Family Budget

I did something this year that I haven’t done in quite a while, I went Christmas shopping on Black Friday. For some people this is a tradition that goes hand-in-hand with Thanksgiving but I’m not usually one of those people. In fact, I have only ever gone holiday shopping on Black Friday one other time in my life. So what possessed me to do it this year?? The DISCOUNTS of course!

It all started with one specific item I wanted to find a good deal on. It was a learning toy for my oldest son and I found a few stores that had it on sale at a good price. Then I noticed that a few stores were also selling some of the accessories for it at pretty cheap prices. So, I decided to start skimming the black friday ads online to see which stores had the best sales or else sales on the largest number of items that I wanted. Before I knew it, I had tagged five or six different stores with “good deals” on some items that were kind of on my radar to give as gifts. After all, I was going to be out anyway shopping for that “one” item so why not go ahead and take advantage of the other sales too… right?

Continue reading » Holiday Shopping: Did You Get Tricked On Black Friday Too?

Quite a while ago I wrote a post about a little trick that we use to stretch out our grocery budget. Since then, I have found a slightly different way of doing things that makes it much easier on us and much better for our budget. The previous method assumed a bi-weekly pay period but a monthly household budget. With that assumption in place, then two months out of the year (about six months apart) there are 3 paychecks within one month. We were taking that third pay check and using most of it to fund a “grocery account” that we would pull half of our food money from each month for the next six months until the next 3-paycheck month.

This has worked really well for us for the past several years but there was always a problem. Along with bi-weekly pay periods, we were allowing our grocery budget to follow the same bi-weekly schedule. Every time we would hit a month with 3 paychecks, we were forced to also make a sudden shift to our grocery budget where we had to wait 3 weeks in between grocery money being added for 2 grocery cycles and then we could go back to normal after that. Needless to say, this was almost impossible.

Finally I got smart. Continue reading » How To Manage Money For Your Grocery Budget

Making a healthy grocery shopping list has been the furthest thing from my mind ever since I went to college. For five years I barely had time to commute between school and work and back to school, let alone time to actually plan any healthy meals. Now I’ve been out of school for several years, but I find that I still struggle to break some of those very unhealthy habits I learned back then. One of my problems is that, aside from the obvious things, I don’t always know which foods are healthier than others.

This past week I was doing some reading on the American Heart Association website and I found something I think is really cool. They have a simple grocery shopping list maker on their website that lists foods that are certified to be heart-healthy. If you’re interested in being healthy AND frugal, this is a great grocery list tool.

As I mentioned, it is simple so there aren’t a lot of bells and whistles but you can browse foods by category or by manufacturer. There is also a category called “My Items” where you can add anything that doesn’t already appear on their lists. Personally, I want to eat healthy but often I’m a little too lazy to do the research for finding foods that are good for me. With this tool, they have already done the hard part for you so all you have to do is browse their list and add the number of items you want.

When you’re done making your grocery shopping list you can save it, print it or access it on your mobile device (for the tech-savvy grocery shoppers). The one thing I didn’t like about it was that, once you add something to your list it doesn’t seem like you can edit the quantity. Instead, you have to delete the item and add it again with the correct quantity. While this particular list may not appeal to all areas of health-related diets, it is certainly a step in the right direction. If you’re looking for an easy way to fill your grocery shopping list with healthier food items, give this tool a try!

Well after that last poll asking people about their grocery shopping list habits, I started thinking. What goes hand-in-hand with making a grocery list (well, IMO anyway)? Clipping coupons, of course! So I went back to ask 500 people and I was actually surprised by the results. Of the people that responded, almost 65% of people said that they do NOT use coupons on a regular basis when they grocery shop.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that these polls are nowhere near scientific and the responses include some countries around the world where coupons are not even available. So I focused on the responses just from the US and the numbers are basically the same. Despite the fact that we’re in the middle of a recession worse than this country has seen in years, people are either unwilling or uneducated about how to save money on their groceries.
Continue reading » Are Grocery Coupons a Waste of Time?

I’ve often wondered how many people believe that they can benefit from making a grocery shopping list before they go to the store. Personally, I find lists to be very useful in general and especially when I am grocery shopping. There will almost always be things that you leave off your list and that’s ok. The two biggest advantages to taking a grocery shopping list to the store are that it saves you time and helps you focus.

I guess those really might be the same advantage. If you go to the store without a shopping list, at some point or another you will find yourself moving slowly down an aisle trying to remember what it was that you needed. This wastes time but it can also end up costing you money because as you wander along you are bound to see something on sale that you don’t REALLY need but it’s such a good deal, you’ll go ahead and buy some anyway. Keep in mind that I am talking about a major grocery shopping trip here, not the one-off 10:00PM milk run (make that cookies and milk if you’re anything like me).

Whether you’re a believer in grocery shopping lists or not, I thought you might enjoy the following poll and it’s results Continue reading » Spend less by using a grocery shopping list

Here is a short video about how to create a grocery shopping list. This is a simple but good idea and one that we find very useful in our household. I especially like the fact that her list is right on the fridge, that makes it very handy and quick to add things. Leave a comment here and tell me how you create your grocery shopping list.

As promised, this will be the last of my posts on managing family food money. On top of that, I’ll keep it short and sweet. In my second post I mentioned a “trick” to making our grocery budget appear like it was cut in half. So, here it is.

I receive paychecks bi-weekly, so I get 26 paychecks a year. As most people who are paid this way know, that means there are two months a year, 6 months apart from each other, when you receive three paychecks. If you do your budget by month, as we do, then those “extra” paychecks every 6 months provide an interesting opportunity.

Continue reading » Managing Family Food Money - Part 3

I’ve always wanted to build a tool to help people create a grocery list. Someday I may still do that, but for now I found a really cool tool online that lists tons of grocery prices at local stores in your area. All you have to do is put in your zip code and it automatically pulls up the grocery stores that they have in their database from your area.

That’s not even the best part though! This company has actually compiled and continues to track grocery prices for the past 19 years!! As you look through the list of groceries, they have stars next to each item indicating how good of a sale price each one is.

For grocery list items that are a great deal (based on historical data), they will have five stars next to them. If something is not such a good deal then it will only have one star and so on. So you can see grocery prices from various different stores at once, all categorized together (i.e. household cleaning supplies, meats, dairy, etc.) and it even lets you select how many of each item to add to your grocery list.

Continue reading » Create and Print Your Grocery List Online For FREE