Annie and I use the envelope system for our spending. We put out budget in envelopes and when the envelope is empty, we stop spending.
It works for us.
The problem this week is that we only had $80 in our envelope for our weekly shopping. We're a family of five and that's roughly $200 less than the average family of five would spend per week on food, deodorant, shampoo, toilet paper, soap, laundry detergent and whatever else you might buy at the store.
We use coupons and that helps. This week it helped a lot. Coop and I had $120 worth of items but we only spent $40. We actually have extra money to put into next week's envelope.
I've heard a few people ask how to save money on groceries and other items and I'll throw out a few links that are fairly easy to use.
Shortcuts allows you to load you shopper's card with electronic coupons. This is a great site if you don't like carrying coupons around - and even better if you do like coupons (because they double)
Cellfire is just like shortcuts..but it's spelled differently
Kroger now has electronic coupons that you can load onto your card.
swagbucks is the site I use for my home page. I use it like google and get free amazon gift cards every few weeks or months. This works well for a presents fund. Sometimes those creep up on me and this gives me a little side electronic envelope.
There are tons of sites that give hints on what the hot deals are - and if you combine those deals with the coupons you have...and the coupons double...and you have electronic coupons on top of that...pretty soon you'll be able to buy and sell Donald Trump three times over.
Ultimately you can spend 1-2 hours a week cutting and organizing coupons - and that can easily save you $50-$100 a week.(depending on how much you're spending that week). I've actually had the store give me money for shopping a couple of times. You won't save $100 if you're just getting milk.
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