Hey friends! If you recall from my last weekly roundup, I mentioned that the Mister and I were doing a monthly meal plan, cash spending, and a monthly grocery trip. I wanted to give you the details about that plan and then I’ll check in at the end of the month to let you know how it went.
First things first. The Mister and I had a long discussion about finances and how we can tighten up our spending. We really don’t spend a ton of money each money with the exception of food. I’m not sure why, but that’s where a lot of our money goes. So in an effort to really get that spending under control, we are going back to a cash spending plan and also really making, and using, a meal plan. And we thought why not just do a monthly meal plan and then go grocery shopping for the month. The garden should start producing something soon so we will hopefully get fresh produce from it before too much longer. So no worries (hopefully) on needing fresh produce.
The Plan:
We are dedicating $500 per month for all our cash needs. This includes groceries/supplies, gas, and other fun activities. This does not include any other bills or unexpected items, such as vet bills, car repairs, etc. We have savings that we’ll use for those things. I only keep enough money in our checking account to cover our monthly bills and a little cushion in case we need to order something online (I order our animal supplies-dog food, cat food, kitty litter-online. I purchase chicken feed at the local feed store).
I used to break down our cash spending into categories and allot money that way, but since we are just starting back out again and our expenses are different now, I want to see how things go over the next couple of months and then I might divide things into categories from there. I think it really helps to keep us on track if we have things broken down into categories.
So the plan. Here’s our meal plan for the month. There aren’t any hard and fast rules. Just make a meal plan for the next three weeks and then we can decide each day what we will actually eat. I wrote everything down in that pretty Rifle Paper Company notebook. It’s so cute and a great place to start our monthly meal plan journey. I also wrote out our grocery list behind the meal plan and added in some recipes that I wanted to keep track of. Also, it’s important to note (and I’ll indicate it below) that I’ve included stockpile items to our list and also some extras for making things (for July, my goal is to make ice cream so there’s extra ingredients for that as well).
July’s Meal Plan:
July 12th-July 31st
12: burgers, tater tots, salad, homemade salad dressing
13: pork chops, applesauce, homemade au gratin potatoes, salad, asparagus
14: roasted chicken, potatoes, onions, home canned green beans
15: shrimp bowls
16: tacos
17: stir fry
18: fish tacos
19: chicken curry skillet (recipe from 100 days of real food)
20: kielbasa and potatoes with onions
21: chicken and veg fajitas
22: sausage, peppers, and onions
23: breakfast for dinner
24: ham pasta bake (recipe from 100 days of real food)
25: homemade mac and cheese with bacon
26: venison (recipe TBD)
27: fish, veg, potato
28: beans and greens
29: venison stroganoff
30: chicken meatballs with roasted red pepper sauce (recipe from Whole30)
31: nachos
The shopping trip
So I love Aldi’s. I’ve always loved Aldi’s but I’ve been shopping there pretty exclusively for a while now. I know what I’m getting there. I know my prices and my budget. It all works. So when we decided to do this monthly budget, I told the Mister that I wanted to shop at Aldi’s. So we had time on Thursday to go shopping there. We did really well. Here’s what we got:
- soy sauce
- butter (stock pile and for an upcoming class)
- block cheese (stock pile)
- canned black beans (stock pile)
- taco kit
- refried beans
- taco seasoning
- salad makings (lettuce, cucumber, spinach)
- red cabbage (didn’t have. will need to purchase elsewhere)
- fish: fresh salmon, frozen whatever they have
- coconut milk
- tortillas
- cilantro (didn’t have. will need to purchase elsewhere0
- onions
- carrots
- rolls
- heavy cream (for a class and also for ice cream making)
- frozen peas
- egg noodles
- ricotta cheese (didn’t have. will need to purchase elsewhere)
- lima beans (didn’t have. will need to purchase elsewhere)
- frozen spinach
- celery
- mushrooms
- ground chicken
- capers (didn’t have)
- tomatoes
- milk (some for ice cream making)
- half-n-half (for ice cream making)
- sweetened condensed milk (for a class)
- heavy cream (for a class and for ice cream making)
- lemons
- cornstarch (totally forgot to look for it!)
- broccoli
- yogurt
- apple juice (used for recipe when smoking meat)
- tortilla chips
- grapes
- cherries
- shrimp
We also added a few other items to our cart as we were shopping. And for a lot of things I purchased an extra. For example, the coconut milk. I only needed one can, but I bought two. It kind of gives us a little stockpile of things that we don’t use all that often but it doesn’t hurt to have an extra. Do you want me to break things down even further and tell you how much of everything I bought? Would that be more helpful?
Anyway, we spent $179 total at Aldi’s that day. However, $14 was for my classes which comes out of my business budget. So that left us with $165 spent out of our monthly budget. I also need to mention that we’ve been doing little trips to the grocery store prior to setting this budget. So there was another $100 spent for a total of $275 spent on groceries and supplies thus far. I’ll keep you posted on how the rest of the month goes!
Do you set a budget and/or a meal plan? How does your system work?
’til next time
-k
xoxo