It feels like a Monday

To everyone that was a regular reader of my last blog, I have shut that one down. I've gone through some changes and felt it was best to start fresh.

In my quest to live a fulfilling life, I have found that most things that are of importance cost very little. This saves me large amounts of cash as well as a lot of stress. As I come across tips, freebies, easy (and I mean EASY) recipes and other such tokens of wisdom- I will pass these along to you. Otherwise, you'll be reading about my day-to-day. Hopefully you will find some of helpful gems and be able to apply them to your life.

If you have any suggestions or run across any helpful hints- please let me know so I can share your wisdom!

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Lately I have been interested in ways to save money thoughout the month of February. This is all an attempt to "not spend any money" the entire MONTH of February. Obviously there are exceptions to this "rule," as I have loan payments and the like. My vision here is to go to the grocery store one time per month with a game plan. The desired outcome is to spend a lot less on groceries than I normally do.

That said, I haven't been keeping track of my spending on groceries, but it has been over $200 a month for 2 people. If the shopping is done smartly and strategically, I don't see any reason to not spend less than $200 every month.

Here is what I have done so far:

- create a monthly meal plan, with built-in left-over meal days.
- create a monthly grocery list
- Shop wisely for these items (I will be first going to Aldi to get most of the items there, then to Trader Joes for the specialties)

Yes, I know that February has already started. The massive snow fall in the Midwest has crippled my ability to make it to the grocery store for a large shopping trip. I will be heading there this weekend. If anyone has ever done this before, any tips or tricks you have would be great!



Here are the links to the forms I used for creating the meal plan and grocery list-

http://frugalliving.about.com/library/pdfs/MonthlyMealPlanningWorksheetA.pdf

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/results.aspx?qu=grocery&origin=TC006089426#ai:TC030007984|