Did some online grocery shopping tonight. By paying via my checking account, I save $1 off my order. Had a $5 coupon off the order, and then saved $2.50 for selecting a non-prime delivery time. $8.50 going to the challenge.

Old EF Balance: $973.33
Peapod discounts: $8.50
-----------------------------
New EF balance: $981.83

I was reading yet another book on personal finances, and one of the chapters was on using Peapod for groceries. We use Stop and Shop as our grocery store to begin with, so that wasn't a change for us. The main idea behind it is that you save money becasue you remove yourself from the temptation of everything in the store.

When we go grocery shopping, we have a list, but we always deviate from it. We aim for $50 in gorceries and we spend $80. But with peapod, you just go online and order what you want.

The delivery fees are $9.95 for an order under $100 and $6.95 for an order over $100. Much better than the $30 or so we spend in extra food we want, bt don't have on our list of need. There is also a small fuel charge, but it is usually less than $1 total (not per mile).

I'm going to keep tabs on our gorcery spendings with Peapod and see if it really does help save us money in the end. It does save on time. Once you put something on your list, you can just go to that next time to select it instead of searching for it all over again. And honestly? We hate grocery shopping more than anything else.

So, today I put in an order. This was my second one. By looking st the sale items and comparing proce and size, I saved about $13. That will help stretch our grocery budget a little further this month.

I also got some special additional svings. After signing up with them on the last order, I got a $5 coupon off our total order for this second order. I also signed up to pay with online checking instead of a credit card (or debutcard) and saved another $5. Plus, I picked a non-rush delivery time (Between 4 and 10 pm monday night) to save $1, and finally, saved another $1 for choosing online checking instead of my debit card to pay for the order. Total saved on these features alone? $12. I am adding that $12 to my $20 challenge.


$20 Old Balance: $744.59
Peapod account savings: $12.00
--------------------------------
$20 New Balance: $756.59

So, it looks like we will be getting an extra $1,100 in March! Yay!!!! Great timing, too, with the move! I have already budgeted it all out:

$200 for the move (truck rental and treating friends and family to dinner afterwards)
$100 extra to LBCC
$100 extra to ATTCC
$100 extra to grocery budget (after the move, we will need to restock basics)
$100 into the $20/Taxes account to replace the $100 I had to steal out of it for groceries this week
$100 for new apartment things (dinning room rug, computer desk)
and the big one...$400 to the EF!!

I am actually excited to get the $1,100 so I can start transferring it around! Who knew paying bills and saving could be so much fun?

Saturday free lunch with my friend got messed up. She had a gict certificate for Outback, so we were going to go there. She came up my way, and then we went to go to the restaurant and saw it had been closed! It was gone! Grrr...so we drove around a little looking for another Outback but couldn't find one. So we ended up at the 99 here lunch was $15 for me. Ouch.

Also picked up some groceries Sat. For the life of me I can't remember exactly what we spent, and I can't find the reciept. I know it was less than $20 so we're just gonna use that number.

Sat Spendings:
$15 lunch
$20 groceries
TOTAL $35

Sunday we went to Mums and Dads. Did laundry and just hung around. I did about 3 hours worth of take home OT for work, so that rocks. We had dinner there, then came home.

Sun Spendings: $0!! NO SPEND DAY!

Whoo-hoo!
$35 for the weekend...much better than normal!

Lunch: $4.00
Groceries: $93.00
Interview clothes for the boy: $27.00

Total spendings: $124.00

Not much going on these past few days. Been tryng to not spend much. Spent some money this week on breakfasts b/c we were all out of cereal, bagels, etc and didn't get a chance to go shopping until last night. Spent about $15 on that. Dropped $5 at Cumby's the other night when we ran out of tp at midnight. Picked up sme from the all night store and a bottle of soda for the boy. Yeh, convenient, but fricken expensive! I hate buying things at convenience store.

Grocery shopping finally last niht. Spent $111 and change. Not bad, as we did a major shop and picked up a lot of meats. I think it's fair to say we blew our grocery budget for July, but I a going to do the math later to see how off we were. I'm not too upset, as July was the first month on this new plan and we are in assessment mode to see how much we are over or under in budgeting in some cateories.

Got a bill from the hospital from when I was sick a few months ago. Guess insurance didn't cover all of it. Didn't have the funds in out checking account to cover it all, so I took $125 from the Vegas fund to pay it and I will replace that when I get paid on Aug 3rd.

