Food For Thought

A year and a half ago, Brian and I were doing great with couponing and playing the drug store game.  With the increase of shows like Extreme Couponing and our lack of time, we don't coupon as much as we used to.  We still do, but not as much.  We do several things to cut money out of our budget including:

• Price matching/couponing
• Brian cuts his own hair as well as Macie and Gavin's
• Make our own wipes
• Make our own laundry detergent
• Only grocery shop once every two weeks and set a strict budget of $125 (that feeds all 5 of us and we take our lunches daily)

This year, I'm wanting to find more creative ways to cut money out of our budget and stretch our grocery budget.  I follow a blog called Money Saving Mom and have for a while.  She always posts ideas I want to try and I'm hoping to do that this year.  She has started a new weekly series that of ideas that will save you $100 this year.  If I do all of them, I could save over $5,000!

• Stop buying bread!  Make all of our bread from scratch (we already make our own biscuits).  Bread is one food that tends to go bad in our house and one of the only foods we end up throwing away.  I want to change that.  We are also working on healthy eating, so making our bread from scratch will be better for us.  Also, she has lots of versions that can go in the freezer, so I'm going to start there.
• Freezer cooking...I already do a lot of that, but I'm hoping to take it up a notch this year.  I plan to make more bulk and have lots of yummy food ready for us to eat.  Since Lilah, I haven't done this as much as I've wanted.
• Follow her blog and try as many of the ways to save $100 as I can!
• Keep couponing...and get better at it...and look into drug store deals again.