In my last blog I shared my very large grocery bill but I didn’t tell you what my strategies were to help whittle that down to less money. That’s because I didn’t know. I am convinced that my best ideas come when it is most inconvenient to write them down. That way, I have to mull on them long enough to ensure that eventually I’ll think of it again. I did share how to analyze your grocery bill to help see where you spend the most money on a daily basis. I was (and still am) determined to whittle category by category and save us a whopping $75 per month. Or at least that’s the plan. It’s less than $25 a week–I can do that–right? (She asks meekly looking for any vague semblance of support.)
Sticking with this concept, I decided it is my children who spend the most money out of our grocery budget. They eat, they keep growing and then they want to eat some more. It’s really a never ending vicious cycle of eating and growing. This. . .my children’s eating. . .is the first area I decided needs tackling. I clearly cannot get rid of them (although they eat a lot they are cute), and I clearly cannot stop feeding them. . .so I needed to come up with a way to ’curb’ the kiddy food spending.
Now understand, that I do actually make lots of snacks from scratch, and cook breakfast several days out of the week. But I still cannot cook without another adult home (trust me–it’s a twin thing) and frankly, I still don’t get enough sleep all the time that I’m able to get up in the morning and cook breakfast, and make the day’s snack from scratch and get dinner done in the crock pot or ready to go in the oven before my darling husband leaves for work. I am not super mom. So I needed a non-super mom strategy.
And then it hit me. . .what if the kids had to spend their own money on their own food?
It is with that interesting thought that I leave you to ponder your own children and their grocery budget consumption. You will have to wait until later today when I post the second half of my blog to see how I worked it out, what they have to pay for, and whether or not it is saving money!
Catch Up on What I’m Doing:
Extreme Makeover: Grocery Bill Edition
Extreme Grocery Bill Makeover: Analysis 101