Tracking your spending

My husband and I sat down and made a budget for the first time in our married life in January. We didn't have a clue where our money had been going since I cut back my hours and he moved into management in January of 2007. Once we got our W-2's and saw our income and how we both felt we should have saved more, improved our house more, and definitely should have paid down more debt. We had a business meeting where I filled him in on interest rates on our debt, how much we still owed and presented a reasonable budget. Well, we blew that out of the water in January. Not to say that we both didn't try, we just didn't think of the simple unexpected things like meeting medication deductables and eye exams, dental visits and such. So we have re-evaluated this month and hope to be able to stick to this one. Our goal is to pay off 1 small loan and pay down 1 big charge card. We have 2 worksheets we are using. The first one is from Mommysnacks for tracking your grocery savings and it is here. The second is a budget from shopping for two and it is here. Thanks to both of these ladies for their great sheets! I hope you too can use them to get your money on track.

doing good so far!

Well, let's see.......since I last posted, I did the hot dog, bun and watermelon deal at Jewel (Albertsons) adding Gatorade at the last minute and spent $6.17 and had savings of $24 something. I also went to Walmart for school supplies, did really well on that and also bought my 2 sure deodorants for the mail in rebate using a coupon each on the deodorants. I also bought Honey nut cheerios and Lucky charms with the q's I had. My total was $34.82 and I had a total of $8.55 in q's. Friday I did the diaper deal again at Walgreens and with my 5.00 rebate back I bought a cute candle that was on clearance for the family room I just painted. Today though was my best at Walgreens yet.....I bought 5 powerades, 2 schick razors, 3 boxes of cereal all for $11.17 and had $23.60 in savings. I used 3 Powerade q's, B1G1 for the razors, and 2 $1.00 off the cereal plus the Powerade q in this weeks flyer, and the 2.00 off from the July savings ad. Not bad for a newbie!!

So for me it is really about changing my thought process since I now have more razors, diapers, and powerades than ever in this house, but I won't need them for quite awhile. Especially since Powerades are treats and we drink mostly water and juice.

I did do the math and added all my receipts and my savings......I was shocked!!! I thought I was pretty frugal but doing these deals has made me see that I can really pinch it if I pay attention to the sales ads, keep my q's organized and go to more than one store. So far since June 25th I have spent $140.00 and saved......drumroll please $104. and some change!! This total does not include the 114.00 I spent at Aldi on July 5th since that was normal grocery shopping for me. I hope to keep adding to my stashes around here so that next week when I go to Aldi and our harvest market I will only spend 50.00 total......that will shock the hubby!! I al;so took 100 from my paycheck and put it in an envelope that I hope will not need to be used until Christmas!