Living on Less Week 1

This is not directly homeschool related, but as a homeschool mom I am always looking for ways to save money since we are living on one income. This summer we didn't do a good job putting money in savings. We traveled and had fun, but now it's time to start putting money away again.  Last September my husband took a new job in a new state which increased his salary. After going back and reviewing our budget then and our budget now I decided we should be able to put around $1000 a month into savings if we REALLY try hard.  We did the Dave Ramsey plan for a few years to get ourselves out of debt so we are not new to a strict budget and living on less. We also have motivation to save this money and me and my hubby are taking a trip to Dallas in December and want to take the kids on a small trip for Christmas.

Now the question is can we as a family of 5 live on $1000 less than what we normally spend each month??? In the previous months we were spending $800-$900 on groceries and anther $100-$200 on eating out. Ummm....can we say CRAZY! This month there will be no eating out and I dropped our grocery budget to $300 for the ENTIRE month. That is only $75 a week for 2 adults, 3 kids (6,4,1), a dog, a cat, and a bunny!

Today is payday and grocery day so the living on less process begins today.  I am going to try different stores each week to see where I get the most for our money. Today I went to our Neighborhood Walmart. (For those of you unfamiliar with Neighborhood Walmart it's basically just the grocery part of Walmart as a stand alone store. I had never heard of one until we moved here to Kentucky.) My total was $73.35 and I purchased 32 items.

Generic capri suns $1.97 for 10
All purpose flour (Lily brand bc it is the only one I can find w/o barley which my son is highly allergic to) $2.78
Pedigree dog pouches (my spoiled Stella a faux frenchbo won't eat anything besides wet food) $6.68
Generic Canola Oil $2.88
Frozen chicken breasts 3 lbs $7.98
Generic canned peaches x2 $.98
Johnsonville Brats (sale) $3
Bag of yellow onions $1.96
Generic can of Lima Beans $.98
Snap peas (margaret holmes brand) $.98
Beef stew mix $.92 x2
Yoplait yogurt $.58x6
Generic Pear halves $1.68
Roast $8.23 3.14lbs
Pork Chops $4.93 3.18lbs
Spaghetti Sauce 1.88
Coffee Creamer (HELLO...Smores is the new fall flavor!) $1.91
Campbells Chicken and Stars (which was oddly the same price as generic) $1.25x2
Can of Succotash $.98
Bananas $.52 per pd x 3.45lbs
Generic cream cheese $1.78
Instant grits (was not happy they didn't have the big container of quick cook!) $2.38
generic spaghetti noodles $.88
24 pk of cokes (yeah...yeah....but I wouldn't make it through the day w/o it! $6.98

I went and picked up all of this without meal planning. I am so burnt out on meal planning. No one ever wants to help suggest meals, but they all want to complain  about the meals :/  Now I get to sit down and go over everything we have in the pantry (we had quite a bit before this trip) and come up with meals.