Sorry to drop off the face of the planet! My sister had some complications after the delivery of my niece so I stayed with her at the hospital so her husband could watch the baby at home with their older daughter. Then….I was asked to help sew some costumes for a play that my kids are in and that has taken up more time than I originally thought so the blog got pushed to the wayside. But I have been keeping up with my Frugal February Challenge. Here is a recap of my monthly spending so far:
Groceries: $356 (This is a rough estimate. I threw out a couple of receipts so I couldn’t remember how much my non-food items were, so I calculated what I remembered)
Thrift store: $55
Eating out: $35 (I was too tired to cook one night after the hospital stay, so we grabbed pizza and ordered an extra so the kids could have leftovers the next day)
Total spent so far: $446
Money remaining for the rest of the month: $54
Since this is our last week of February, I am hoping I can stay in my budget and just pick up a few basics to round out our meals for the week. I have really noticed the increase in prices of food lately! Two troubling things I have noticed are: 1) The boxes/packages are getting smaller while the prices are staying the same. Case in point, we drink a lot of Crystal Lite and I noticed now the containers only have 5 packets of drink mix where they use to have 6 in each box. I find this very sneaky of the companies!! OR 2) The boxes/packages are staying the same size while the prices have risen considerably. I can actually deal with this strategy better because I feel it’s more honest to raise the price instead of gaslighting you into thinking nothing has changed except you are consuming more maybe. **Not sure if this trend will keep on or if we might see the prices lower as Covid slowly begins to disappear from our day to day lives. It is definitely not cheap to feed a family right now. Watching the grocery ads and utilizing all the digital coupons/deals I can at Kroger have become even more critical in feeding my family as affordably as possible.
Some Frugal Things we have been doing lately:
-Collecting bugs ourselves to feed our Venus fly trap. Since I will not pay to buy bugs to feed our plant, we have been scavenging any proper sized bug we can find to feed the little darlings. (Emma has named the plant Jaws and it is very fitting, I must say)
-Ben and I did a video review for a portable microscope and will hopefully receive a $30 rebate once it has been approved by the company. Easy money!
-My dad had picked up two deer from family members who did not want to process the meat recently and has kindly shared the meat with us. Beef prices are astronomical right now.
-I have been stocking up on snacks, frozen pizzas, and cheese lately at Kroger. Around the Super Bowl they usually have good deals on these types of food and luckily, this year the prices were very similar to the previous year (which is a shocker!)
-I have found the cutest planters at the thrift store lately. So far, I’ve picked up a monkey pot, a weird face planter (ha), a coffee mug pot, and several small ceramic ones that have livened up my plant collection greatly. As you can imagine, any novelty pot (but especially the large ones) can be really expensive, so I usually save at least 75% off the original price by buying them used. Yay!
How is your month going?? Do u think I can stay on budget for February?
The Thrifty Educator 