Month End Money Recap

I know the end of the month is not technically until tomorrow but I decided today would be close enough. Nothing's going to change tomorrow :) I will go grocery shopping but that will be a March expense - forgive me if I'm a day off on that as well!

Another update on my New Year's resolutions:

1. Spend $100 or less on groceries each week. This month I had started out hoping to spend only $50 each week. Kind of an experiment to see if I could do it. I could not! I would love to try again when I had more meat in the freezer or even meals already frozen and ready to go becuase it just became impossible at the end of the month. Either that or the pull of double dollar coupons was too strong! On the plus side trying to spend so much less meant I came in well under budget for the month.

My total grocery budget for the month was: $352.36
My total savings for the month was: $518.83
I earned back: $17.49 in Catalinas and Extra Care Bucks (I didn't go to CVS much this month thanks to snow and illness)

The only thing that does include is some packs of diapers which would make up the other $50 putting me right on budget. Kaitlyn's science project happens to be on the absorbency of diapers so we bought a number of extra packs to give her several brands to work with so I wasn't really sure where in the budget to put that under! Quite a few diapers were sacrificed in the name of science but many more have been used on the girls :)

For the month of March I have already drawn out my entire $400 budget in cash and will only spend that on all food, toiletries and diapers. Sometimes it's easy to just shop once a week on Sunday's but on good weeks like dollar doubler or triple coupon week (which I hear may be coming up in March at HT) I go several times and in that week may exceed the $100 but other weeks I come well below. Having the money out for the month seems easier plus it's already out of my bank account like any other bill I would pay. Any money left over at the end of the month will go to a nice dinner out - gives me an incentive not to spend it all :)

2. Pay down debt and keep from accruing new debt. This we did and hope to keep it up again in March.

3. Budget, budget, budget. Still working on it. I am keeping track of every penny. We aren't spending money we don't have but I still have trouble figuring out all the categories. I plan to work on it again in March.

4. Make a price point book. This will probably end up being an April task. I have 3 consignment sales in March and there just won't be time to get this done with everything else I have going on.

5. Get rid of stuff! This we did and quite a lot of it too. I haven't sold any of it so far but I have tossed and donated a lot.

This month I got rid of:

- 4 garbage pails full of trash/broken toys from the basement
- 32 shirts of Kirk's that he no longer wears
- 4 pairs of pants of Kirk's that he no longer wears.
- 1 old flat iron and 1 old curling iron that I don't ever use
- 4 things of never used beauty products that were way past their shelf life

Not sure how the trash bins work as far as getting rid of stuff but that's another 45 things I got rid of for Amy's decluttering challenge . Hoping for even more in March!

6. Organize. I had signed up to participate in OrgJunkie's 28 day organizing challenge but I'm not going to make it and get it all done. We made huge strides in the basement and really sorted quite a bit but it's not done yet. Getting sick last week put me behind and I really need to spend this weekend and week getting ready for my moms of multiples sale - meaning I need to spend more time tagging and less time organizing.

7. Make extra money. Not much this month. I got a check for $25 from BlogHer which runs ads on my other blog Two Kids Plus Trips! I'm thrilled for anything from that :) Next month this should be a much higher number.

8. Still buying good kids clothes. Didn't buy any this month but I'm planning to in March though for summer it will mostly be at all the consignment sales I'm working so it would ultimately be good free kids clothes :)