Keep Your Grocery Spending Under Control

Aside from your mortgage, your biggest monthly expense is likely groceries. And unlike your mortgage, your car payment and most of the rest of your bills you actually have some control over how much you spend at the grocery store. 

 

Make A Grocery Budget 

 

Start by tracking how much you’re spending on groceries for a few weeks. From there, come up with a weekly or monthly budget. Allot that money for groceries and whatever you do don’t go over. 

 

Next, try cutting back your budget by $20 per month. Keep going and see how low you can go. The remaining tips will help you do that without feeling like you’re depriving yourself. 

 

Keep A Price Book 

 

Who doesn’t love a bargain or a good deal? They are all over the store, but do you know if what they advertise as a good deal is actually saving you money? 

 

Keep a little notebook in your purse or keep a text document on your phone with the regular prices of the items you buy most often. Not only can you see if that “deal” really is a deal, you can also determine what kitchen staple is cheapest where and adjust your shopping accordingly. Your price book will also come in handy when you browse through weekly grocery flyers. You can decide if a loss leader deal is worth driving to the store long before you ever set a foot out the door. 

 

Come Up With A Few Frugal Dishes 

 

You don’t have to make drastic changes and eat nothing but rice and beans all week. Instead think of a few inexpensive dishes your family enjoys. They may be rice and beans. Or how about a big pot of soup or chili. Often meatless dishes will be your best frugal bet, or use meat in small portions on frugal dish days. 

 

Enjoying frugal meals even just a handful of days during the month combined with using up any and all leftovers will make a big difference in your grocery budget. 

 

Cut Out The Extras 

 

Make a list before you head to the store and stick to it. All those little extras like the fancy bread from the bakery or the candy you grabbed at checkout start to add up. Get in the habit of skipping those extras unless there’s a good reason to buy them. Stick to your list and you’ll cut your grocery bill by quite a bit each week. It’s amazing how all those little extras add up.  

 

Give these tips a try and see if you don’t start to see big savings on a weekly basis. What you do with all the extra money each month is up to you. Save up for a fun summer vacation, pay off those credit cards or start building your financial safety net. 

Do You Have A Financial Safety Net? (And How To Build One)

Do you have a financial safety net? It’s something worth thinking about and setting up. What will happen to you and your loved ones if you lose your job for a few months? What if you get into an accident that may prevent you from earning a living? Or what if some unexpected expenses come up. Do you have anything in place to make sure the bills continue to get paid and your family is taken care of? 

 

If not, now is the time to get started. But where do you actually start? Having three to six months’ worth of living expenses tucked away in an interests-bearing account is a good beginning. Figure out what your family needs to comfortably live on if all income stops. Then start saving as much money as you can until you have built up this safety net. 

 

Put the money you usually spend on going out to eat, going to the movies, buying the newest TV and Tech gadget and the likes into your savings account until you’ve saved enough to have a comfortable cushion. Take make this step go even faster, add any bonuses, tax refunds etc. as well. 

 

Don’t just stop there. Make it a goal to add to your safety cushion as you can and come back and revise your numbers from time to time. Your living expenses may go up or down over time and you can adjust how much you need to set aside in quickly accessible money accordingly. 

 

Life and disability insurance are another important part of your financial safety net, as is your retirement money. Do you have a plan in place to continue to cover your living expenses (or those of your family) when you can no longer work? Call up your insurance agent and go over your current coverage. Make sure the insurance you’re paying for will pay out what you need and if not, make adjustments. 

 

Once you have those two parts of your safety net firmly in place, consider investing any additional savings into higher interest bearing accounts. While you may not be able to access any money invested here right away, it will come in handy when you’re dealing with a long term financial emergency or are ready to retire. The plus side is that there are plenty of investment vehicles out there that will get you a much better return than your plain savings account at the bank. Talk to your financial adviser and come up with a plan that’s right for you, your family and whatever the future may hold. 

