Egh..... money....I have a love hate relationship with money...I love it, but am rubbish with it. Luckily for me I married an accountant, it's a blessing and a nightmare, without my husband I would be in a financial mess, I find it impossible to budget and when I have money love to spend it. However it can also be like being married to your bank manager at times....
With me having been on maternity leave (government funded only) and now starting the business up money is very tight, like... size 6 jeans when you are a size 16 - not that I would know what a size 6 would feel like! So I have to do our food shop on a budget, we have £150 a month food money for the 2 of us. It is near impossible to eat healthily and on a budget especially when you see the cheap food (which is full of rubbish) but a huge family pack is £3, however...we just about manage.
I used to shop at Waitrose pre baby - not all the time but fairly often, I now shop at Lidl and Asda. Actually I am often surprised at Lidl - it's still not Waitrose but it's not too bad and some of the things they do are really good, I just don't think I will ever get over having milk on one side of the aisle and then virtually a combine harvester on the other!
So how do I shop on a budget? Planning, you have to have a good food plan in place. That way you know EXACTLY what you need to buy and when you are going to be using it. I used to just buy a load of meat and a load of veg and cupboard things and then cook on a day to day basis but it's just not feasible as half the time you don't actually have all the ingredients you need. Also I don't know about anyone else but I struggle coming up with new food ideas every week off the top of my head where as planning, you get a few recipe books, write down the menu for the week and job done.
What do you do to shop on a budget? Do you manage to avoid the wine aisle? Have to say that is where I struggle and where my budget plan can go really wrong!!!
Here is a meal planner/shopping list I found online which is pretty useful..... you are welcome!!!
I can totally relate to this !! I graduated from school a year ago, and was Lucky enough to find a great job right after ! I have like a zillion personal projects buzzing in my head, but over the last year, I have really been struggling with money, unable to make appropriate savings. So when I ealised that after a full year of work I hadn't saved up half of what I had set out to save, I decided to take matters into my hands and be really strict with myself ! First, I downloaded this really cool application called Quick Money Recorder, where I entered a monthly budget per category (groceries, shopping, travel, so as to be able to save up more money. So far (its been only two weeks), I can reall feel a change in the way I spend, because I find that writing down my expenses at the end of each day, and seeing what I have left in my budget, helps me stay cautious of how much I spend and what I spend it on. We'll see if that still works in 3 months !!
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