Mom’s Family Budget Update

As many of you know, our family is in the midst of a $20 dollars a day challenge. To say that it has been challenging would obviously be repetitive, but it would also be true. We are only half-way through and we are fatigued by the whole process. We are sick of talking about money, looking at receipts, chasing down lost cents, and keeping tabs on everything. I am just being honest here. We also worry that this really isn’t sustainable going forward. However, saying all of that, our family agrees that we have learned some incredibly important lessons so far. They include:

We now see where our money is going and on what. And guess what? It is mostly on food. I tallied up all of our shopping costs so far to find that we spent almost $30 on milk, $25 on tomatoes (can you believe that???), and $10 on apples. Are we going to give up those items? No, but if we are going to need that much of one product, than we need to buy it in bulk. (We should also consider growing tomatoes for goodness sakes!).

We have realized that cutting costs has to be a priority. So we have given up dry cleaning, dinner out, driving long distances, and certain luxury goods. We also realize that we need to cut costs further or increase income to actually get ahead.

We probably spent more last month than we did so far this month - and yet $20 dollars a day adds up to be a lot of money in a month. It is a wake-up call that we are still buying & spending too much.

In the second half of the month, we are going to change it up a bit. Instead of shopping everyday (which is exhausting) we are going to do a large shop at the beginning of the pay cycle to see if our money will go further. We noticed that we were going to the grocery store every single day, and not necessarily taking advantage of 2 for 1 deals or other discounts because we didn’t want to spend more than our allotted $20. That means we will have less cash to spend for the rest of the month, but hopefully we won’t need it as much.

Little things do add up. In using coupons, bringing in our own cloth bags, and checking our receipts, we have saved more than $20 since July 1st, which isn’t too bad (and it is a whole day’s spend!).

So although we aren’t done, we are going to see if spending our money upfront on groceries & household items works. We will keep you updated on our progress. But continue to wish us luck & share your cost saving tips with us as well - we need all the help we can get.