Listed a bunch (about 20) new books on half.com this week. One sold today, so that rocks.

Now that I got a better/working camera, there are some things I want to list on ebay, like my KidRobot Bunny's, some Tori Amos concerts, some NIN videos, a Louis Vuitton clutch/wallet thingy from inside a Louis purse that is no more, and possibly a Coach clutch. I dont know about that one. I LOVE it an it matched my hot pink leather jacket perfectly!!

Anywho, that's about it here. For now, at least.

Grocery store: $108


That's it. I'm happy. No outside spending and still doing good on the grocery budget.

Did fairly good at spending on Sunday. Went to the grocery store, and spent $69.32 This was Fab as it was down from $83.43 after I got my discounts (saved $14.11!). Didn’t get to the bank, as they didn’t open until almost an hour after I was done shopping and I didn’t want to go back there again. It’s OK, I just needed to deposit some rolled change. It’s in my purse still, so I’ll count this as exercise (carrying around heavy coins!). lol

Other than groceries, I only spent $0.40 on Sunday. We went to the annual Summerfest here and walked around looking at all the art and crafts and booths. Admission was free, my BF treated me to a Dels from his allowance money, and we didn’t get anything to eat. I bought 8 beautiful polished stones ($.05 each!) that I am going to wrap and make necklaces with.

The rest of the day was spent trying to cool off. We watched TV and took naps in the afternoon. At night BF played his Game Boy and I finally started working on my quilt.

All in all, a good day.

Spendings
Groceries: $69.32
Stones: $.40
Total: $69.72

Happy Fourth All! Today was a great day. Me and The Boy slept in (so nice) then went to Mums and Dads house for a small BBQ for dinner. My sis and her hubby weren't there, but it was still fun. My best friend (who I've known since we were 12) also came over and joined us for the cookout. We hung around and played cards for a while. It was nice and realxing and fun.

While we were there, we got about 4 loands of laundry done (yay!). We have a coin op washer and dryer in our apartment building so anytime we go to visit Mums and Dads, we bring some with us. Parents rock!!

Dinner was wicked yummy: hamburgers, cheese hot dogs, pasta salad, chips, and ice cream. One bonus: as we were leaving, Mums loaded us up with leftover food! We got half a pack each hamburger and hot dog rolls, a 6 pack of cheese hot dogs, a half bag of regular chips, a half bag of sour cream and chive chips, all the leftover pasta salad (yum! Lunch tomorrow), a tomato, 2 heads of broccoli, and an 8 pack of GIANT ribs! Mums just started cleaning out the fridge and freezer and putting things in the bag for us! And then, Dads gave me a 6 pack of my fave beer he had picked up for me! How much does that rock??

So, we got a good load of stuff for the next few days, and this kind passing out of food from Mums will help us make our $200 grocery budget for July. Yay for doting parents everywhere!

The only money we spent all day was $.50 for the newspaper, and $4.50 on DnD Iced Coffees. I like days like this!

Well, we made it through Day 1 with our new budget in palce. Yay!

My goal today was to spend $50 at the grocery store, instead of the usual $75 or so. We are hoping to cut our grocery budget down by $100 a month, $25 aweek. We came in at $53.25 A little over, but I'm happy with it. It just means for the rest of the month we have $146.75 instead of $150. I think we can do it.

We did great today: we had a total savings of $14.60 through buying things on sale. No coupons, but hopefully that will change soon. So, what did we get?

Hot Dogs (BOGO Free)
Hot Dog buns (Generic & on sale)
Whole Grain Bread (Generic)
Light Cheese (on sale)
Low Carb Pita bread
Provolone (Generic & on sale)
Turkey breast lunchmeat (Generic)
2 cartons of Friendlies Ice Cream ($1.99 each, instead of $5.59 each! And this will keep up from going out to Friendlies for ice cream).
Cat Food (generic, trying a new kind)
Rice cakes
Wheat Thins (on sale)
Carrots (on sale)
Apples (on sale)
Pears (on sale)
Strawberries (on sale)
Green Peppers

We have plenty of meats in the fridge, plus a couple boxs of pasta still. For the next week, we can easily live off what we got today and what we already have. The hard part will be next week. It will be time for our big shop (we do a small one every other week and a large one every other week). I'm thinking I can do this if I just get the Sunday papaer and compare sales beforehand. Plus, I want to try the local Shop and Save. It's a kinda discount grocery store around here. You can't get brand name stuff or meats there, but what they do have is much cheaper and Mums swears by it.

