First adventure into meal planning, and couponing

I mentioned in one of my previous posts that we're working on spending less & saving more. For us, this means some serious budgeting, especially for groceries. I'm not going to say how much we were spending, but let's just say it was ridiculous since there are only two of us. So we've decided we're going to get better, I started reading books about budgeting and cutting grocery bills in half. Originally we decided to start by just trying to reduce our grocery spending by $100 this month. However, after today I think we can do better. I used today to buy some of the essentials we needed like carrots, celery, hummus, cereal, etc. Stuff that we eat a LOT of that doesn't keep. However, I also used today to work on building up a stockpile of things we use a lot; especially because those items were on sale- which is why I bought them today!

I do want to make it clear, I'm not a super awesome coupon person. I am not at that point where I can get a $100 worth of stuff and only pay $4. Honestly, I don't think I'll EVER get to that point. However, I did save almost $30 today and I met the goal of staying under $100. That got me thinking, "Hey, that wasn't hard...." so I'm thinking we'll be able to aim for $100 a week instead and that will cut our grocery bill down even more (I told you, our bill was ridiculous).

 So here are the things I've learned so far:
1) Plan your meals! It seems like a complete pain, but it is completely worth it. I've only done this for a few days but I can't say it has! I'm less frazzled when I get home because I have a plan for dinner, I don't have to stand at the fridge or pantry wondering what the heck I'm going to make.

2) Plan your meals around the sales flyers:
This is less of a big deal for me this time- because I only needed a few things for this week's dinners. However, I did use this to plan out what cereals I bought and what items I bought to work on stocking up our "use a lot" section.

3) Don't clip coupons for things you don't buy, pay attention to the coupons and they stack on already there sales!
This is one I'm still working on. I'm pretty good about not clipping coupons for stuff we don't normally buy. I misread a couple coupons today- but it worked out ok. I didn't realize I could stack coupons on top of the store sales, but you can! That saved me a few bucks today too!

Right now I'm at the "start small" stage. I realize it will take me a while to figure out how to save even more money. But I"ll get there.

Ice Cream!!!!!

One of the things Superman and I love is ice cream, unfortunately for our attempts to eat healthy it is also hard to stop at one serving if we are scooping it at that moment. HOWEVER, we have a solution! It isn't those oh-so-yummy single serve cups that can be bought for between $1-$4 at the grocery store. Since we are trying to reduce our grocery spending we were trying to figure out the best way to continue to have ice cream without having to worry about remembering the serving size when our brains are screaming "ICE CREAM" at us.  So my solution.....

Yup, it's really that simple. We got more of the GLAD 1/2 cup tuperware and got ready to make our own single serving of ice cream cups! It really wasn't that time consuming, it took maybe half an hour. Though, I don't suggest doing this if you are having a major craving for ice cream, you'll find that a bite for each container gets eaten. So we started with basically 2 sets of  8 of the GLAD 1/2 cup containers and a 1.5 qt carton of ice cream. On a side note, this ice cream, Turkey Hill's limited edition Chunky Peanut Butter, is delicious! We ended up with about 9 individual containers of ice cream. If you go with the lowest of the single serve ice cream containers that $9 worth of ice cream. However, since we scooped it out ourselves and our 1.5 qt of ice cream was $2.99 that is 33 cents per single serve cup. I'd that that is a considerable amount of savings.Granted, you have to buy the containers, and we picked these up for $3.49 but since they can be reused over and over and over again I would say it is completely worth it. This is also one of the few times I'd actually say go with the name brand containers. The store brand containers of similar size tend to crack when you take the lid off trying to get to your ice cream, I've yet to have a GLAD lid crack on me. 

I'm loving this idea. Next time we're going to buy a big container of plain vanilla ice cream and then add our own "fillers"- like pineapple, or strawberries and peanut butter, etc. We're not sure if that will make a huge price difference or not- but it sounds fun! But anyway, like I said, super easy and cheap!

Our ice cream cups all lined up, waiting to be devoured (some already were). 

Saving Money pt 1: First round of utility usage cutback- hopefully.

So Superman and I have come to a decision- and that decision is that we are going to do our best to have the money on hand before we do any home repairs/additions/finishing. To do that we are going to have to work on cutting down some utility bills and work harder on paying down the remaining Credit Cards and various loans. Why are we doing this? Easy, because it's smarter, and we are all about being smarter.

Our first step in the process has been focusing on bringing down the utility bills. First, we had the money to buy a new toilet to replace the one that wouldn't stop running every 10-20 minutes- so we did. Now we live in a community where the water plant is not county owned, it's privately owned and that means that water is more expensive. We're on a community-well that is privately owned. It took me a little while to understand that- and that it means water is just more expensive. Our water bill since we moved in has been around $90 a month. I'm not happy about it- but I'm sharing the amount because, it's a water bill, I don't particularly care if you know how much our water bill is. However, we still feel like $90 a month is RIDICULOUS and we attributed a lot of that cost to the ever-running and not-at-all water efficient toilet. SO we bought a Glacier Bay Dual Flush, High efficiency toilet. I'm ridiculously excited about this new toilet- I never thought I would be so excited about toilet. ANYWAY, we installed it ourselves, which really was not as hard as one might think- though a bit on the yucky side- mostly because of the amount of rust the ever-running toilet had.

So we installed the new toilet and no more running water! It also doesn't have any leaks like the old one did and it flushes quieter and if I had to guess- I would even venture to say it regularly uses about 1/4 - 1/2 the water the old toilet used. It also looks SO MUCH BETTER and since it is high efficiency we should be able to get a tax write-off for it. Woohoo! We're looking forward to seeing how much of a difference it makes! 

Our new toilet! 

The other utility we're trying to reduce our monthly bill on is electricity. We were gone for a week in March and it knocked $50 off our monthly bill. We think a lot of that is the lack of cooking, TV watching and keeping the thermostat at 50 degrees Fahrenheit. However, we are determined to see how much we can knock off during the spring/summer/fall. Luckily our house is in the shade so hopefully that will help keep the house cool once we get the A/C going. But to help us keep the A/C off longer we finally bought a replacement fan for the one in our bedroom that died. We installed it last weekend, but we haven't used it yet because one of the electrical cords didn't tuck properly so it is hitting the motor and by the time we get home in the evening the light is fading too rapidly to fix it. So we will fix that this weekend hopefully! Despite that issue we've managed to only turn on the A/C once or twice in the past 2 weeks- hopefully we can keep that trend up!  We'll see how much of a difference it has made on the next billing cycle :-) 

This is the old, not working fan. 

New, soon to be fully functional fan!

So what's next?

On the utility front we're going to work on replacing our dishes with ones that fit in our dishwasher better. They will also be smaller so our portion sizes will automatically shrink so that will help with the grocery bill in theory as well (and help us loose weight!)

We're also working on reducing our grocery bill (cuz it's ridiculous- mostly my fault cuz I'm the one who does the shopping). I'm slowly starting the process of couponing- but I'm focusing on couponing the right way! We're starting off slow hoping to knock $50-$100 off our monthly grocery bill.  As we find ways to save I try to remember to share them here. 

So what's our goal for doing this again? 

1) Saving money for our projects- we're saving up for a deck and fence next year.

2) Pay off debt so we can get closer to being debt free!