Budget Makeover Step 2: My Top Five Expenses and Steps 3, 4, 5 & 6 to Reduce Spending on the Top Five

So you have intrepidly gathered and tallied your grocery and toiletry receipts for a 30 day period. Good for you! That was a big accomplishment! Now you want to evaluate you spending. First, how much is your total spend You will want to know how much your total spending per month/30 days is so that What do you spend the most money on each week? I suggest that you choose the top five items in your monthly spending and seek to reduce the cost of those items each week.

How do you reduce the cost of a grocery line item? There are several ways. First, consider whether the item is really necessary. Perhaps your biggest expense is a (regular) impulse purchase. For example, I love coffee. I REALLY love coffee. I love it black, in coffee drinks *think frappuccino *, with expensive creamers. Yum. Now, I believe that coffee is necessary in our grocery budget. But, frankly, bottled coffee drinks at $1.50 or more per bottle are not. I can get the same effect by using milk and sucralose or sugar. For me, this is not really a necessary purchase if I am trying to reduce my grocery spending to meet financial goals that are important to my family. You get the idea. Honestly and prayerfully evaluate the top five in your monthly spending. Since you are looking at the top money users in your budget, you'll get the most bang for your buck reducing spending on these items.

So, now let's say you have looked at each of the top five in your budget over the past 30 days and determined that that each one is a necessary or sufficiently valuable element of your grocery spending. By sufficiently valuable, I mean those items that, yes, you could live without, but, no, you don't want to do so. For our family, I'll go back to the coffee example. My husband and I both love coffee and do not wish to give it up. It stays on the list. Now, the goal is to spend the least amount of money on that item. The next steps in our grocery budget make over seek to do that for each of the 5 items.

Step 3:  See if you can use and purchase less of the item.

Step 4: Determine less expensive alternatives to the item in question in order to reduce your cost.

Step 5: Shop sales for the item to reduce your overall spending on it. A price book page for those top five items is helpful to determine what a good "sales" price is.

Step 6: Add coupons on the item to the sales price and to get your best deal on that specific item.

I'll go into great detail on each of those steps separately in my next blog post(s).

To Be Continued...

Save-a-Lot April 15th to April 28th, 2012

There are several noteworthy deals at Save-a-Lot this period.
      Center Cut Pork Steaks or Country Style Ribs will be $1.49 per pound.
      Honey Bunches of Oats Raisin Medley 17 ounce cereal $1.77
      Kool Aid Jammers $1.77 60 oz 10 Pk.
      Beef Shoulder Roast $2.99 per pound
      Minute Maid OJ 59 ounces $2.39
      Welches Juice Cocktails Grape or Orange Pineapple Apple 64 ounces $1.99

Grocery Budget Make-Over

Does your grocery budget need a make-over? That's the reality show we really need...not "What Not To Wear," but "What Not To Buy." Like fashion, everyone has a different grocery budget "look." In other words, my budget won't be the same as yours...and that's fine. However, most of us could improve our grocery spending. Some of us simply have to do so in these difficult economic times. I'd like to take a look at how you can easily decrease your grocery spending, step by step.

Step 1: How Much Do I Spend?

I know this seems elementary, but I bet there are a lot of people out there who know they spend too much on groceries and toiletries and are struggling to make ends meet, but DON'T know how much they actually spend on groceries and toiletries. Now, IF you save every receipt, simply look back at the last month's receipts to determine your total spending. There are some great computer programs to keep up with spending, but you can simply use pencil and paper. If you don't save every receipt, but use checks or a debit card exclusively for grocery and toiletry items, review you bank statement online and tally up the info there. If historical data is not available, commit to take the next 30 days to save all your receipts and tally up the info. Get a basket, or shoebox or a zippered make-up bag you can keep in your purse to collect all those Publix, Save-a-Lot and Walmart receipts. After the 30 days are up, add up your receipts. You can use an Excel spreadsheet (a standard one is on my list of things to do), or simply that aforementioned pad of paper and a pencil. Having an accurate dollar amount of what you actually spend in a month on groceries and toiletries is VERY POWERFUL (School House Rock was right about that.) Now it's time for STEP 2...

To Be Continued

It's been so long...

For anyone who reads my blog regularly, it has been a while since my last post. How time flies! Our family has been busy with school, tax returns (well, my husband, anyway), planting a garden (that would be me) and coupon clippin'. In the grocery department, I have anxiously awaited $1.49 chicken breast at my local Save-a-Lot store, since my freezer was echoing when I lifted the lid. Over the next two weeks I will work to add as much poultry as possible to my deep freeze. Save-a-Lot is really good about keeping a great stock of inventory on their sale  chicken breast. (Thank you Save-a-Lot!)