One Family's Journey to Debt-Free Living
The month of March always brings many celebrations for our family and therefore it is one that is the most difficult for us to save money. But, we are always up for a challenge and we tried our best.
Here are some of the ways we saved money last month:
1. We discontinued our fruit and veggie delivery again for this month. I am still missing those weekly deliveries but we are trying to remain gazelle intense on paying off the mortgage so this had to go.
Throughout our years together, Mr. SF and I have lived a rather frugal life. But once we were blessed with children we had to learn how to make our money stretch even further.
We had all the regular bills, housing, utilities, food, transportation and on top of all of that lots of medical bills, so when it came to Christmas, I had to be creative. I wanted to make sure we focused on the true meaning of the season in a very budget friendly way.
Now that my kids are older, Christmas looks a bit different, but we still enjoy many of the ways that I wrote about in my book, Frugal Seeds Christmas Edition, 101 Ways to Celebrate the Holiday Season on a Budget.
You can buy it on Amazon or read it FREE with Kindle Unlimited.
This month I headed over to Meijer to see what I could find to stock up on for our family.
I would like to first mention that I have randomly chosen stores and did not seek out items on sale to purchase. Instead, I looked for foods that my family eats on a regular basis and, if it happened to be on sale, it was a bonus. I also did not use coupons on any items that I purchased. The reason I have chosen to do these monthly stock-ups this way is because I wanted to see what people could purchase without doing any planning. Life is busy, people are stressed, and having to worry about stocking up on food does not need to be another stressor. So, when I was out running errands and I (1) happened to have $20.00 in my purse and (2) I was near a grocery store and had time to run in, then I did a monthly stock-up. If you haven’t already, please check out our August and September stock up posts.
I was happy to see that Meijer was having a 10 for $10 sale, with the 11th item free on a lot of canned goods.
October’s score included the following:
2 disinfecting wipes $3.99 each – total $7.98
2 garbanzo beans $1.00 each – total $2.00
1 northern beans $1.00 each – total $1.00
6 black beans $1.00 each – total $10.00
3 peach slices $1.00 each – total $3.00
All canned goods that I purchased were part of the 10 for 10 sale, 11th one free, so I also received one of the canned goods free.
Tax was $0.56
Total for all 14 items was $19.54
Two more months left to in the $20 pantry stock-up challenge and we would love to have you join us.
Have you been able to fortify your pantry? Please take a moment to let us know what you’ve found in the comment section.
In the last blog post, we discussed the reasons you should have a pantry. I think we made a rather compelling argument for the importance of having a “deep pantry” (food that is set back in case of an emergency), so in this post we will discuss the 11 ways to go about setting up a deep pantry for your household.
Continue reading “How to set up a pantry”This month is our Frugal February and we are on a mission to spend as little money as possible this month. This got me thinking of free things we could do and reading was one of my first thoughts. Since we are trying to spend so little, I didn’t want to even drive to the library to search for some good reads. This encouraged me to search for finance and success focused books that are free to read on the internet. I was shocked at all of the great reading I found and wanted to share it all with you!
If there is a book that you have read that encouraged you in your financial walk and is free to read on the internet, please leave a comment below, we would LOVE to share it.
Continue reading “February’s FREE Financial Reading”