Thoughtful budgets and goals

I used to go the grocery store and spend around a 100.00 per trip to feed my family of three humans and two fur children (a dog and cat to the rest of you). Oddly enough I still ran out of things and we still ate at least 50% of our meals at a restaurant.

A personal goal this year is to gain control of my money, not stop spending it but just have control. I'm 45 this year and have a desire to retire from my job at 52. To this I must be debt free (except for my house) by the time I retire. This means I need to take action today to retire my debt before I can retire myself !!

So, I've put away all credit cards (what a shock that was ! ), I now use my debt card once a week to pull a pre-determined amount of money from the back and I stay away from my favorite on-line shopping sites. I am making a BIG effort to pay in cash for everyday expenses, I think this will give me a better feel for my spending. I'm also using a website called Mint to help me budget my expenses. This site gathers all of my transactions and displays them in one place, allowing me to categorize my expenses and help me to see what I'm doing with my income. The site is free with some advertising but it's not intrusive at all.

I'm on week one of a new plan to reduce my shopping expenses to 50.00 per week. I went shopping on Saturday and spent a total (Market Basket, CVS and Walgreen's) of 55.00 but purchased close to 100.00 worth of items. It took me some time, spent while watching TV, to plan out my shopping but by shopping the sales and using my coupons I was able to cut my bill by half !! I use these two forms to help me organize Weekly Shopping and Qrtly Savings from the Mommy Snacks.Net blog

I have a whole binder full of coupons which I gather from the newspaper, Internet and friends. Using the coupons and sales flyers I am able to plan ahead and using my account at Springboard I have all of my meals planned well ahead.

I love CVS the best, as they have the best sales, between manufacturers coupons and CVS loyalty program I can often get things for free or close to it. I highly recommend the CVS in Stratham as being for cooperative and pleasant to deal with.