We're Almost There!

Halving my Car Use Update
Tuesday is the last day of my "month without a car", and I'm amazed at how fast it's gone. As I posted before, I did use the car once - but only once! I'll save the celebration for Wednesday, but I think that I've turned a new leaf in my car usage and it's been nice not to have to fill up the tank.

Halving My Grocery Bill Update

As for groceries, so far this month I've spent $174.79. That's all right, but I was beginning to get nervous. There's still 2/3 of the month to go and at the rate I'm spending, that number will reach at least $436.00 when all is said and done. Half my previous months' grocery bills would be more like $392.00. I would say that I need to re-tool the next few weeks' menus, except....

My food spending is just fine! The big culprit is the "miscellaneous household" category! If I compare my average food spending for the first five months of this year with this month's food spending I'm coming in way under budget. It's only when I add in the miscellaneous household spending to both numbers that it looks like I'm blowing it.

Hmmmm. What's up with that????

Well, my "miscellaneous household" category is a catch-all for everything from shampoo to chamois cloths, stuff for kids' science experiments to scrub brushes. It's a lousy category, all in all, for analytical purposes, but it's still a necessary one. The money I spend on these things comes out of my grocery budget, after all. From now on I'll examine my totals in two ways: one with the miscellaneous spending included and one with it taken out.

So, what have we learned so far?

I am halving my food budget by preparing bread products and snacks from scratch.

I am NOT halving the spending I do on miscellaneous items for my house and kids.


If you want to follow along with my monthly grocery budget, you can click here. I update my spending every couple of days.

My goals for the rest of this month include adding some recipes to this blog for our homemade goodies, and tackling the "stuff" in the rest of the house!