Centsable Budget Report: Jan. 16-22 Grocery Budget Update

I have to say this was a very quiet week for me in terms of grocery shopping. I only made a couple of necessary trips out, and really did not have any major shopping trip (I love being stockpiled to a point, I can actually skip grocery shopping for a week).

So, here’s the overall breakdown of last week’s shopping expenditures. 

DATE	STORE	TOTAL B4 SALES/Qs	TOTAL AMNT. OOP	TOTAL AMNT. SAVED	PERCENTAGE SAVED	STORE MONEY RECEIVED
1/16/2011	Target	$24.21	$0.00	$24.21	100%
1/19/2011	Aldi	$12.66	$12.66	??	??
1/18/2011	Target	$1.27	$0.00	$1.27	100%
1/19/2011	Walgreens	$3.16	$1.67	$1.49	47.15%	$2.50 RR
1/20/2011	CVS	$3.59/milk	$3.59/milk	$0.00	0%	---
TOTAL=	----	44.89	$17.92	$26.97	60.08%	$2.50 RR

 

This month I am over budget, but not horrible. I knew I would be considering I needed to restock on meat, and should be good now for awhile.  Here is the update of my monthly spending:

Total Monthly Amnt. Purchased:    $958.16

Total Montly Amnt Spent OOP:      $323.42 (over by $63.42)

Total Monthly Amnt. Saved:          $634.74 (66.25%)

Not bad with a stock-up of meat in my freezer. I also still have one more week of grocery shopping before I officially close this month off. I am attempting to keep my OOP as low as possible, until February begins.  I know I will need to run to Aldi for another weekly stock-up of produce, we go through produce like crazy people in our house, and I am not complaining, there are much worse things we could go through.  And I still have a couple of items at Publix for this week’s ad (Jan. 20-27) that I plan to purchase, but won’t get to until Monday (Jan. 24).

How is everyone's monthly budget’s looking? Are you over/under? Happy, or wish you were doing better?

Centsable Budget Report: Weekly Spending for Jan. 1-8, 2011

Date	Store	Total Purchased	Total Amnt. OOP	Total Amnt Saved	Percentage Saved
1/2/2011	PetSmart	$63.00	$45.00	$18.00	28.57%
1/3/2011	Publix	$116.08	$34.18	$81.90	70.55%
1/3/2011	Walgreens	$86.46	$12.45	$74.01	85.60%
1/4/2011	Target	$7.98	$1.98	$6.00	75.19%
1/5/2011	CVS	$128.32	$53.42	$74.90	58.37%
1/5/2011	Walgreens	$14.79	$3.05	$11.74	79.38%
1/8/2011	Albertsons	$66.32	$35.34	$30.98	46.71%
1/8/2011	Publix	$83.39	$24.36	$59.03	70.79%
Totals		$566.34	$209.78	$356.56	63%

Ok – so I spent most of my monthly budget this week (not sure to laugh or cry J). I’m not surprised some of the added expenses were dog food, which I only have to buy every 6-8 wks, so that won’t be back on my list for awhile.  We loaded back up on meat, which I actually have not had to buy since the middle of November, so it had been awhile for meat.  Plus, I had to buy meat twice because 16 lbs of ground hamburger were left in the car overnight, and it had to be thrown out (now that I cried L over).

It may seem only like one week but I really did two weeks of shopping. I made a couple Publix runs this week, one was for last weeks ad (that was only 4 days long), the second was for this week’s ad.  My CVS trip actually included a new hair dryer, that alone would have cost me $39.99, w/o sales and ECBs. It that was a much needed expense, that I am glad to have out of the way and, I LOVE my new hair dryer!

As a result of this crazy week, the rest of the month will be quiet in terms of spending and what I buy. Basically I’ll need to grab some staple items (milk, bread, fruit, & veggies), and anything that is FREE to stockpile. r Otherwise, we have everything else on hand.

I promise in the end it will all balance out when all is said and done.  I am thankful to have the meat stocked back up.

How did all of you do this week on your weekly/monthly budgets?

CentsAble Budget Report: Financial Goals for 2011

Happy New Year!! Hope you all enjoyed your first day yesterday in 2011, and had a restful weekend before having to dig your heels back into the swing of things & begin your every day routine back up. 

