it’s friday, which means time for an update on my budget & weekly goal. to be honest, i’m a tad over. well, i’ll just say it… i’m over more than a tad. i never have been the best budgetier (not a word, but i’m still using it) so i’m chalking these first few weeks up to the learning curve of it all. right? right!  i mean it couldn’t a total and complete lack of self control when it comes to all things shopping? no? well, maybe!

 i figure at least now i’m just over by fifty or so dollars and not three or four hundred. baby steps…baby steps. i have to admit my whole goal with this has been, i want to save money but i don’t want to sacrifice taste, brand, quality or preference so it’s taken some learning to figure out how to maintain the “same” standard of living but for 75% (or more!) less!

here are my most recent totals:

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um, over 78% savings! not too shabby! i’d prefer it to be up in the 80% range, but i’ll take 78% that’s for sure. hopefully by summer it’ll be where i want it! so now, how am i getting that kind of savings? well, here are a couple of my grocery runs from this week…

first up, king soopers. if you live in utah (which a lot of my readers do) think smith’s. they are both kroger stores. here is what i picked up at king soopers earlier this week:

(2) 2 liters of soda, (3) boxes of ritz, (6) boxes of hefty storage bags, (8) gatorade, (6) cans of pillsbury grands rolls, (5) bottles of bbq sauce (various flavors), (2) totino’s pizzas, (3) cans of chef boyardee pasta, (4) 5 packs of kraft macaroni & cheese (a favorite at our house!), (1) jar of ragu sauce & 2 lbs. of lean hamburger meat.

the febreeze luminary starter kit is normally close to $11.00 but it was on clearance for $4.19 and i had a $5.00 off coupon which meant that i made .80 cents purchasing that item. i actually had three coupons for this product so i purchased 2 others on another run. basically i made $2.40 by buying something i’ve wanted to try and stocking up on it. what could be better than making money buying something that you’ve wanted to try out anyway?

the 6 pack box of airheads were on sale for .69 cents and i had (6) .50 cent off coupons so each box of airheads was only .19 cents. that’s less than .04 cents an airhead. i bought these so i’d have them on hand for when the little man starts to get stir crazy at the store. i’d much rather pull a cheap treat out of my purse than grab one from the checkout stand and pay .50 cents to a dollar. (side note: of course my mom would say, “or you could just skip the treat all together” 🙂 which is true, but my grocery runs do take a little longer these days especially at check out and i’d so much rather be able to hand him a .04 cent treat and be able to think clearly and get my savings than have to leave or miss watching to see if my coupons are being scanned correctly because he’s tired and or cranky and done with the shopping excursion.)

next up the pringles, these weren’t the BEST deal but i’ve been craving them and it was a pretty good deal so i snagged them. they were on sale for 2/$3 and i had a $1 off the purchase of 2 coupon (expiring on monday) so each can was $1.

…and the gummi bears, well we are just simply addicted to them in my family and love them for movie nights so i grabbed them at 2/$2 and justified it since i’d be paying with register rewards, plus i needed a filler item in order to be able to use said register rewards. call this a frugal snack run if you will.

basically here is my purchase went down:

2 cans of pringles: $2.00
2 bags of gummi bears (or yogi bears as ti calls them): $2.00
6 boxes of of 6 ct. airheads: $1.14
febreeze: .80 cent money maker

total: $4.34

then i used (2) $2 register rewards i had from previous purchased which brought it down to: .34 cents
then add on tax and you are at .72 cents for the entire purchase! love it! of course most of it is “junk” food but i’m sure we all find ourselves buying these same types of things probably on a somewhat regular basis. even if it’s just for kid’s birthday parties/holidays/summer road trips/etc. why not only pay pennies for them???

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i mentioned in my previous post that broc and i had our “valentine’s” date on friday night. we hate fighting the crowds on the 14th and so we always plan our night a few days before or after. here is how we celebrated valentine’s for under $5!

first off for a babysitter we are lucky and have grandma & grandpa who are willing to babysit so we can have date nights, so that is how we got that for free. for those who don’t have grandma & grandpa so close, i recommend finding another couple and trading once or twice a month. one of you take friday and the other take saturday…you get the idea. i’ve been told here in colorado the going rate for a babysitter watching one child is $6-$8 an hour so i am so happy we have family close at hand! if we didn’t i’d sure be offering to trade!!!

next for dinner we received a gift card to olive garden for $25.00 at christmas and so we saved it knowing valentine’s would be here shortly. i also took along a coupon for $4.00 off two entree’s, so by the time we filled up on our soup, salad, breadsticks and entree’s, plus got my refills on my diet coke & paid a tip, we only ended up paying $1.00 out of pocket.

for the movie treats i stopped at walgreen’s the morning of and grabbed some candy on sale to use as filler items during my usual shopping run. our favorite movie snacks are gummi bears, twizzlers & milk duds! since the items were fillers and i was using register rewards the candy was all under a $1.00. for drinks, i knew i’d be getting a drink at olive garden so i just grabbed us some water bottles from our stash at home.

now for the movie. movies around here are $10.50 a ticket in the evening which means $21.00 for the two of us to see a movie. yikes! a couple months ago though general mills did a promotion where for every two boxes of cereal you purchased you could submit for a free movie ticket good at most theaters. so i waited for a sale and used some coupons and purchased each box of cereal for just .75 cents which means $1.50 a movie ticket! plus we got the cereal as well! so really i could consider the movie free, but we’ll consider the cereal free. the best part was the passes were used like cash so we were able to see “just go with it” the night it came out. no having to wait until the “no passes, no discounts” restriction was lifted.

…and there you have it, how we went out on valentine’s for under $5.00!

now ready for this? if i total up what we would have spent without coupons, discounts & a little advanced planning this date would have cost us the following:

now of course, we did have the gift card which helped a lot, but even with taking that out of the mix, we still saved $66.00 on this date! i’d say we did pretty good!

…and people say married med school students can’t afford to have any fun!

my overall point is, with a little creativity and some planning anyone can afford a date night here and there! no excuses! 🙂