Ahhh! Getting tight 😉 Last Saturday I reported we were at about $25 left in our budget IF we were going to be successful at keeping an average weekly spend of $35 a week (4 wks in January = $140 total) for grocery AND household expenses.  I know thats a low amount for a family of 4 – add in 2 cats not to mention 2 fish (the kids are 4 & 6 yrs old). I felt I was doing pretty good this week, until. today. Before I talk about today lets start with Monday.

Monday January 17th…

I purchased 4 half off Sunday papers, for the coupons of course! I’m SO glad we have a couple places at least that will sell Sunday papers half off on Mondays.  $3 total

Giant Eagle: spent about $8.50 on some cold cut meat/cheese from the deli and a bag of chips. I know that sounds high, but we don’t do this very often.

Wednesday January 19th…

Beuhlers: spent $7.40 on the above contents pictured. That includes  7.19 pounds of bananas (.29 cents a #)! I will freeze many of these for my super yummy-healthy smoothie I luv!

Today*gulp*…

(January 22- yes I know I have one more week to go!)

My grocery shopping from Giant Eagle & Walmart is pictured below minus the 2 dozen eggs ($1 each), 1 box of the Fish Sticks, the orange juice, and you can’t see it very well but a 2nd package of 6 roll toilet paper hiding.

Giant Eagle: spent aprx. $36.75 (but saved over $25 with sales & coupons) and Walmart: spent about $10.70. The 14# bag of cat food was about $11 but will last for months. Have to feed the kittys 🙂 . Fish are way more cheaper to feed let me say.

The splurges: The B1G1 44 ct. Van de Kamp’s fish sticks (husband wanted), 2 boxes of Pringle Stix with coupons for the kids,  International Delight Coffee Creamer  (for me) $1.50 on sale.

Stockpile: 3 jars of Smart Balance creamy peanut butter $1.49 each after sale & doubled coupons; 2 boxes of Snuggle dryer sheets 50 cents each after doubled coupons; an extra pack of soft taco shells.

We’ve been blowing through the bread and I don’t know when I’ll make it back to the Hostess Outlet store so I grabbed a loaf and a pack of hot dog buns at Walmart.

The damage.

Really? Do I even want to add this up?

Balance left in the month:  $25.00

Aprx. Spent this week:   $3.00 + $8.50 + $7.40 + $36.75  + $10.70 =  $66.35 – $25.00 = means…

I’m $41.35 over budget.

But I’m just fine with that. I’m sure I can do better. And trying to keep toilet paper and cat food among other household needs in that $35/ avg weekly budget is hard core. Right now anyways. The more I can stockpile (a few extras  by buying when I can get the lowest price) the better off we will be.

Okay, so I’ve been asked about what we are eating. Well, I plan on sharing some of that. I’ve been taking pictures of some of that too. Stay tuned and I will hopefully have some pictures and super simple “recipes” for you this week 😉  You might want to subscribe here for my email newsletter so you don’t miss those posts.

Click here to see the $35 budget- week 1 update.
Click here to see the $35 budget- week 2 update.