Saving a little.... equals SAVING a lot!

In the past 2 years we have taken on the 52 week money challenge, and I am happy to say, it really did pay off...

We were able to save up the $1378 a year and then some.

Wanting to step it up a notch for 2016, I looked into challenging our family into a no spend month, a $5 challenge, or taking a real hard look at our grocery budget and tightening the strings.

In the end, we decided that the grocery budget will get the cut!

On average, we were spending $200 a week for a family of four.

 Free styling and winging it, with no real meal plan, we did shop the sales and managed to build up our food storage in the process. Our grocery budget has always included pet food, toiletries, paper products, kitchen supplies and all Laundry expenses.

So our challenge this year is to cut the grocery budget in half!
That's $100 dollars a week for a family of four, 3 dogs, 1 cat, 12 chickens and a goldfish.

By the end of the year that will be a savings of $5200.....Wow really!!!

Who needs to win the POWERBALL anyways?

So we have been at it for 4 weeks now, and I have discovered that this is indeed do-able and to date we have saved $400.

Why oh why have we not been doing this sooner?

The weekly budget will now include:

• a predetermined weekly meal plan  
• no repeated meals in the month, unless there are leftovers from the night before
• at least one meatless meal a week
• and will include one new recipe from pinterest each week