FOWC with Fandango — Wistful

This, That, and the Other

Welcome to September 29, 2019 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). It’s designed to fill the void after WordPress bailed on its daily one-word prompt.

I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (US).

Today’s word is “wistful.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.

The issue with pingbacks not showing up seems to have been resolved, but you might check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to…

View original post 17 more words

Lens-Artists Challenge #65 – Pick a Place

Travels and Trifles

“The place cast a spell on me, a lovely spell that seduced me one breath at a time.”

Brenda Sutton Rose

FIELDS OF GOLD

Last week Amy challenged us to share images of the countryside and/or a small town. This week we’re asking you to look a bit farther afield. Each of us at some point has visited a place that holds special memories. It may have been a small town, a big city, or even better, an entire country.  We’d like you to capture the spirit of a place that is vivid in your memory. What was it that drew you in and why did it capture YOUR heart?

AFTER THE STORM

“There are places which exist in this world beyond the reach of imagination.”

Daniel J. Rick

My husband and I have been fortunate to experience some truly iconic places, most of which have appeared here on Travels and…

View original post 578 more words

Probe the Galaxy on a Shoestring with this DIY Hydrogen-Line Telescope — Hackaday

Foil-lined foam insulation board, scraps of lumber, and a paint-thinner can hardly sound like the tools of a radio astronomer. But when coupled with an SDR, a couple of amplifiers, and a fair amount of trial-and-error tweaking, it’s possible to build your own hydrogen-line radio telescope and use it to image the galaxy. As the…

via Probe the Galaxy on a Shoestring with this DIY Hydrogen-Line Telescope — Hackaday

Trains

via Trains

RDP-Sunday-CORRUPT

It seems the whole world is caught in a vortex. There is no way to avoid the word that swirls in the air.

The Ragtag Daily Prompt is CORRUPT.

Find inspiration. Challenge yourself to use this word in a positive manner. Post your inspiration with a pingback to this post. Don’t forget to use the tags ‘RDP’, ‘Ragtag Daily Prompt’, and ‘corrupt’.

Let’s see what we each have to say.

May your Sunday be full of laughter, love and music.

View original post

Roughing It, Volume Fourteen — claytoonz

Last Thursday, when I started working on a cartoon for CNN Opinion’s newsletter, the Whistelbowergate thingy was just breaking. I thought it was our topic but my editor was afraid that by the time the cartoon ran on Sunday, that it would be outdated. That was my concern too. He was interested in some other […]

via Roughing It, Volume Fourteen — claytoonz

FOTD – September 29, 2019 – Autumn Leaf

Cee's Photo Challenges

Feel free to post every day or when you you feel like it.  Please continue to post your entries on my daily post.  Here is a link to my FOTD page.  Thanks.

Don’t forget that my FOTD challenge accepts leaves and berries as well as flowers.

I’ve gathered a list of challenges and their hosts.  So if you know a challenge host, please direct them to my blog.  Feel free to contact me anytime.  I hope everyone will be able to use my lists.

Qi (energy) hugs

Cee

View original post

Your Daily Word Prompt – Capacity – September 29, 2019

Your Daily Word Prompt

⇑Click the banner to visit September’s prompt Page ⇑

Daily Prompts – Words and Images

To participate in This Daily Prompt, all you have to do is publish a post on your own blog that responds to the prompt. It can be words, images anything that you like. Put the link (listed below) in your post to create the automatic pingback. You can leave a link to your post in the comments if you wish.

Today’s Word:          Capacity

Please link to this prompt in your post by using this URL link in the text of your post or at the end of your post:

https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2019/09/29/your-daily-word-prompt-capacity-september-29-2019/

Make sure to check out the comment links and pingbacks to view other posts inspired by today’s prompt.

Thank you and happy blogging. 

-Sheryl

To report issues with the daily post please contact me directly.

⇓Click here to visit Sheryl’s blog

View original post 1 more word