Adventures in Extreme Budgeting - Day Two

Not much to report today as I had no discretionary spending.  Yay!  Keep this up and I might be able to survive this challenge in one piece.

I did, however, do the household grocery shopping and made out like a bandit.  I went to Smart and Final, a local non-membership warehouse store, for the bulk of the shopping.  I normally go there to purchase big packs of meat, double sized boxes of cereal and cleaning supplies.  Our monthly food budget is $200 (for two adults) and I'm a serial food stretcher.  I've been known to throw some cooked rice into some scrambled eggs to stretch them.  Or toast some bread ends and make bread crumbs for meatloaf instead of buying a canister of bread crumbs. And I never let anything go to waste.  A half a pound of meat or fish is just as good as a full pound to me.  I just bulk up the meal with vegetables and rice (we basically eat rice everyday although I prefer brown while DH likes white).

Anyway, my goal was to spend under $100 for everything on the list.  I ended up spending $81.18 and got double the amount of meat I normally get (which included 6lbs of chicken legs, 2 whole chuck pot roasts, 3lbs of stew meat, 1lb of ham, 3lbs of polish sausage, 2lbs of boneless beef ribs, and 3lbs tilapia) We now have enough meat, rice and vegetables to last for about 2 weeks or more, depending on how I stretch it.

I'm not a big coupon clipper.  But I do take advantage of savings cards, always on the look out for manager's specials (particularly on meats that I can freeze and store) and scour the weekly ads beforehand for the best deals and do the bulk of my shopping at that store.  Since Smart and Final is a warehouse store, they often don't have everything I need so sometimes I end up clipping some coupons for the supermarkets for the few items I need to get from there. 

Since I'm laid up with neck strain from sleeping funky last night, my husband went to go see some scary movie by himself.  Good thing because the smell of popcorn would have messed with my resolve to eat better and not spend frivolously. 

Day 2
Amount Spent: ZERO
Remaining: 30.19