Happy End of the Month

Make sure you print any printable coupons because the end of the month is the magical time when they all go away and new ones come up with the new month.  It would be sad to miss it just because the calendar flipped to the next month.

I hope that you had a great month and stayed on track with any budgetting and meal planning goals.  Do you want the good news or the bad news?  Only kidding, I think that it was good news all the way around for me.  The monthly budget came in just a little over but included $89 of boneless chicken and $30 of medicine for the sick boys at my house.  I don't usually count medicine but you cut down on the out of pocket costs, I used CVS gift card, ECBs and coupons.  It is hard to figure out how much was out of pocket because then I ended up paying for other things that I could have used the money for like diapers.  I did really great with the meal planning for the month and I am starting to work on next months plan to see what food we are going to need at the store in the coming months to refill the pantry and freezer.  It really helps at the end of a tough day to know that the food is waiting in the fridge so that you aren't sitting there wondering what you are going to eat.  It makes it much less stressful with a sick young one around and an exhusted mom (that's me) who would rather go to sleep then eat (still really wish that diet would work but it never does).  If you still aren't doing a meal plan, I highly recommend it.  It helps when you are in the grocery store to not pick up things that you don't need and it helps make sure you do have the things you can't make the dinner without :)  No more last minute trips to the store because you are missing one ingredient and coming back with $40 of groceries because you were starving or delaying dinner.  We are now eating every night around 6 pm instead of when I was working and trying to figure out what was for dinner and we were lucky to eat at 7:30 pm.... or when we were childless which was more like 8:30 pm.  I hope that your month went the way you wanted and you got done everything you wanted.  Looking forward to February!!