New Challenge

Since we received the $500 grocery store gift card, I have been very excited to see if we could buy all our food, toiletries, and pullups for that amount this month. Really excited. I love a challenge! I am almost certain that we can do it, and my motivation is high to prove that fact to myself. Yesterday our daughter G and I went to the grocery store with a medium long list and the sale flyer. We spent about $60 on pullups and $168 on food. As we were shopping I was so thankful for the ways God has helped me to prepare for this, because there were just so many items I did not need to buy that a few months ago I would have thought were standard things for us.

If you are wondering how it might be possible to feed a family of 7 for $500 a month, keep in mind that I already bought all our milk for the month (it's in our freezer, remember?). I bake our bread so don't need to buy any. I am striving to cook more non-meat meals for my family, which means buying less meat. In fact, yesterday the only meat I bought were 3 whole chickens on sale for .79 cents a pound, and a few cans of canned chicken for my hubby's chicken salad sandwiches. I make our yogurt now so didn't have to buy any of that. I bought no crackers or chips. We snack now on hard boiled eggs, carrot sticks, slices of bread, or fruit. Better choices anyway! We bought 7 large bags of cold cereal, which will be doled out sparingly over the course of the month. The children know the drill now ~ no more cereal until March! :-)

I will be posting weekly menus, recipes, and updates on how we're doing with the food budget over on my food blog, so please visit there if you want to check on how I'm doing with my new challenge. In the meantime, I put a little ticker in the top right corner of my blog that will countdown the money on the giftcard as we use it throughout the month. My stated goal is to make it last for all of February, but my secret goal is to still have money on the card when March comes. I could not find a giftcard countdown ticker (goodness, I wonder why?) so had to re-purpose a debt reduction ticker. Don't let the little words "debt ticker" fool you ~ it's really our giftcard countdown!

And again, thank you, thank you, thank you to whomever blessed us with this giftcard and started me on this fun and exciting food budget challenge! You are helping me to see how much we can save every month if we eat like this all the time. What a thought!