March 24th-Progress for the month!

It's time for an update on the progress thus far.

I am as of RIGHT NOW $2.00 OVER my grocery budget for the month. :( I'm pretty bummed about it BUT I did have a pretty extreme goal. I wanted to only spend $100 dollars at the grocery store for the month of March and i'm a little over. I could kick myself and be all mad OR I can just relish in the fact that I did so good! :)

I'm 2 dollars over my budget, yes-it's true, BUT I still have 13 meals that I can make with all of the food that I have bought. So that's impressive, right?! I realized that my mistakes in the past when it came to the dreaded grocery store were all about lack of planning, and I am working on that for SURE! SO far its really paid off.

I had told you that I wanted a small stock pile of items like detergent, TP, toothpaste, shampoo...and I now have it :) I'm so proud of it! It's nice to not have to think about buying those things when I go to the store. That's how I can manage to spend $102 dollars at Kroger. It's because I am ONLY buying food.

I found myself getting frustrated this month b/c I feel like the coupons for grocery items are never that good. OR they are good coupons but the off brand is still cheaper. I refuse to buy an item JUST b/c I have a coupon. I don't want to get caught up buying items that I DON'T need or that I wouldn't normally buy. It's not a bargain if you didn't need it...

I have a good amount of cash in my envelopes. Oh yea, thats a new thing. I started an envelope system. My envelopes are as follows:

TUNICA(that ones for our little vacation next month)
GROCERIES
CHRISTMAS (yep, you guessed it. I have a xmas fund already)
CAR STUFF (oil changes, tires, etc)


A lot of folks that do "Enveloping" have way more envelopes but this helps me get started. I have been selling a lot of items on EBAY and when those items sell I am depositing transferring the money to my account and then going to withdraw it. It's helped me not use that money for just random stuff. It's kept me in check and allowed me to save.

Overall I feel good about where we are headed. I'm not loaded yet. I haven't figured out how to never spend a dime at the store (doubt i ever will), but I have figured out some new ways to keep me in "check".

What about you? What have you done?