Seeing if we can make it on $400/month with our family of 4 (3 year old and 9 year old). If we can do that for the next 16-17 months we'll have about $38,000 in debt completely paid off.
We have frozen chicken breasts in the freezer, a few pounds of ground turkey in the freezer... We have a garden that's giving us copious amounts of lettuce right now, great for salads.
I have a huge bag of rice, we have like 2 dozen eggs, we have plenty of milk, a bag of potatoes, bag of onions... Lot's of misc items to help get us through the month...
Just want to know you're tips to try to make it last. Last night I told my wife that we had $20 left in the grocery budget, to see this morning a $4.39 purchase at the grocery store near our house for some coconut milk... Because that's what she wants to drink in her coffee now instead of the heavy whipping cream that we both used to drink in our coffee... So that basically took 1/4 of our remaining budget.
My wife is on board with this plan, but I think she lacks a bit of frugalness with the groceries... She came home with an almost $200 receipt from Costco a couple of days ago and the Coconut milk purchase, which seemed less than frugal to me.
Another issue with my wife is she sometimes demands that there are certain things she will not sacrifice when it comes to food. Such as wanting to eat a certain way or buy groceries from certain stores because she thinks they're higher quality than some of the cheaper stores... I try to tell her that it's basically all the same stuff, but she can be a little stubborn when it comes to all of that. We end up buying a lot of groceries at a nice grocery store near our house, but they aren't always the cheapest prices.
If we fail this month, we'll try again next month, and if $400/month for a family of 4 doesn't seem do-able, we'll up it to $500/month, I guess. We're fine with not eating out except maybe a couple of special occasions that we plan ahead of time for, friend's birthdays and whatnot. But any tips for staying on budget for future months would be much appreciated as well!
The goal is to pay off all of our debt by next October and then my wife wants to take the family to Mexico for her 30th birthday in November. So I kind of have that carrot to hang in front of her for motivation.
I have a spreadsheet that I made that lays out all the months between now and next October which shows our estimated income along with hard expenses and other discretionary spending. I then can pop in some extra spending for a month to show her whether that keeps us on track, sets us back, or gets us ahead. I showed her last night and she really seemed on board with it. Even really getting on board with skipping a trip to an amusement park with the kids this summer to meet the goal, something I had suggested these past few weeks but she didn't seem to like the idea then. It's just one summer so we can have an awesome family trip in a little over a year.
Thanks for any suggestions you have with working with a willing but less frugal spouse! And any advice for staying on budget with the groceries!
May 16, 2017 at 01:47PM
