How to Budget $25/week on Groceries

The first thing my fiancee and I learned as we moved into our own apartment was that food gets expensive. Especially because we could easily blow $200 per week on just eating out. Which is horrible budgeting and it doesn't help us pay our bills and our debt. So in order for us to get our finances together, we came up with a budget on food that we have implemented since July 2017.

Several months later, I can tell you that this is a tried and true method and we have saved $100's just by following our basic budget plan. This post is here to help you in your endeavor to save money with still obtaining the nutrition needed for your family.
This is set for my fiance and I, however, we do still have leftover food from these meals and could very likely be updated for at least one more person. In the post, I'll go over what worked best for the two of us and what we started out doing and what we decided to do differently. Here's HOW TO BUDGET $25/WEEK ON GROCERIES.

Making a plan and sticking to it:

We get easily distracted whenever we go shopping for food that we tend to buy too much and it ends up going to waste or we'll call up pizza hut and have the pizza delivered to us. But if you are an avid pizza lover like myself, you'll learn very quickly that pizza can be upwards of $30 including the tip. So, we decided to try out $20/week on food and we would have to actually make food. (What? No...ewwww. Just kidding, but really, who has time for that??)

The $20/week worked well and we'd spend only $80/month on groceries but we always found ourselves running short a day or two before our shopping day. So we bumped it up $5 dollars and we have done well with sticking to the budget and lasting the extra two days.

List out ahead of time:

We keep a tiny $2 white board on our refrigerator and any time we run out of something we'll write it on the board. Or if there's a new meal we want to try, we'll write down the ingredients that we need. Basics like Flour, oil, and Sugar don't count in our budget just because you can buy a large amount of it and you don't need to replace it until after a month or so. AND that's if you use it daily.

By writing all of our ingredients ahead of time, we can make decisions based on what is most important to buy and what can be saved for the next week, since we shop once a week. AND shopping once a week ensures that we don't need to blow our budget to buy everything that we need, because we can just wait a week to pick it up.

When it is grocery time, we'll snap a picture of the list or rewrite it on a sticky note and when we go shopping, we can cross each item off. It also feels to go cross each item off of the list because it feels as if we are doing something with our day and getting things done. I'll also write down each price and subtract it from the $25 dollars.

Breaking down the Budget:

Here's an example of what I mean:

As you can see, I have a list of what I'm buying and as I get each item in my basket, I write down the price and subtract from my initial $25. Once we have everything that we need, then we can decide what else we could pick up. 

In this case, I started with everything except the meat because I didn't know how much meat I could buy. With pork being $1.99/lb, and having $9.68 left over, we could get a decent sized nearly 5-lb pork. Which we could cut up and store in the freezer to have later. OR we could pick up that juice we always wanted to try or grab another type of cereal, or maybe we want to have some fruit as well with our meal. Who knows? The extra amount is up to you and however you decide to spend it, ALWAYS USE THE AMOUNT YOU SET ASIDE. 

Because if not, you'll remember that extra thing you wanted to buy but now the next week is around, so maybe you decide to go over the budget for this week because you didn't last week. Before you know it, you aren't even on budget anymore and you already spent an extra $50 without meaning to. TRUST ME, just stick to the budget. It's easier after you're already in routine.

Research Groceries BEFOREHAND

There was this one time when Steven and I were out shopping at Aldi's and the meat was significantly higher than the week before. We decided that we were also going to grab some water bottles but figured that the meat and the H2O would be cheaper at Walmart. However, we didn't know for certain. When we arrived to Walmart, lo and behold!!....it was the same price. So we just wasted gas driving across town rather than looking up prices beforehand or even with our smartphones.

However, it is generally better to get regular, non-special meat at Walmart when the meat is discounted because it's "old". As long as the meat looks and smells fine, I promise, it's fine. I once got a roast for half the price it would have been just because it didn't sell before "sell-by date". And, It tasted lovely!

Overall, looking up shopping tips on Pinterest, Coupon.com, and several blogging sites can help you save money and by doing at least ten minutes of research, you'll be all the wiser for looking!

Reward yourself(ves)!!

After a couple of weeks of making breakfast, lunch, and dinner, it gets tiring always making something. So, you should reward yourselves for sticking to the budget with that date night you haven't had in awhile. Or maybe going out and doing something you haven't done in a long time such as go to the movies and splurging on the popcorn! Or it could even be a rewarding night in the homestead with pizza delivered from Pizza Hut. 

Whatever it may be, make it worth the while to Budgeting on $25/week because it's hard work. It definitely gets easier over time as you begin to recognize prices and can tell when you've reached your limit without any basic math at all!

But rewarding yourself helps reinforce that what you're doing, the time you are setting aside for grocery shopping and budgeting to, are in fact good things to be doing and much better to save money for bills and/or debts you're paying. 

