All You Challenge- Grocery challenge

All You magazine is having a challenge to only spend $25 a week per person for groceries. I thought I would try this. This would give 125 a week on groceries which is more than I allow myself to spend a week now. So far this week my spending has been
Sav A Lot 7.19 Ice cream. 2 loafs of bread
Harvey's .92 Root beer soda
Bi-lo 5.33 2 Fast fixing bags - nuggets and chicken patties, 2 Bounty Tissues
Harvey's 6.44- 5 boxes of Cereal
Harvey's 42.35 7 packs of chicken breast, 10 packages of Chi-Chi's Tortilla, and one jar of Apple jelly noticed my recipet was off. Went back to store and got back $12.
Dollar tree $2.12 Sodas

Did It - Budget

I sat down and did it. I wrote down where all the money goes and it is amazing how much goes on impulse items.  I wrote down all of our debt and figured out to get everything paid off. We will be trying to use the Dave Ramsey method of snowballing. I even wrote down on the calendar when each bill needs to be paid to avoid late fees.  If everything works out then we should have everything but the mortgage paid off in 4 years. I will be looking for a job in the fall to try to help  out more. I am only buying items that we have to use. We are eating out of the stockpile for the next  week or so. 

Cutting my Grocery Bill-any ideas

This week I have decided to drastically cut my budget only for next week. I want to see if it will be possible to cut it in half and still be able to purchase what we need. Now that is going to be a little difficult because sometimes I have a hard determining what we want and what we need.  I will be only using $50 on grocery that week instead of the usual $100. I know that some are thinking that $100 a week is a lot but I am feeding a family of 6 on that amount. I try to use the money to stock up on mostly meat and use other items that I have in my stockpile. I try to buy snacks only from the drug stores when they are cheap or practically free. 
We are also debating about cutting the satellite bill but we have to get an outside antenna first to see what local channels are available.  I know that it will be a big adjustment for the children but I need to think about improving my finances first. This will just give them more time to play outside and read books.  I would love any comments or suggestions on how to reduce the grocery bill.

Goals for 2011

My goals for this year is to pay off 2 credit cards and to lower one to less than  $1000. One day I will have the nerves to reveal how much in debt we are in.  I am going to try to start using the envelope method.  Basically I will withdraw money each week and put in different envelopes with the amount of money that can be used for the week. The bills that will not be paid by envelope are the mortgage, credit cards, water bill (has to be mailed to FL), and phone bill. I need to sit down and do a budget and set up payment schedules for all bills so that they are paid on time to stop late charges from being applied to accounts. Budgets, budgets that is something that has been a hard word in this house. I have a hard time putting a budget down, but I know that I need to do it. I HAVE TO DO IT.  We need to put money back in an emergency fun and I know how important it is to have one.  A couple years ago my husband was in a car wreck and he was the only one working at the time.   He was hurt so badly that he had to have an operation on his leg and went through several months of physical therapy.  Luckily we had disability insurance and it helped over the months that he was not working.  It helped but it was not enough and we used our savings to tide us over during this time. The savings have never been rebuilt since then and it is time that we start again.  There are several places that have free budget software.

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