October Budget Challenge – Week One

October started for me yesterday with summer temps (at least midwest style summer temps), two shopping trips, a trip to the bank, a trip to the library, and having friends over to swim and grill at our pool.  It was a very busy day.

As I had mentioned I would do in last weeks post (which you can check out here), I made a menu plan for the whole month of October.  It just about killed me.  I am not great at menu planning anyway, but having to do it for a whole month is really hard for me.  Then I remembered that I don’t have to have a new thing every day, and it got a little easier.  I looked over what I had and repeated the recipes that we tend to have too many leftovers of.  I will just freeze half of that meal right away and we can have it again a couple of weeks later.

After I made the menu, I made a list of everything we would need to cook those meals, except very perishable things like salad.  I looked over my list and made a separate list of things that I thought might be cheaper at Costco.  Since I wasn’t sure if they would really be cheaper, I took the kids there Friday morning to price things out.  Once I got there I realized that I forgot my pencil.  You know, the one that I had in my hand until right before we walked out the door.  So I went around Costco taking pictures of price tags with my phone.  I felt pretty silly, but fortunately it was not super busy.  I came home, did some math, and compared the unit prices to how much I know things cost at Target (where I do all my grocery shopping).  My friend, Kristina, suggested that I post some of my results.  I will do that later this week.

So I made my trip to Target (with kids), and then a trip to Costco (without kids – and without my list – oops).  I used my Target Redcard to pay for the groceries at Target to save 5% and used cash at Costco.  Out of the cash I took out yesterday, I set aside $40 for our dates this month.  If we do free dates, that would be great, but I thought budgeting $10 a week would be a doable goal.  I also had cash left from my Costco trip, because I forgot my list and ended up buying less stuff.  It is stuff that I think we can live without, so I tucked that cash away in a safe place.  I did NOT leave it in my wallet, because that is a dangerous place for cash.  With cash in my wallet, I am much more likely to say, “Oh, let’s just go through this drive through on the way home, because it is past lunch time and I don’t feel like making lunch.”  With no cash, no drive through.  That should save us some money too.

If you count all the money I spent yesterday and the cash I got, I have spent half of the money that I budgeted for our weekly expenses this month.  Yikes!  But I did buy most of the food we need for the month, and the rest of the money will go for milk, fruit, fresh veggies, etc that we will need each week.

Today I am going to spend some time cooking for the week.  Ben will go somewhere with the kids so I can cook uninterrupted, and I will hopefully get some meals going for our freezer.  That also reduces the chance of me calling for pizza on nights I am too wiped out to cook.

If you are doing the monthly challenge, what things have you put into place to help you reach your goals this week?  Anyone else cooking some freezer meals?  Anyone else not really have room in their tiny freezer after their trip to Costco yesterday?  I guess I should have taken that into consideration when I planned these freezer meals.

October Challenge Activity

Tomorrow starts the October Challenge! Today I am taking the kids to Costco to price out the things on my Costco list that I think are cheaper than Target to see if they really are. Oh and to pick up a coupon book, since I didn’t get one in the mail. Tomorrow the shopping will begin!