Budget Update

We're on week #2 of the new budget and I'd say it's going OK. The husband has spent each night this past week comparing cell phone providers and plans - turns out we're spending a ton of money on cell phones. Up until a year ago, when I was still a full fledged associate at my firm, I received a decent monthly technology allowance that covered about half of our cell phone bill so we never really worried about looking for a cheaper plan. Well, now that I don't have that added benefit, it's high time to cut the cell bill.  (If we were smart money managers, we'd have realized this a long time ago and cut our cell bill even with the technology allowance, but so it goes.)  I think he's decided TMobile or Sprint are our best bets (as opposed to our current provider, AT&T), but he's still working that out.

We have DirectTV and cut our premium channels this past week to save on the cable bill. Customer service said to call back at the end of this month, when we'll have had our contract for a full year and they'll be able to work out a new rate with us, so we're waiting to pull the plug entirely until we see what they offer. We may drop from 3 receivers to just two and we're still considering cutting cable entirely and using Netflix and Hulu instead. The one thing that is holding us back is how to handle sports without cable - the husband is a huge soccer fan and I enjoy having the GA bulldogs on the TV during the Fall. I'm not sure there's a way around this if you cut cable altogether. We could always go out to watch these events, but that seems like it could be cost prohibitive in the end as we'd be spending money at whatever bar or restaurant we went to to watch the game. So you'd save on cable but spend on food.  This is a work in progress, clearly.

We fired the yard guy and sweet husband is out there now cutting the lawn. He also lowered the temperature on the hot water heater and we reset the thermostats to try to lower the energy bill. We're also being more diligent about turning off lights in rooms we're not currently in.

I'd say the most tangible budget change is in our approach to food. I went back and pulled our food expenses since April and I'm embarrassed to admit we've been spending an average of $1800 on food a month - split between restaurants and groceries. Our new budget allots $600 total - $500 for groceries and $100 for eating out. This is a BIG cut, so it has required a lot of planning and preparation.  Last Saturday I meal planned for the week and settled on these meals:

Saturday: homemade gluten free pizza with Italian sausage
Sunday: breaded chicken cutlets (made with GF breadcrumbs), broccoli and roasted carrots
Monday: Chickpea and vegetable curry with quinoa (the boys at fish sticks as I knew they wouldn't touch the curry)
Tuesday: tacos (we never made so we have 1 lb of ground turkey for this week)
Wednesday: Crock pot pork loin with rice (moved to Tuesday's meal)
Thursday: leftovers (made grilled cheese sandwiches with bacon and avocado)
Friday: pasta with shrimp (had leftovers instead - the shrimp is frozen so no food lost here)

So husband and I went to the grocery store armed with our list and the goal of spending $125. We spent $137 which isn't bad for our first attempt at a budgeted shopping trip, especially since we weren't adding up ingredients as we went. We had to go back to the store mid-week for more bread and milk, laundry detergent, butter and strawberries. So tack on another $20 or so.  We moved around the meals a bit because we went out to dinner with friends on Wednesday night. $53 of our eating out budget is now gone, but it was worth the fun night out with friends! I also had lunch with a girlfriend and spent $8, so we have about $40 left for the month to eat out. Knowing this has definitely stopped us from swinging by Panera or 5 Guys on a night we don't feel like cooking.  We were also diligent about bringing leftovers for lunches each day (those $5-10 lunches out add up quickly)!

I will say our pantry and fridge are pretty bare right now since we have yet to grocery shop this week, but I feel good that we're not wasting food, something I knew we were doing since we weren't aware of what was always in the fridge and would often decide to eat out rather than cook what was planned.

This week we decided to try a new approach to lower the grocery bill to keep it under $125. We're going meatless for the week - here's the plan:

Saturday: Dinner at a children's birthday party
Sunday: Turkey burgers with roasted carrots (this is one of my go-to meals that I make for company often - its a delicious 5 ingredient recipe and I usually make sliders and go bunless)
Monday: Chickpea and vegetable curry with quinoa (last week's Meatless Monday meal - it was delicious, and we already have chickpeas and quinoa in the pantry)
Tuesday: Roasted vegetable and black bean tacos
Wednesday: Grilled cheese sandwiches with sliced apples and possibly a carrot and ginger soup
Thursday: Coconut Green Lentil Curry(I have a bunch of lentils in the pantry waiting to be cooked)
Friday: Shrimp pasta (or leftovers depending on my mood)

So that covers our dinners. We should have enough leftovers for lunches, but if not my go-to lunch is to brown a pound of turkey cooked with green curry paste, put over rice, roasted sweet potatoes or carrots and shredded kale with either coconut oil or ghee. It sounds odd but it is delicious.  I made this last week and ate it for lunch, a snack or breakfast each day.

Turkey veggie rice curry

For breakfasts I usually make overnight oats with steel cut oats, almond milk, chia seeds, cacao powder, maple syrup, vanilla and strawberries. I had some leftover quinoa from our curry meal so last week I also made breakfast quinoa with almond milk, shredded almonds, peanut butter and blueberries.

Breakfast quinoa (before mixing it all together)

The hubs eats granola with milk for breakfast or skips breakfast altogether. We also have to pack the boys lunch for school each day and feed them breakfast (duh). They usually eat gluten free waffles for breakfast with a ton of fruit, or toast with butter and fruit or yogurt and fruit or cereal and fruit. (They love fruit.) For their lunches we do a lot of peanut butter sandwiches or hot dogs (the Applegate organic nitrate free ones, so in my head these are nutritious), tomatoes, carrots, sliced apples, mandarin oranges, yogurt, sliced cucumber, apple sauce, string cheese, etc. So we have a lot of items on this week's grocery list for these growing boys who seem to have huge appetites these days!

I'm not sure we'll hit the food budget this month (or this week as we need to buy Julian diapers which currently comes out of the grocery budget) but I can already tell a big shift simply by being aware of the money we are spending on food and consciously trying to make positive changes. I still want to enjoy dinners out with friends and worry the $100 restaurant budget will inhibit that, so perhaps we can get our grocery bills cheaper to be able to go over the $100 every now and again if need be. Or we'll invite friends over to eat at our house so we can control the costs.) And as I say in my Beautycounter business, it's not about perfection, it's about progress!

I have not done any shopping this week on clothes or house goods, even though I've done some online perusing. We were at a friend's new house yesterday and I definitely had envy over all the new furniture and furnishings she'd bought for her house. I started picking apart each room of our house and noting what we were lacking, but quickly shifted into being thankful for what we do have. Our house may not be as pretty or put together (or big) as hers and I may still have rooms with mismatched furniture (and a dining room table with no chairs), but our home is full of love and that makes it more than enough.

This week my goal is looking into refinancing our student loans and attempting to get that payment down. I hate the thought of pushing them out even longer, but the husband had a good point - we can refinance them to lower the required monthly payment, but we can continue paying the same amount each month we're currently paying as long as we can swing it. That way if there are months where we need to spend more on one area of life (say for a broken car, the $60 oil change I paid for this week or unexpected house expense that will surely come up), we won't be stuck dipping into our savings. So here's hoping we can lower that payment!

Do you budget?  Where have you made changes to save costs?