Tomorrow is the last day of the month, and it is time to do an end-of-month spending check. In January, I have been focusing on groceries and food, keeping track of our spending in those areas and saving as much as I can. Writing down what I spend on each trip to the grocery store has helped.
While I still don’t have a lot of coupon use, I’m paying more attention to the sales and not buying things that we don’t need, purchasing more fruit and less snacks for example. This has made a difference.
I’ve also been more conscious of eliminating the food waste, by organizing the pantry and using up items that were just languishing there, baking more for breakfast and snacks, and keeping leftovers front and center in the refrigerator. I’m also back to creating freezer meals from low-cost ingredients. It is much more cooking than I had been doing before, but the lower food bill reflects this.
For eating out, we’ve cut way down on the frequency of going out, and when we do we make sure to spend $40 or less each time for our family of 5-6 people (my father usually joins us) by using coupons, skipping drinks, going for lunch instead of dinner and splitting meals.
Another frugal project for our household is to cut down on laundry expenses. I have been hanging most of the laundry, even now in the winter, and being diligent about catching wet laundry before it has a chance to mildew in the washer, forcing me to redo the load. I’m also using up laundry detergent that is on the shelf, even it if isn’t my favorite.
We had a lot of unexpected expenses last month, that reduced our emergency fund, and it is good to see that we are now heading toward rebuilding it, a little at a time.