Just to forewarn you this is a much longer than usual ‘CentsAble  Budget Report’, I have a lot to go over this Monday but promise from here on out I will keep it short….(maybe I shouldn’t promise J).

I’m sure many of you have made some resolutions for this New Year.  I certainly have, and so has my family.  I will share more of my 2011 goals but for today’s topic ‘CentsAble Budget Report’ I am going to share my financial goals for this year.

For 2011 I am setting a few high bars when it comes to our finances, but I think/know, these goals are not out of reach, it will take some serious diligence, and sacrificing on our parts, but I know in the long run, from a financial perspective we will be such a better place.  So here they are:

1.  Grocery Budget: 2010 was spent building my stockpile and lowering my grocery budget, which I successfully did. I gave our family a weekly budget of $75 for a family of 5, and we were able to obtain that goal. For 2011 I am pushing to bar a bit higher for us. I am setting our weekly grocery budget to just a mere $60 for a family of 5, or $3120 for the entire year. And yes this includes meat & veggies J.

2. Savings: Mostly I am continuing our savings goal from 2010 into 2011 since I started this late in the year. I plan to save at least $1500 for our family emergency fund, and to then start saving for our backup emergency fund where I want to save at least $9,000. The backup emergency fund I only want to get started once the $1500 is saved, which I have about 25% saved at this point & am very happy since I only started in Sept.  I plan to have this fully funded by the middle of 2011, can I do it? J

3.  Debt: Without going into a lot of details my goal is to get all of our debt (w/the exclusion of school debt) completely paid off by the end of 2011! This is a biggie.  And this is where a lot of sacrifice will be required.  We don’t have car debt (which I hope to never have again in my life) so we have some credit card debt and some health bills, which comes to around $5000.

So – between saving and paying off debt we will need to come up with approximately an extra $15,000. Is it possible, I think so.  Are we going to be sacrificing a little more this coming year, absolutely! But I have some plans up my sleeves to reach our financial goals without sacrificing everything J. So, you will have to stay tuned throughout this New Year to see how we are doing. I will be reporting to all of you each Monday on ‘CentsAble Budget Report’, how each of our goals is coming along and just how I plan to get this all accomplished. I’m actually a little excited, and hope we can all learn from one another about becoming better stewards or our finances.

Now on to some changes in my weekly grocery shopping trips. . .

Every Friday I will continue post my weekly & monthly budget/spending for groceries.  Within my goal of $260 monthly budget I include food, household products (cleaning, toiletries, ect), and pet products (excluding pet healthcare).

I will continue to display a picture of my weekly shopping trips, but will also break down my trips even further, by store.  Here’s an example of what to expect (these are not actual prices or coupons):

STORE	Quantity	ITEM	PRICE	SALE PRICE	MFQ	SQ	OOP	SAVED
Publix
	2	Breads	$2.58	BOGO $2.58	(2)-$.75/1	XXX	$1.08	$4.08
	4	Kraft Cheese	$3.50	2/$4	(2)-$1/2	(4)$.75/1	$3.00	$11.32
CVS
	1	Tone Body Wash	$4.98	$3.88	-$1/1	XXX	$2.88	$2.10
	1	Coffee Mate Crmr	$3.79	XXX	-$.75/1	-$3.00ecb	$.04	$3.75
TOTAL			$28.25	$18.25	-$5.25	-$6.00	$7.00	$21.25 (75%)

I will then also have a running tab you will find on the side bar of this site, again here is another sample of what to keep an eye out for: (again not real numbers)

Monthly Budget ($300)	Yearly Budget ($3600)
$258	$456

I hope that each of you will help keep me accountable as I will need to stick very closely to my grocery budget in order to accomplish my Savings & Debt goals for 2011.

There are a couple reasons for being this transparent when it comes to my budget with all of you. First of all – for my own accountability. If I know I have to come and tell ‘the world’ about how I am doing on my goals, I’m more likely to stick with those goals. I suppose this is my way of binding these sacrifices & goals, and making these more than just words or nice thoughts, but making them real.

Secondly – I hope that by sharing and being open, you can all learn how I go about accomplishing these goals for 2011, that this becomes an encouragement to each of you, and hopefully you too can see that what seems impossible really is possible, especially if we trust in God to help us be over-comers.

What are your financial goals for 2011??

Psalms 118:27

“The Lord is God, shining upon us. Take the sacrifice and bind it with cords on the altar”