frugal february is in effect. we are attempting to see how little we can spend in one month to help us save up for building our house and to also show us just how little of what we normally buy is truly "essential." coupons and meal-planning are two huge branches of this fiscal scorched earth policy. i am by no means an expert on any of this, so if there are ways i can be saving more, feel free to chime in an illuminate us all.
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my good buddy and ONLY person i have ever shared a bedroom with besides my husband and my little brother, joanna tatum, asked me for some clarification on couponing because she went in and saved $10 with her 'pons but also ended up spending way more than she normally would have. i totally understand.
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here's my routine: every sunday i skip to the end of my driveway and pick up our fat, juicy newspaper (when its not stolen by hooligans for the lingerie ads!). i cut out all the coupons of anything i would ever realistically use/eat and file them in my chic file folder (i now have 2: food and non-food). on thursdays the new weekly publix flyer is released and these deals are good through next wednesday. i LOVE thursdays. the thought of this flyer + my coupons gets me out of bed. seriously, i sat in bed for about 20 minutes this morning trying to summon up a reason stimulating enough to draw me out of my downy ikea paradise and into the gloomy 25 degree morning: pooping and peeing so i can then weigh myself? getting to work on time and remaining gainfully employed? popping a zit that wasn't quite ready last night? ambushing the cat that is sleeping with its back turned to me? loving on my adorable son or aftershave-model husband?...nope, none of these things made me swing my fleece-entombed footsies over the edge of the bed to start my day. but then i remembered it was flyer day!!!
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coupons in hand (folder) i head over to the
publix site. the first place i check is their BOGO (buy one get one free) section. i look for things i: A) really need and/or B) have coupons for. the great thing about publix is that the BOGO deals don't require you to buy 2: one at full price to then get a free one. you can buy just one at at time all at half price instead
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here is a REALLY good example of one thing we'll be picking up on the mega-cheap this week:
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lysol 4-in-1 disinfecting trigger spray:
price: 2.69
BOGO sale price: 1.35
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now, i have a manufacturer's coupon for this that is 50 cents off. the beauty here is that publix doubles ALL coupons that are 50 cents and lower. so...
price minus 50 cent off doubled coupon (-$1): 35 cents!
and just like that i have bought a $2.69 bottle of cleaner for 35 cents. that's 87% off, y'all!
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off course if i was uber-extreme extreme i would buy a double paper and have at least 2 of the same coupons for all these items and could get multiples at these awesome prices, but we don't have the storage capacity or the need to stock up that much.
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two big keys that i think should be mentioned is that it takes awhile to #1: build up your coupon supply so that the BOGO sales are predominantly things you ALSO have coupons on (this double-whammy is where your savings become positively criminal). each week that goes by a higher and higher percentage of the BOGO items that come out are ones that i have coupons for, hopefully this will one day become almost 100%. the great thing is most coupons' expiration dates are 2 or 3 (or more) months later than the day you clip them so you have at least 10 weeks in which to use them and that's 10 or more chances that they will be a BOGO item in the weekly flyer.
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and then #2: on the front end you may need to plan ahead and build up a supply of things to get you through until you can afford to, say, wait 3 weeks for ground beef to go on sale. this may mean an initial investment in some stuff that isn't the cheapest you COULD get it for, but it WILL allow you to then pass up things that are at really high prices without starving. i now HATE it when we have to have a particular item and it forces me to buy it right then, regardless of is it's on sale or i have a coupon. i was searching for ways to avoid this at all costs...
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...which brings me to our latest endeavor. i stumbled across this lunatic woman from a link on facebook. if you don't want to watch the clip, this chick planned out her family's (husband and 4 sons!) meals for the entire year. she also chops tomatoes while holding her 3 year old (whaaaa?). i was always confused by the idea of planning out your meals ahead of time. how the hell does this make them cheaper? but the trick is that with your meals planned out you also have your complete grocery list ready to go so you don't make impulse purchases or buy food for imaginary meals that never happen and then spoils. .
when i was kid i used to dream of my mom publishing a menu for our family's meals for the week so i could know what we were having in advance (not sure why i was fixated on this...so i could plan my wine pairings?). this never happened and i was so miffed (little shit). but now i see why. its freaking hard to plan ahead and then to stick with it! especially with 2 full time working parents and a baby who doesn't eat what/when we do. but in the interest of frugal february i decided to take on the challenge.
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you should know my attempts to plan our meals for even a week have ALWAYS failed. seriously, even before judah, we could barely stick to it for 2 days. well, my friends, enjoy the view of the underside of this new leaf that i have just turned over. for your viewing pleasure, i give you:
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i went all out and color coded each meal by degree of difficulty in preparation. i also added a pool of "reserves" from which to choose on weekends or if we want to swap a scheduled meal out because we aren't feeling it that night.
i started out by looking in the pantry and fridge before ever shopping and seeing what we had to work with. with a "bare" fridge i still came up with about 14 meals that could be made with no additional groceries being bought. from there i came up with meals that could be made from meat and other ingredients that can be frozen or stored for longer than a week.
i put our fun and favorite stuff on fridays so we wouldn't be tempted to go eat out like we normally do and could instead have a date night of cooking together. i planned for maximum easy on wednesdays since jesse eats at church and i sort of just forage. saturdays and sundays are blank since we usually don't have plans set until the last minute and they often involve eating with people out of the house. mondays i cook alone and thursday jesse cooks alone so those have balanced difficulty. tuesdays is our date night so we cook together again, but not as difficult stuff since it's a work night.
clearly we only plan dinners. jesse eats lunch in meetings and at high schools most days of the week so he is not spending any money in that regard. my lunches are usually frozen dinners, but with us now making so many dinners at home i usually have plenty of leftovers for a lunch or two the next day(s) since most meals are rationed for a family of 4. so even our TV dinner supply is still alive.
this menu makes it sort of hard to get healthy stuff planned since produce goes bad over a month's time, but we allot weekly trips to the store for great deals and to fill in the produce blanks that our menu leaves. so far we have stuck to this calendar 100% and it has been awesome. the one i have printed out at home even has reminders the day before to take the meat out of the freezer to defrost for the next nights recipe.
so when you combine advance meal planning (on any scale-weekly, monthly, yearly) with couponing you become a seriously empowered customer (there was no way to make that not sound lame). because i know i am not eating meatloaf for 3 weeks, i can wait for ground turkey to go on sale rather than rushing in the day of and buying it out of necessity whatever the price may be. some of the items on this menu were bought at prices less than optimum. however, i can now plan march's menu out and then i will have weeks to wait for the ingredients i need for that month to go on sale/have coupons for. power to the people!
***let me know if you want this and i will send you the excel file that i made it in (it's excel2007 which will mess up the colors in 2003 version but still work fine) and you can take it and adapt it however you want!***
he's having a ball (wocka wocka)
gotta fuel up for the workday!
daddy's desktop image comes to life...on his desktop
swirly-bird hairline mimics the storm system "headed" our way
relax...no one is going to take your ball
aw, snap!
he has started doing this HILARIOUS smile/squint when we take a picture of him. its because the flash pre-light shines in his eye and half annoys and half cracks him up. the face he makes KILLS us.
HAHAHAHAHA i was purposely shining the light in his eyes this time. i tested it on myself and didn't go blind, so don't worry (mom)
he looks like he is imparting some wisdom to us, "well, let me tell YOU something..."
i wish i had one for MY desk!
boston chowda company's charleston she-crab soup.
