Cheap April Update

(Jenn) Tyler & Alison Squire put me to shame! They have gone almost the entire month now withouth spending a dime on anything except bills and medical necessities. They haven't even filled up their car with gas! But you have to remember that they are them, and I am me. And if any of you know me very well, you know that I like to spend money. It's been really eye-opening to me to see how much it affects me to have only $30 to spend in two weeks. And this is grocery money!

Here's the tally:

30.00 Our budget

-15.53 Milk, eggs, cheese, apples, dishwasher soap, lettuce

-2.34 I can't remember what this was for

-6.99 Cough medicine for Henry

-4.78 Milk

.36 Our total, assuming we don't break down before May 1st

I've learned a couple of things:

1) Grocery spending is my outlet. Since we really don't have much money for me to buy the things I dream of buying (clothes, toys, furniture, decorations, gifts, a house), I can at least set free my need to spend using $300 a month at the grocery store. And it's amazing how much it thrills me to get some incredible deal on cereal (6 for $10, using 3 $1 coupons) or to buy something fun like a new eyeshadow (using grocery money? of course -- it's at the grocery store!).

2) It really pains me to miss a good deal. I know it's good to buy things when they're on sale and stock up, instead of waiting until you desperately need them and paying the higher price. This makes sense. But sometimes I think I may carry it a bit too far. I've been in serious pain over the bottle of laundry detergent -- the kind I use -- that's on sale this week for $1.99, and I have a 65-cent coupon, and ShopRite doubles all coupons under a dollar. So I guess I should have bought it, but we kind of needed milk more than laundry soap. Ouch, that hurt. I just need to be careful and make sure I'm not buying something just because it's a good deal, especially if it's something we wouldn't normally use.

3) We could eat our regular meals more cheaply than we do. It seems like I have been flooded recently with new recipes I want to try. I get recipes from an email exchange, from people at church, and from Martha Stewart's Food Magazine. And when you plan your meals from all new recipes, there are often new and unique ingredients to buy. For the past two weeks, we really haven't felt deprived at all! We have eaten waffles, omelets, soup and sandwiches, pasta, rice, and leftovers. We like eating these foods, and they really are cheaper than a lot of fancier recipes. So I've decided from now on, I need to plan at least a few cheap recipes into each week.

4) I spend a lot of time shopping and cooking. I guess that's not all that bad, because I enjoy doing both of those things. But last week I felt like I had absolutely nothing to do! I spent most of my time reading, and I really enjoyed all the extra free time.

5) Henry likes canned green beans! He ate like 35 of them in one night! And Ben doesn't like creamed corn, which he had never had previously.

6) (And this is terrible) Spending the Church Budget is a last-resort outlet for me. I'm sure I would have had to buy this stuff anyway, but somehow I felt satisfied spending $14.99 on refreshments for the employment workshop this Saturday, and $18 on copies and supplies for the young women. I'll just have to be careful not to get carried away with this!

So it looks like overall, this has been a good experience for me! And I definitely couldn't do it much more than two weeks (we're probably really lacking in our fresh fruit and vegetable consumption), I'm surprised that I actually still have about 5 spend-free dinner ideas left! Wish me luck with the next four days!