I hope you've enjoyed this YAC! Please leave comments below on what budget techniques you've used that help and which ones that don't!

Thank you!

8 Ways to Save Money With a Small Income

Whether you just opened your Pay Stub at the end of the grueling two week work-period and realize "Oh shit, I have no money!", or you are in between jobs and are living dollars a day, Saving Money when you have none, can be extremely hard work. Especially when the money you do have needs to go to bills, it can be extremely hard to scrap some for food.

And food is not always cheap.

We've all been there at one time or another, or maybe we are there now. Living paycheck to paycheck, just barely, and hoping that someday soon we'll be out of the dark abyss of debt and bills.

But until then, I've got a list for you specifically for these situations! All tried and true by yours truly!

This is:

8 Ways to Save Money With a Small Income

It's important to understand that one can't just do nothing and save money, you have to be willing to put a little bit of effort into wanting to save money whether it be research on how, or downloading a few simple apps.

#1. There's an App for that!

There's literally, not figuratively, but actually LITERALLY AN APP FOR EVERYTHING!! Whether you have trouble with budgeting what you spend, balancing all of your accounts, or finding money-saving apps, I promise, IT EXISTS!! A couple such apps that exist are:

"Prism Bills & Personal Finance" is rated with a 4.6 Stars as of September 2nd. You can hook up all of your bills, including Netflix, credit cards, banks, etc.  You can input all of your bills and keep track of what you need to pay and how much you have already paid. It's sweet and simple.

"Mint: Budget, Bills, Finance" is also another free app in which you can also budget everything you need in one place. This app however can also add bills such as your education debt, your gas, groceries, and you get to see your credit score while your are paying bills. Don't be discouraged if you credit score is low or average, being able to see where you are can help you build up while you are paying off your bills. This in turn, will help build your credit slowly.

"Pocket Points" is an app for college students who are looking to get deals with anything, but mainly food. Pocket points is set up so that while the student is in class or on campus, they open the app and 'lock their phone' to obtain points while they are off of their phone. These points can then be spent on "Buy One Get One Free"'s at Dairy Queen, Sonic, and other places. It's really simple and it encourages the student to stay off of their phone while in class.

#2. Account text/SMS Reminders

My fiancee has setup every account he has, from all of our bank/credit accounts to our payment accounts, such as our energy bill, phone bill, and the likes, so that he gets text messages every day, EVERY DAY, at 7:15ish am, so he can be reminded about how much we have, and how much we owe. It's really nice because we can control what we spend where, without having to get complicated and guess how much is in our bank.

Knowing exactly how much you have, sets you up to know exactly how much you are going to spend. If you are a frivolous spender like myself, you'll think twice about spending what you don't have. Or, if you find yourself in a better week than usual, you might be able to treat yourself to a nice dinner out.

Speaking of food...

#3. Cook all meals, NO EATING OUT/FAST FOOD

This one, my fiancee and I had such a hard time with because we are college students, and college kids usually don't have the resources need to be able to cook. In the dorms, we aren't equipped with a stove and a fridge to store food to eat. However, there were definitely other alternatives to cooking on the stove that we could have utilized and would have been way Healthier For Ourselves, And Healthier On Our Budgets!

There are so may unique recipes online, especially on Pinterest!!

However, we now live in our own apartment off campus and we have saved hundreds of dollars a month on not eating out!! How crazy is that?? We spend about $25/week on groceries. If you don't believe me, my future self will write another post about how that is possible to do so! (Hint: Aldi's works wonders!!)

#4. Selling Crap You Don't Need/Use

There's a few quotes that makes this so much easier for me to sell extra stuff I just lying around but here's a couple:

"Your home is LIVING SPACE, NOT STORAGE SPACE." Francine Jay

"He who buys what he does not need, steals from himself." Swedish Proverb

Both of these are so fricken true!! When my mother was cleaning out her horde of a storage room, there were so many things that I set aside so I could go through; books, board games, art books, arts & crafts, but honestly, I didn't need any of these things. The last time I had knitted was so long ago, I had forgotten my knitting stuff were in there.

Trust me when I say this, if you don't want to get rid of whatever is holding you back from getting rid of it, you have a couple of options:

     You can pick it up again, reference to my knitting, and get rid of all the yarn/arts&crafts you have..

     You can imagine it as someone who actually has an interest in it and will use it for good purposes and you are preventing it...

or  You can imagine that it's holding you back from a cleaner, simpler life.

The choice is yours..and the choice of extra income or your stuff just sitting there...I like the extra couple of bucks better!

#5. Tracking your expenses

I would have put this up higher to remind you guys that budgeting your income is the best, but sometimes, we don't really know where our money is going even after setting up an income plan!