Anywho, that was all we spent today. No other stops anywhere, no purchases other than what was on our list, no other spending.

All in all, a great start and I'm very proud of us!

July Groceries to Date: $53.25
July Groceries $ Left: $146.75

July spendings to Date: $53.25

Start of a new month, so I'm gonna refocus.

Going out to lunch today with Dads, which will be a freebie for me (thanks Dads!).

After that, I want to hit the bank to make a deposit, then the grocery store. Very nicely, my bank has a branch in the grocery store, so that will be only one stop.

Found a band I like at the concert I went to last night, so I am copying their CD right now onto my iPod. Didn't have to pay for the CD, so that is a bonus. Rest of the day I think will be quiet. Read, maybe work on the quilt I am making if it is not too hot, listen to this new CD. A friend at work let me borrow the first 3 episodes of that old show Firefly on DVD, so I want to watch at least one episode tonight, too.

I also want to figure out exactly what our bills are a month. I know we spend around this much for this, but I want to know exact numbers.

The plan for spending today is to spend only on groceries today, and my grocery budget for the week is $50. I need milk, lunch meat, bread, and some fruit and veggies. If it is on sale, maybe some yogurt and ice cream, but that is it.

I will do better this month!

I picked up 4 t-hirts, one fancier kind of t-shirt/top, a pair of linen sleeping pants, and a cute pair of linen sleeping shorts for $65. Much better than I expected, as I figured it would be about $100.

Bought lunch at Taco Bell for $5.12 Not the healthiest choice, but oh well. What's done is done.

Went to the bookstore. $44.00 Ooooh, not smart. But I saved about $5 with my membership card. And one is a Suze Orman book.

Grocery store: $145.00 Saved $10 with copons. YAY! And $45 was the new Brita Water Pitcher we had to get. I dropped and broke our old one this morning. Suppose I can't complain too much: it was 8 years old. But Brita is a totally necessity for us. We drink coffee and water and not much else and the Brita keeps us from buying bottled water.

So, about $15 in savings today. I'd like to add it to the challenge or the cc debt, but where I had a day out of work this week, my paycheck was smaller than usual so we need the extra cash.

I really want to get to using coupons and such to cut our grocery budget down, but I have no idea where to start. I never get any circular with coupons. I go through the ones my Mums saves for me, but can never find a lot of them to clip.

Honestly, the whole thing seems very overwhelming to me.

However, I am dtermined to become a coupon queen this summer and would love some help. Any ideas or tips someone can pass along would be very much appreciated. Also, if anyone knows of good palces to get coupons, or good websites to learn about couponing from, I'd apprecaite that as well.

I know I can count on my frugal family!
Thanks all!

Saved $30.18 at the grocery store tonight! $1.60 was from coupons and the rest was just due to having a frequent shopper card there and pcking items that were on sale. Will add at least that $1.60 to the $20 Challenge account. LOL I should use coupons more often!

Also added to the $20 challenge is $7 I saved at CVS yesterday. I had a coupon for $7 off any purchase from my extra care savings card. Yay for frequent shopper cards!

Old $20 Challenge Total: $113.27
Added April 13, 2007: $8.60
--------------------------------
New $20 Challenge Total: $121.87

Working on tracking our (ok, mostly my) spending better. That's what kills us: all the extras.

FEBRUARY:

Groceries: $43.27
2/2/07 $43.27

Eating out: $9.59
2/2/07 $9.59

Donations: $11
2/1/07 $1.00
2/2/07 $10.00

Extras: $23.00
Football Pool $20
ATM fee $3.00

Bills: $298.57
LB CC $100
MED CC $100
CC Co $98.57

Total: $385.43

All week I keep thinking it will be a No Spend Day, then BAM! I get whacked with a surprise purchase. I've gotten in the habit of eating breakfast at home, as well as brewing my own coffee for the ride to work (all thanks to the boy, he's FAB). I also am now taking my lunch every day instead of eating lunch out anymore. Much better for the diet and for the wallet. So, untl I get home at night, it looks good.

And then the surprises.

Last night the filter on the aquarium broke. I'm telling you, these "free" fish are getting expensive. We've already had to replace 4 or 5 fish, plus the heater and now the filter.

