Budgeting.
My enemy. Lol.
Not really my enemy,
but I sometimes get frustrated because I wish I could just spend whatever I
want. But with my maternity ending and
that beautiful government paycheque disappearing – I’m starting to get worried about
money. It seems like that is always one
of the biggest worries people have nowadays.
I think it’s because so many people live beyond their means (us
included). We don’t have to go out to
dinner, I don’t have to go to Stars and Strollers, we don’t have to go for
drinks with friends. There are lots of
ways we can start to cut back (and let me tell, that will be starting MAJORLY
next month lol). I have one month and 20
days left of Mat leave. So if I don’t go
back to work, we will be out $800 per month (which in all reality boggles my
mind because I don’t feel like I made that much money in a month working… but
that’s just me lol).
My new project right
now is Meal planning and food budgeting.
I follow a couple of “budget” blogs and they have such awesome ideas for
couponing and great stuff like that – WHICH WE DON’T HAVE HERE IN CANADA. It’s really frustrating. However, many of the grocery stores are
starting to price match – and it’s saving me a BOATLOAD of money. For 3 weeks in March our food budget went
from $125/week to spending only $220 for the 3 weeks. I hope that I can keep that up for April, my
goal is to get our food budget to $75-$100 per week. We buy most of our meat in bulk from Costco
so that lasts us quite some time and now that I’m a price matcher, I watch for
good deals at the different stores.
Granted, I ruined our
great streak by spending $40 at Michael’s on Tuesday, and $20 at Homesense and
$40 at Walmart on frivolous things that we didn’t REALLY need. But I’m trying to do better. I find that I shop and spend more when I’m
sad or frustrated. (and these long
nights with Nora are leaving me quite frustrated). But I’m trying to use up the “stuff” I have
at home now, and hopefully that will curb my spending for a little while.
So here is our meal
plan for this past week so you have an idea, I only write down dinners because
we plan to have enough leftovers for Paul to take for lunch and I usually eat
whatever is in the fridge when I remember to eat at the right time (it’s 11am
and I just ate my cereal lol). And
breakfasts are either cereal or scrambled egg wraps.
Monday – Tilapia &
Rice
Tuesday – Crockpot Chicken
& Rice (a Pinterest recipe)
Wednesday – Spaghetti &
Chicken meatballs & Salad
Thursday – BBQ Pork
Chops, Potatoes and veggies
Friday – Tilapia &
Quinoa
Saturday – Homemade Pizza
Sunday – Slow cooker
Honey Sesame Chicken (Pinterest).
We buy yogurt at
Costco when it’s on sale as well, and eggs too (although last week you could
get 3 dozen for $5 at Loblaw’s and that was cheaper than Costco!).
So that’s part one of my budget revamp! Here’s hoping for a good result.
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