to $0.50. Hubby got some BBQ rub for the spareribs also. The total was just under $40, but he hasn’t given me the receipt yet so I can’t tell you exactly the savings. Sorry!!
We ate out at Applebees on Thursday after our weigh-in ($30) and again on Friday at Ryan’s ($22) before going to see Beauty and Beast in 3D (the boy LOVES it!!), but that is considerably less than normal for us lately.
We had Christmas with my older sister at my dad’s house so Saturday and Sunday’s meals were basically all FREE!!
This put us in a great position to not need to grocery shop again this week (good thing, because we missed the Sunday paper and didn’t get the coupons). We have meat in the fridge/freezer, the boy is looking good on Apple Juice and pull-ups, we have all the household supplies we need (might need laundry soap) and we still have money in our pockets!!
I’m counting this as a good week!!
How are you doing on your pantry challenge goals this week? Remember to leave a link to your post or comment below about your progress in the pantry challenge and you’ll be entered to win a $25 Coupon Clutch gift certificate. One participant who either leaves a link to a challenge post or a comment about their challenge progress will win each week!
(Bloggers: if you wish to join us, we’ll have a linky each week where you can link to your challenge posts. The linky will appear on the blogs of all of the co-hosts so your post will get quite a bit of exposure!)
How silly is it that I forgot to link up my post until I read yours?! Gotta love Mondays! Sounds like you’re doing good and learning as much as I am during this challenge!
Cyndy recently posted..Bloggers Monetize Your Blog With Escalate
My computer was having a Monday…but things got better. Lucky for me, since I couldn’t use the computer I was able to get some house cleaning done. Good thing, too, since we’re getting our foundation fixed tomorrow so we’ll have people in the house.
I love that your hubby is so involved! Keep on savin’, girl!
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My husband loves that I started couponing and being involved in the grocery shopping. For the first 3 years of our marriage we always fought over groceries because I hated buying them. Now it’s like a game for us!!
Love, love, love that you are saving so much at Brookshire’s! Congrats on being very diligent with you budget and I’m sorry you lost your post this morning.
Pary Moppins recently posted..Boost Your Budget Pantry Challenge Week 3
Thanks!! When I first started reading blogs I thought about writing a blog ONLY about how to save at Brookshire’s because everyone thinks it’s more expensive. Since Hubby is there everyday, we know how to shop there and we save tons, especially since we can still double/triple coupons!!