Night before, we needed to get a wrist brace for the boy's C. Tunnel. (How do you even spell that???) They didn't have the one we needed at CVS, but we ended up getting shampoo, conditioner anda new bath sponge. Oh yeah, and I found a cool little bag for work. *hanging head in shame*

Monday night we ordered pizza b/c we were so exhausted from dealing with other stuff going on, we couldn't be bothered cooking. *hanging head even deeper in shame*

Sunday we met up w/some friends for lunch out. *sigh*

I'd like today to be the No Spend Day I'm waiting for, but we are just about out of milk, Splenda, my WW granola bars, and fesh frutis and veggies.

Does it ever end???

OK, so not groceries in terms of fresh produce or meats or anything, but I did pick up a few things while I was poking around there last night. Much cheaper than at the regular stores. Yay for the X-mas Tree Shop!

Candy Bar (last splurge before WW)$1.00
2 packs of soup (just add water!) $3.00
2 Thai quick meals $3.98
Salt & pepper $.89
Pumpkin Butter (this is a gift for Mums on Turkey Day $2.99
-----------------------------------------
Total: $11.86

Stopped at the grocery store on the way home from work tonight. Just needed a few random things.

Mayo = $3.29 (ouch!)
Reduced Fat Wheat Thins = $3.29 (ouch again, but on WW these are the only crackers I eat)
Carb Friendly Turkey Hill Ice Cream = $5.49 - $3.61 RS = $1.88
Laughing Cow Cheese = $3.19 ea - $1.19 eac RS = $2.00 ea X 2 = $4.00
Sargento LF Mozzerella = $2.99 - $.99 RS = $2.00
Mouth Wash = $1.19
TP = $3.50

tax = $.23

SUB-TOTAL = $26.36
RS = $6.98
REAL TOTAL = $19.38
26% Savings

Grocery Spendings to Date = $68.42
Grocery Savings to Date = $29.58

Just picked up come groceries on my lunch break. Our S&S is having a sale: 2 liter bottles of Pepsi products for $1.00, 10 for $10.00 And I have a rebate at home for $10.00 off a $10.00 purchase of Pepsi products! =) So I wanted to run out and grab those, plus pick up something for my lunch (I ran out of the house without it today).

**Spicy Combo Sushi (lunch) $4.49
**Cantaloupe Chunks (lunch) $2.55
**Perdue chicken breast $5.94
**Perdue chicken breast $5.14
BOGO Free RS -$5.14
**10 bottles Diet Pepsi ($1.59)= $15.90
RS - ($.59 ea) - $5.90 = $10.00 (plus $10 rebate offer at home) = FREE!
** $.50 bottle deposit ($.05 ea) -
Redeemable when I turn in bottles = $0.00

SUB-TOTAL = $34.52
RS = $11.04
REAL TOTAL = $23.48
REBATE/BOTTLE DEPOSIT = $10.50
TOTAL AFTER REABTE/BD = $12.98


Grocery Spendings to Date = $49.04*
Grocery Savings to Date = $22.60*




*Does not include rebate or bottle deposit savings

Last night The Boy came over and gave me the $20 he owed me. Whoo-hoo! I could finally buy some groceries! (The boy also took me out to dinner...so sweet!)

**Bananas $.86
**Green Pepper $1.96 - $.97 RS (reward savings) = $.99
**Plum Tomatoes $2.02
**Mango Salsa $1.00
**2 boxes Kraft Mac & Cheese
**Multi-grain Cherrios $4.19 - 2.53 RS = $1.66
**Harvest Pasta $1.79
**Shaw's Raisin Bran $2.79 - $1.13 RS = $1.66
**Edy's Light Ice Cream $5.69 - $3.72 RS = $1.97
**Skim Milk $1.79
**5 WW yogurts $4.45 - $1.95 RS = $2.50
**WW Bread $2.99

SUB-TOTAL = $31.50
RS = $10.30
REAL TOTAL = $21.20
TOTAL % SAVED = 32%


Grocery Spendings to Date = $25.56
Grocery Savings to Date = $11.56

I spend so much money on groceries, it's kinda ridiculous. I live alone, no kids, just 2 cats. I am on Weight Watchers, and low-point healthy food is more expensive than junk, so I know that is part of it, but still.

So, here's the beginning of my grocery spending log:

Tues, Aug 15, 2006
**2 peaches (1.14 lbs) @ $1.69 a lb = $1.93
**1 box Crystal Lite on the go mix @ $3.69 = $3.69
**S&S Cardmember savings = $1.26
TOTAL = $4.36

Grocery Spendings to Date = $4.36
Grocery Savings to Date = $1.26