Trying to be thrifty

I haven't written a post besides a pregnancy check in in quite some time. My friend Lauren over at Our Little All-American Family is a financially savvy momma and she has been posting tips on how to live more frugally. She has inspired me to take a closer look at our finances. With baby #2 on the way, finances are going to become tighter between daycare, diapers, etc. We have been putting extra money on our mortgage each month to try to pay that down more quickly plus all of the extra costs we are going to be faced with, it's time to start being more aware of our spending. 

Food: This is the area I chose to focus on first. Bill and I have never been very good at making shopping lists aside from the items that we were out of. We would grab a few things for meals in our weekly shopping, but run to the store close to our house to get items for dinner, or take out, multiple times a week. I've decided to start meal planning. It took some convincing but Bill has agreed with me. He's used to eating whatever sounds good on that particular day and deciding our meals a week in advance was foreign to him. 

We discuss meals on Saturday and Sunday for the week and I go to the store to buy the ingredients on Sunday. We've decreased our food bill by A LOT. Between meal planning and buying food for Bill to take lunches with him. We have cut our food bill by almost 40%. Bill is a delivery driver and works long days. He would grab a coffee before work (still does, that was our compromise) then stop once or twice for food throughout the day spending between $10 and $15 each work day (4 days per week). Now I buy sandwich meat, bread, and snacks for him at the store weekly at a cost of less than $20 per week. 

One positive side effect we didn't plan on, was the fact that having a meal plan takes away a lot of stress each night. We know what we're eating and one of us will make the meal without the back and forth conversation of "what do you want for dinner?" "I don't know, what do you want?" There's less time spend running our for ingredients and more time spent as a family. 

This has been GREAT for our finances and good for our family too.