May Budget Review

My first purchase of the month was a total necessary one :)  I only spent $0.04 (saving $2.38) and I got my green bag tag $2 ECB back which I used to buy 2 Red Baron Pizzas and a bottle of Tide for $3.19 OOP (saving $20.45)

The great addition to the month is Giant credit and gift cards that I used for the following purchases and one more gallon of milk through the month so I didn't spend any money out of the budget on all of these purchases.  Total savings with online community credit + discount savings + coupons + gift cards= $32.43 savings

I had a trip to Target to get yeast because it is way cheaper at Target then Safeway, Giant or Harris Teeter (I know because I checked all of them).  Three jars were $11.02 after coupons.

Then, I went to Walmart to get seeds and spent $3.15.  I went a little overboard with all of the seeds but who can beat the pricing of $0.50 per pack!!!  I would have spent this much on one pot of basil...sadly, I would have already had basil though!!  I am trying to be patient!

By the middle of the month, I had a very low total OOP of $27.05 by the 15th.  I was pretty excited because that included two trips with my son where he picked out some treats at each store (not pictured) but my total was still super low leaving me the rest of the month to figure out what else I needed to get.

Then, my parents came to visit!  This is usually not great on the budget because they encourage more shopping and more spending as well as needing the extra food to feed more people but they greatly helped out the budget by buying a bunch of things at Target and Aldi's for us!!  My mom also took my husband and son shoe shopping at Kohl's and picked up the tab for all of those purchases.  We also took the time while they were here to plant some of our seeds to grow some interesting food indoors.  So nothing out of pocket and we made out of ahead on all the stuff that they bought.  I only spent $4.00 OOP at Aldi's when we were trying to come up exact change.  Grandma savings $81.75 (aproximate money my mother spent getting everything that my son pointed at).

I decided to go and get some deals at Harris Teeter and spent $8.49 (saving $24.71).

I only had two weeks left in the month and very little on the list that had to be purchased.  I am sure that there are other things that I could get but nothing that we desperately needed except olive oil.  Can you believe that we were out?  Good news was it was on sale at CVS so I bought two for a total of $6.18 OOP (saving $14.00).

Then, we needed some milk and they had it at Harris Teeter for an evic special but I might have gone a little crazy.  There were a lot of deals to be had including free Fiber One bars and Toaster Strudels from evic coupons.  Plus new coupons out to make the sugar super cheap and the salt, soy sauce, and frosting flavors free!!!  I grabbed a bag of bananas that were clearanced for $0.25 per pound so for $0.92, I got enough to make three loaves of banana bread!  I am going to freeze and make them when we are ready for some bread (and have some air conditioning).

I actually did two trips to get the below items which were a total of $11.82 OOP (saving $67.99).  I got a lot of things on these trips but I went a little overboard because I knew how little that I spent so far for the month and it was almost over. 

Of course, while I was preparing for this trip, I saw a rumor that Harris Teeter was having Super Doubles starting on 5/29!!  Really three days of month left and I am going to blow it on whatever deals are out there for Super Doubles!!  Well, the good news is that I only spent $57.54 in the first 4 weeks in the month!!  Leaving lots leftover to go wild and crazy at the Super Double event.

Decided on one more pre-super double trip to Harris Teeter to stock up on Cheese Its because I found the other computer and printed more coupons and I "bought" the coupon on the Kellogg's Family Rewards site.  I also "bought" the Lipton coupon on Recycle bank so that I could get the tea bags.  I broke out my first check out into two so that I wouldn't have an issue with the evic specials and the zvr coupons (because I always do and if the check out is too big, then I don't see it) and then realized that there was a sale on Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice which we were already running low on so I went through the line again and got a few Ocean Spray and a few more Cheese Its (because more Cheese Its never hurt anyone, except my budget).  Total OOP $22.15 (total savings $59.94) pictured below.

After all that shopping, I did some Super Double madness!!  I got all this stuff and a little more below in the last three days of the month to finish off a little higher on the budget then I wanted to be but how can you turn down those deals!!!

Total Monthly OOP $124.08
Total Montly Savings $498.60 (including Giant savings and gift cards)
80.1% Monthly Savings

This is a great amount of savings over the first five months of the year:

Year To Date Spending $743.62
Year To Date Savings     $2276.61

The Average Monthly OOP is $148.72 which is below my budget of $160 per month.

75.4% Total Savings YTD