I know I hadn't been around much lately, but I didn't realize it had been quite so long. Wow. I took some time off for Christmas to spend with my family. My husband's shifts at work have been crazy, so family time has been hard to come by. It was nice to get plenty of it over Christmas break. We played board games, read books, watched a couple of movies, and just spent a lot of family time together. It was nice.
Elliott's been back in school for over a week now, though. I just started a medicine that I've been on in the past, but it seems to be kicking my butt worse this time. Maybe I just don't remember the early days from last time. :) Anyway, it seems like I want to sleep every chance I get, so I haven't done much of anything online lately. I'm starting to adjust to it a little better now, so I'm hoping to be online more. I have several goals this year that I'm excited about, and I plan on blogging about them. One of them kind of goes against the goal to get out of debt, but I think it will help motivate us for several other things, so I think we will stick with it.
One of my goals this year is to track all of my grocery purchases. I'm amazed that some people are able to track everything they purchase through out the year, but I don't think I'm ready for that. In fact, I'm already not sure how much money I spent on Christmas clearance stuff at a few different places in the last two weeks. I'm planning on writing a weekly post every Thursday that details how much I spent on groceries each week, so I can better keep track of it. There will be weeks that just include a running total, since we don't go grocery shopping every week, but I think by posting the same day every week I'm more likely to remember to do it. My goal this year is less than $100 a week. That includes 3 adults (my sister, my husband and myself), and my soon to be seven year old. It also includes two dogs and a cat. There are just a couple of dietary restrictions as well. We live in an area with a fairly high cost of living. It's not like NYC or California or anything, but prices are pretty high because of the oil boom. We do most of our shopping at the commissary, but it's small, and doesn't carry everything we need, so we obviously have to go elsewhere sometimes. Also, nowhere doubles coupons, and we don't have any big chains with excellent sales (we have a Walmart, and two regional chains of grocery stores).
2 comments:
Keeping close track of our grocery spendings, and then feeling the obligation to share the details with my readers really helps me to stay on track throughout the year.
My grocery posts actually earn me quite a bit in blogging income, as they are some of the more popular posts as well...which is another motivating factor.
I was amazed that I was able to spend an average of only $63 a week for a our family of five, but I highly doubt that I will be able to keep it like that in 2013.
I am thinking of raising our weekly budget to $70, since the baby will be coming soon, but even that may be too little. My oldest son is now 10, and he is growing fast and eating more, so I am working hard on keeping the fruit bowl full. Thankfully I have a big stock of diapers, due to some great sales in 2012.
I know my spending on clothing is already up big time, because of all the baby girl clothing I have bought....but I had the feeling it would happen:)
We have been so terrible at keeping track of grocery totals for the last year, that I honestly had no idea what to budget. It's just been in the same budget category as entertainment, and eating out for the last year. We stuck to that budget, but I'm honestly not sure how much was groceries vs. eating out vs. entertainment, vs. other things that didn't have a specific spot elsewhere in the budget.
So far we have only been to the grocery store twice, but I plan on going for a fairly large trip on Wednesday (I think the last time we did a big trip was before Christmas), so I have a feeling I'm going to be over budget for the year already. Haha.
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