Monthly Spending Summary (Jan.)

Starting a new year of budgeting is always kind of fun and kind of scary. It's fun because their is a whole new year ahead of me and it's fun to think of all that I will be able to save. And it's scary because I wonder how I'll do and if I'll be able to keep in budget.

I had previously mentioned that I was thinking about dropping my monthly grocery budget to $180 a month, but after discussing it with my husband we decided to just leave it where it is. He had been reading a number of articles recently that were speculating that grocery prices were going to rise quite a bit this year so we thought maybe we should plan for that.

This year, for a variety of reasons, we decided to "wipe the slate clean" so to speak and start our budget out at $0. So the extra money I had in my grocery budget from last year is going to go towards some meat we are purchasing inexpensively from some farmer friends of ours.

Anyway, here's the breakdown of my monthly spending. I didn't do as good as I had hoped but I feel okay with it nonetheless. I usually don't spend anywhere near my budgeted amount in Jan. and am able to set quite a bit aside for canning and freezing costs that we have later in the year. However I am hoping that Feb. and March will be lower spending months and will allow me to get ahead a bit and save up for my canning costs.

Monthly Grocery/Household Budget: $190

Total Spent: $198.82
Total Saved with Coupons/Sales: $551.47

Week 1: $0.99
Week 2: $57.45
Week 3: $74.87
Week 4: $65.51

Ending Monthly Balance: -8.82
I went over budget by this amount. Not a good idea!