Level 1: Bargain Belle
Get Organized
• Place a blank piece of paper on your counter in a notebook, or taped to a cabinet in your kitchen, in a location where it can live for the month. (30 seconds)
• Whenever you or a family member realizes you’re ALMOST out of an item, write it on the list. (10 seconds)
• Organize your list: Make it easy on yourself and write the item on the list in the approximate location in which you will encounter it in the store. You can make either a traditional vertical list, or assign each section of the store a location on the page.
For instance, if you shop at a store like our local Kroger where the produce section is on the left as you come in and the frozen food section is on the right, place all fresh fruit and vegetables at the top of the page on the left-hand side, first column. Frozen vegetables are near the bottom for the traditional vertical list, or on the bottom right-hand corner of the page because they are on the far right-hand side of the store as you enter, and therefore the last section shopped. (30 seconds)
• Check out this site for free printable grocery lists.
Grocery Budget Extreme Makeover Part I
How to Subscribe to My Blog
After a few emails asking how to subscribe to LivingLaVidaMama, I did a little search for tutorials and found this one. Not only is it the best tutorial I found, but the site is enjoyable to read and full of feisty frugal ideas; definitely my kind of place.
Warming Up for the Grocery Budget Extreme Makeover
Happy FruGal Friday everyone. As I always say, I know the name is corny, but the thoughts are sincere.
Next week, the Grocery Budget Extreme Makeover will kick into full gear. To get ready, we need to have a good sense of how much we spend per week, or per month, on groceries and other food.
If you’re doing the Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover or Financial Peace University, then you probably have a good sense of this already. If not, let’s try to get a realistic estimate of your total grocery costs.
If you have receipts that are representative of your average shopping trips, total them up and use those. If not, make your best educated, REALISTIC, guess.
Don’t get stressed out. The goal of this exercise is to give you a baseline, a starting point so to speak, so that when you are saving a lot of money, you’ll actually know how much you are saving. For instance, if you typically spend $700 per month on groceries, and after the Grocery Budget Extreme Makeover are spending $500 per month, you’ll know that you’re saving $200, or just under 30%.
Include these categories to determine your total food expenses (some of them overlap):
1. Eating out
a. Restaurants, sit-down or drive-thru
b. Hotels while traveling for business or pleasure
c. Convenience Stores
d. Meals out of the home while working, running errands, etc.
e. Coffees, teas, waters, or sodas while out of the home
2. Groceries
a. Typical groceries such as produce, dairy products, meats, baking supplies, etc.
b. Groceries purchased at farmer’s markets or CSAs
c. Entertaining: Any food purchased to host family or friends in your home, or to attend a function at someone else’s home, at church, etc.
d. Processed foods
i. Cans
ii. Jars
iii. Boxes
iv. Bagged mixes
v. Frozen foods that contain more than one item, i.e., frozen peas by themselves don’t count as processed foods.
vi. Candy, snacks, junk foods, special treats, or other addictions
vii. Snacks purchased at health food stores
viii. Prepared specialty or diet foods
ix. Sodas
x. Juices
xi. Bottled water (not necessarily “processed,” but heavily packaged)
3. Any other food items I have left out
You know what you eat better than I do. This isn’t an exercise in feeling guilty about what we do or do not eat, or how much we do or do not spend; it’s simply a bookkeeping exercise to determine if we know what we’re actually spending on consumable food items.
Don’t worry if you don’t know what you spend on groceries every month. Most people don’t. Click here to read more.
Use whatever method of tabulation works for you. If you prefer pen and paper, use that. If you prefer Excel, use that. Make it as easy on yourself as possible. And don’t forget to have fun.
