A Brief Update

In my last post I talked about my goal to start menu planning and couponing. Well, I am happy to say that almost 3 weeks later, we have stuck to it. The first week I made apple dijon pork loin, hamburgers, and tomato basil soup. We ended up having leftovers from all of those. The second week I made ranch chicken and salisbury steak. We were supposed to have spaghetti that week, but our church ended up having a spaghetti dinner for a fundraiser on Wednesday, so we moved it to next week. So far this week we have had shepherd's pie and tilapia. I am actually quite excited that this has worked. I hope to post some pictures and recipes soon, but most of the pictures aren't on my computer yet, and I only have a few minutes.

As far as couponing is concerned, I am quite pleased with how this is going, also. I went to Kroger the other day and saved 41% plus got a $5.00 gift card. This ended up making it closer to 46%. I feel like I am slowly learning the tricks of the trade. It takes quite a bit of time, but I think it will become quicker now that I have everything organized.

I hope to figure out whether the menu planning actually saved us money at the end of the month. Our problem right now is that we are still eating out quite a bit, and we aren't always cheap when we do. The other problem is that when you first start couponing, you have to build-up your supply of staple items when they go on sale. This adds extra costs at first. It will be interesting to see what happens. I was telling a friend the other day that I have really made it a game (I know I'm weird). If you know me, you know that I am very competitive. It helps make it fun, and I think it also helps me stick with it.