Yummy Fruit!

We had a few dollars left over in our food budget this week, and since Wal-Mart had pomegranates on sale for $1.88, I thought I’d get one.

It was quite juicy and flavorful, although after I finished getting the seeds out of it, I was full of red juice!

CVS Money Saving Trip

Eating gluten free can be expensive. I love it when I can save money on non-food products, so I have more dollars left for food!

Here's the deal that I got today at CVS that definitely helped stretch our food/consumables budget this week.

What I Got

CVS vitamin E oil - 0.78 (on clearance)
2 Oral-B Indicator toothbrushes - 3.98
Revlon mascara - 6.49
Advil Children's - 5.79
Advil PM - 5.29
CVS sunblock - 1.99
Hefty ultra-flex garbage bags - 6.49

Coupons I Used

2.00 off CVS skincare product
1.00 off 2 Oral-B toothbrushes
1.00 off Revlon
1.00 off Advil PM (CVS store coupon)
2 - 2.00 off Advil products (manu. coupon)
19.97 in Extra Care Bucks

How Much I Spent and Got Back

I spent $2.25 out of pocket and got $12.79 in ECBs back.

I normally wouldn't be able to get garbage bags for $2.25, let alone all that other fun stuff, too!

I usually go to Money Saving Mom to find CVS deals, but I put this one together all by myself! (I'm beaming with pride!)

SWEET DEAL!!!

Super 8 Motel is having an "8" party this month. You can get a hotel room for just $8.88! You have to register online at exactly 8:00 pm EDT and be one of the first 800 registrants, but it worked for me! We're going to have a little one-night getaway for $9.95 plus gas money.

I had checked with the specific hotel that I wanted in advance to be sure they had rooms. I also typed out my address, email, phone #, and check card # into a Word doc. I refreshed the promo page right at 8pm and copied and pasted my info into the form.

Apparently I was one of the first 800 to complete registration. I'm "Super" excited for a little getaway trip!

Thanks to MoneySavingMom for alerting me to this great deal.

Budgeting

Check out my friend's new blog here. Carrie's a veteran of gluten free blogging; a link to her Ginger Lemon Girl blog is on my sidebar. I'm excited to see where she goes with her new blog about living frugally.

Budget Update

Tim and I just about made it through our switch to cash for groceries for the month of June. And, we ran out of money about a week ago. We want to set it up so we can save money, but also so we can succeed in our budget.

We're going to try switching to taking out cash every two weeks instead of once a month. So the Saturday after we get paid, we'll take out $100 for groceries for the next two weeks. Hopefully it will be easier to gauge how much money we should (or shouldn't) spend in two weeks as opposed to one month.

I'll let you know how this works for us. We still might adjust the amount after a few cycles of two weeks, but I know this will save us money in the long run.

Gluten Free Simple on a Budget?

I enjoyed reading Gluten Free Frugal's post on a gluten free budget. I'm in tune with her desire to create simple, fast, cheap, nutritious meals. So many blogs are full of these recipes for extravagent dishes. Like a fruit salad that would take a half an hour to make! And would cost more than our entire dinner would usually cost! I prefer mine; it's cheap, good, and takes just a few minutes to whip up.

I strive to keep things simple. I don't need or want a complicated life.

June Budget Beginnings

We're starting our cash adventure today. We've switched to using cash for groceries and consumables. We gave ourselves a $200/month budget to start out with. After June we may tweak it either up or down depending on how it went this month.

Today we had a few non-food items that we needed, so we stopped by CVS. We got 2 Pantene shampoos, Pantene intensive conditioner, 4 Dawn dish soaps, floss, 4 Oral-B toothbrushes, mouthwash, bandaids, napkins, Scott toilet paper, Hefty garbage bags, and a bag of peanut M&Ms. We spent $5.56 out of pocket and got $23.49 in Extra Care Bucks back to use next time we shop at CVS.

Now we won't use all 4 Dawns or toothbrushes tomorrow, but we will use them in the next few months. That means that we will have more money that can go towards food. Also, even if we got all of this stuff at the dollar store or as generics at Wal-Mart, we still would have paid more that we did today at CVS.

We were happy with our CVS shopping trip. Now, if only we could find a #2 plastic water bottle. You wouldn't think that would be too difficult, but apparently it is!

Gluten Free Friday, Day 7

I'm going to be switching gears a bit for Gluten Free Fridays. I'm going to move from discussing gluten free basics to discussing how to eat gluten free on a budget.

The biggest grocery money saving change that Tim and I instituted was to create a menu. We try to create our menu around store sales and coupons. This doesn't always work, as a lot of gluten free foods don't usually go on sale or have coupons.

I have a list on my fridge (that I need to update, by the way) of all of the dinners that I can cook or that I'd like to learn to cook. Tim and I'll just sit down and pick dinners off of the list, combining really cheap meals (rice noodles with tomato sauce) with slightly more expensive meals (roast in the crock pot). If I make a more expensive meal, I'll schedule another meal made out of the leftovers. For example if we have a roast in the crock pot, I'll make the leftovers into a beef stew.

We'll then create a shopping list with foods that we need to make the dinners on our menu, and add a few things to the list for breakfasts and lunchs. We shop at a few different stores and only get what's on our list.

I've found that taking these few extra steps has saved us money, and saved me the headache of figuring out what to make for dinner every evening.

Starting in June, we're going to try using only cash for groceries and consumables. We've set a tentative budget of $200/month. I'll let you know how it goes!

Eating Out

Tenille at Gluten Free Frugal said that she uses cash for groceries, gas, and eating out. I think that going cash for eating out is a great idea. We'll have to switch to that soon.

We're going to start using cash for groceries and consumables (soap, toothpaste, etc.) in June. We're going to shoot for using cash for eating out starting July. Hopefully these changes with help with the whole budgetizing thing!

Grocery Budget

Tim and I are going to try doing cash for our groceries. That way we'll know how much we've spent and how much we have left to spend.

We're going to start with $200.00/month and see how that works. We thought about doing a weekly amount, but I think a monthly amount will work better for us right now. With random rice flour purchases, it fluctuates week by week.

I'll let you know how it works!