Multi-Hued Zinnias from Our Garden
One of the benefits to having a written budget is that at the end of the week when think you didn’t spend a lot of money, you can quantify that inkling. This week it seemed like we would have unspent money, and indeed we did. This week we:
- Ate meals at home mainly using ingredients that we had on hand.
- Had one nice meal out using a birthday coupon. Glad we took advantage of that because we are still homebound with a sick child this weekend.
- Husband took lunches to work and got creative when we ran out of prepared frozen meals – he took a hot dog and bun from the freezer one day, and loved it!
- I received $ 3.00 from CVS Drugstore to use on anything and I used it to buy dishwasher detergent when I ran out.
- I won an anniversary contest at our local non-chain sub shop and now have a $ 50.00 gift card! Dinner’s on me this week.
- Ran a report on grocery spending this month… we are averaging $ 80.00 per week, which is low for us. I am planning meals based on what is on sale and stocking up when I see lowest prices based on the info I put into ValueTracker. When I say “stock up” I don’t mean Campbell’s soup underneath the bed and pasta in the linen closet, I just mean buying a product to replace the current one I have. Canola oil was one such purchase this week.
- Asked our neighbor if they would mind passing their Sunday coupons on to me. They really weren’t aware there were even coupons in the Sunday paper. I regularly share our Wall Street Journal weekend sections with them so there was a precedent to my asking.
- Free entertainment this week consisted of Daddy/Daughter on the couch watching old Leave it to Beaver episodes (“It’s so weird they let their kids roam around town like that, Dad”), library books, and a good deal of football on TV.
Some of the surplus budget money this week will be set aside for haircuts next week (school pictures are right around the corner). We also put some money towards winter weather gear for child, and savings.
The Healthful Saver 
Good job on these little savings this week, it all adds up!
I’m happy to live in a place where our kids can still wander the neighbourhood like the leave it to Beaver days..
That is terrific. I had to laugh at an episode I overheard where the boys were over an hour late coming home from school and June wasn’t really too concerned. She just hoped they weren’t getting messy!
I have no idea what ‘Leave It To Beaver’ is supposed to be. We obviously didn’t get that in the U.K.
Interesting! A wholesome show about a traditional family in the early 1960s in small-town America. Mom in pearls, boys playing Cowboys and Indians. The show was really well written and the themes still hold up 50 years later. “Beaver” is the little kid’s nickname.
Thanks for sharing these practical tips!
Congratulations on the gift card 🙂 And well done on the grocery spending – I’m averaging $57 a week just for myself (although I do live in Australia…)
And I found the email notifying me about the gift card win in my SPAM folder, of all places. I guess GMAIL didn’t like the words “win – contest – send us your address” !
I used to keep a grocery price book spreadsheet as well, so I will try out the app. What a nice perk that you won the gift card!
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