So what you should do instead, is keep all the receipts, then after a week has gone by, highlight the days and the cost of what you bought/ate/drank/etc. After you do that for your week of receipts, you take a piece of paper, write down the weeks days (mon-sun) and under each day, write the total about of money spent on food, gas, bills, and other.

You should be able to see very quickly where your money is going. If it's going to food, refer to #3. If it goes to random knick knacks, or bullet journals you're never going to use regularly, then refer to #4. If it's gas or bills, I'm going to explain how to fix that with the point.

#6. Readjusting your lackless expenses

Lackless expenses are the items you have to buy to live comfortably, such as tampons, pads, dog food, gas, new work clothes, etc. These are items you can't wait to buy.

If your money is getting soaked up by your car, you might want to see if you can trade your auto friend to something with better gas mileage. My fiance's and my first big purchase together was a car. We had to give my car back to my parents since my brother's car broke down, and we traded my fiance's car for a car that had working A/C and heat, locked properly, and wasn't breaking down every other week. (Literally, there were times we thought we were stranded 30 minutes from home and had no way to drive back!)

Readjusting your lackless expenses will be easier than trying your bills. However, BOTH ARE POSSIBLE! You might be required to think outside of the box. Such as buying tampons and food with coupons instead of purchasing without, or buying dog food when it's on sale.

#7. Using Coupons wisely upon purchasing

I'm not like other people who will tell you that couponing has changed my life. Simple fact, it can if you let it but it might not be a good change. Couponing is definitely time-consuming but it's not an automatic reward. COUPONING IS NOT BASED ON TIME=REWARD. THE MORE AMOUNT OF TIME YOU PUT IN, DOES NOT MEAN YOU'LL SAVE MORE MONEY. You might actually end up spending more than you have.

When I coupon, it's not like extreme couponing, I won't be able to get $2,000 worth of food for $1. It's not like that usually because then companies don't make the money they are wanting to. 

What to look for when you are couponing, should start with your grocery list first. If I'm buying tampons and dog food, they are always super cheap at the Dollar Store/Dollar General to begin with, then I look for coupons on dog food and tampons, there usually always there and it helps save you a couple of bucks to about $10.

We could fill up half a tank with $10! It's the little things that matter. So don't get confused and bedazzled by all of the coupons. ONLY GET WHAT YOU NEED TO GET. Just because it's a Buy One Get One (BOGO), does not mean you should go out of your way, and out of your budget to buy the BOGO cereal boxes that you don't need/eat. (This is just an example, if you eat cereal like myself, go for it. It's a good deal.) I just mean, don't waste time and money on items you really don't need just because it's a good deal.

#8. Looking into Cutting your Bills in HALF!

If it's possible, look at how much you are spending for that unlimited data plan for your family, or see how much energy you are using while no one is home. If your bills are pretty pricey and there's a definite possibility in making sure all the lights & electricals are unplugged while your home, or switching your plan to a limited data plan because it turns out that your family only uses 5GBs, or 10GBs, in your cycle, YOU CAN EASILY SAVE $100s BY JUST CUTTING IT BY A LITTLE BIT. It doesn't have to be cut in half but it's a definite GOAL to save so much more.

You can also invest into Energy Saving gadgets that will save you $100s-$1000s in the long run, such as Nest. My professor invested in Nest, it's an easy installation that replaces your thermostat and you hook it up to your phones. It times when you are in or out of the house and it adjusts the temperature so that you only pay for the cool/hot air when you are home.

Thanks for reading!!

Please post a comment about other ways you can save 

Pinterest Challenge

Hello all!



And welcome back to The Young Adult's Club!
I've come up with a great idea (because I honestly have been thinking about this all the time) and I'm going to begin a Pinterest Challenge.

My idea for The Pinterest Challenge begins like this,

• I'll set up a variety of rules and regulations, as well as a reward system for each challenge that is completed and a progress page on my blog.
• Since Pinterest has billions of unique pins, I'll have to keep to a timeline (Hours/Days) of individual mini challenges or "levels" and then I'll also have to have a lengthy timeline (weeks/month) for big challenges or something similar to "Boss levels".
• I'll set up four Pinterest boards for everyone's access, in which they will be labelled "Levels" and "Boss Levels", then "Completed Levels" and "Completed Boss Levels" as well as Youtube videos for each of my completed/attempted challenges.
• To ensure that I follow all of the written rules and regulations, I'll have a PDF available for my readers/watchers/supporters to be able to comment on any of my challenges whether or not if I followed each rule and regulation. So be watching!
• For each and every one of my Youtube videos, I'll also have another blog posted and each of my accounts will be intertwined so everyone can be able to press onto links to get to where they need to be to watch, read, and see upcoming pin "levels".

I'm excited to see what I can accomplish! I'm currently writing the rules and regulations and will soon upload it online!

Thanks and I hope you enjoyed my YAC!