Budgeting

My husband and I have been following a pretty strict and detailed budget for about 5 year now. This has allowed us to be able to pay off almost all of our debt.

When I started Grocery Smarts our monthly "Grocery" budget was $600 a month for our family of 5 with one still in diapers and one that uses pull ups at night. Now our "Grocery" budget consisted of anything and everything we needed for the house....Soap, towels, food, drinks, socks, toilet paper...pretty much everything but our basic bills and gas.

I have been lazy this past month and have been stacking up my receipts in a pile on my desk...in an attempt to get organized I sat down and put them all into my spreadsheet and noticed that prior to July we did spend every bit of that $600 on groceries and always were struggling three days before payday to get milk, bread, and the essentials.

Here is what I've spent on groceries the past few months:

August $487.60
September $356.91
October $305.48

WOW I hadn't realized we had cut back to almost half what we normally spend!!! Because of this savings in September when I had to put two new tires on our Car I was able to go down with Cash to pay for them and I didn't drive away wondering how my family was going to eat for the rest of the month.

What a blessing this Couponing has been for my family!!!

I just wanted to share this with you guys and hopefully inspire you to look into ways you can save money for your family!