A couple weeks ago I talked to my mom about shopping and budgeting. She said "You don't just eat whatever you feel like, you start with a plan, you look at what's on sale and build a plan around that." To make her point, she got out the Sunday paper with we went over what the really good deals were. (I soon learned that just because it's on "sale" - it's not necessarily a "good deal." ...and we have six grocery stores to shop from, and it seems like they all advertise using different quantities and sizes. Husband and I made our list. We checked it twice, we rewrote it based on what we would buy at each store. We got all of the kids ready and off we went! Comparing the number of bottles of water, and the amount in each container, the different units at each location - I think I should have earned a math credit! We did this all day long. At the end of the day, we'd only made it to three stops. (But we learned a LOT!) We'd saved a ton of money, but we'd also overspent our tiny budget. It was now late and the kids were argumentative, and hubby and I were both very grumpy. It would take a lot to get everything home, the baby settled and taken care of, the groceries put away...and the kids and hubby were obviously exhausted and hungry. It would be so much easier to just grab a couple tacos at taco bell on the way home. We'll skip the drinks, nothing special, just tacos... something to quell that hunger. We didn't stop. We went home and my sweet tired husband grilled the pork chops and made the rice while I nursed the baby. The kids were just so relieved to be out of the car and FREE, they forgot to complain about being hungry! K helped set the table, and Z took a shower. Dinner was ready 20 minutes after we got home, and we spent no extra money. This was a major accomplishment for us! The next day I got up feeling like we really could make this work! We could definitely get our food budget under control and therefore make more headway on our debts.

A good friend directed me to the Dave Ramsey site and I looked it over and felt pretty smart that we were already working on the same list of steps in about the same order Dave Ramsey lays out. (We still need to put that grand in the bank though....) From there I found a lot of sites dedicated to getting meals planned and organized. I read more blogs on others who are trying to become financially free. After all this reading I've realized....I have a lot more work to do to get our food budget under control!!!

My mom is the cooking queen. Everyone loves her cooking and quite frankly, she spoils us rotten! We have dinner every Sunday night and she tries to continually outdo herself. It's not a rare event to go out for a restaurant dinner and be disappointed because mom's is simply so much more creative, outstanding, fresher, and of course, MORE of the good stuff! So of course I have some of the same tendencies as my mom. We like to have a stocked house. That's food in the kitchen, pantry, food in the 'fridge, food in the garage 'fridge, and more frozen food in the chest freezer. I buy high quality, healthy food. And lots of it. We don't need the cutest new clothes, we gave up cable years ago, we've skipped a few vacations, rarely ever indulge in things like mochas etc, but we need to eat, right? Ok, so we are trying to get this last obstacle to our budget under control.

I started by trying to just live on what we have in our pantries. I buy milk and eggs at Costco. we go through nearly a loaf of bread a day, and a gallon of milk every two days. At Costco we buy the two gallon containers - times 3 or 4. We buy 5 dozen eggs at a time, and make sure we always have fresh veggies and fruit on hand. Two weeks without going to the grocery store - it wasn't really even a challenge. (We were half way through week two before I told my husband what I was doing. He hadn't noticed!)

I was so proud of the money I'd saved. As of Saturday though we were needing some staples. So, instead of spending a ton of money on whatever looked like good deals - we made our list based on what was on sale in different stores when we were out shopping. (we checked, and cross checked to make sure these were actually good "deals." Not time consuming, not at all. ) But I didn't have a plan for any of this food. We just had food. And a lot of it. Again. I found e-mealz, a site that plans weekly meals based on what's on sale in each store, sends you the recipes and the shopping list. For 4-6 people, we can feed our family for $75 a week for dinners. Granted, the meals don't look that exciting, they're basic and have only a few ingredients, but they are nutritionally balanced, easy, and pretty cheap and someone else did the mental work. Wow! I've got a plan. Now I need to see if my family will eat these meals...