If you found my link from Nate’s blog over at CFHusband, welcome! I haven’t been here too long, so there isn’t a whole lot to read, but if you like what you do see, keep checking back. If you’d leave me a comment with a link, I’d love to look at your website.
If you didn’t come here from Nate’s blog, you really ought to check it out. His wife has cystic fibrosis and had a lung transplant a few months back, not too long after giving birth to their (very premature) daughter. Both his wife and daughter are doing amazingly well now. It’s an awesome story demonstrating how God can take really tough stuff and use it to benefit many, many people. Because of Nate, Tricia, and Gwyneth, countless people have learned (more) about organ donation, cystic fibrosis, and premature birth. Check it out! (Nate is also a talented photographer and shares many of his photos on his blog.)
Categories: life · links
Tagged: life, links
Mrs. Micah has given her readers a challenge: “Find one step you can take to make your financial system better or more organized.” We all have areas of our budget that need improvement, and we’re no exception. Our grocery budget category often causes us problems and needs some “fixing”. This month, I’ll work on making our grocery budget “work” more efficiently for us – first by identifying what the problem is and then by coming up with solutions to try out.
First, the problem(s): We overspend our grocery budget pretty much every month (Husband says that means we have it budgeted wrong and he’s probably right. However, I am ever-hopeful that we can spend less on food than we do, but it’s really not practical at this point). This is due to a couple of things: 1) We (I) usually spend a lot on groceries at the very beginning of the month. We’re running low on basics at that point and I often find good sales on things we use. 2) Much of what I buy takes some bit of forethought, planning, and preparation and with our schedules, we can’t always use the food I’ve bought in the time we have to prepare it so we end up eating out.
Now, the (possible) solutions: 1) Instead of viewing our grocery budget as $400 per month, I could break it down and limit us to either $200 every two weeks or $100 per week. Doing that should help fix the problem of spending a big chunk of the budget at the beginning of the month. 2) Husband and I could sit down and come up with meal ideas that we find to be a good balance between healthy/fresh and convenient. From there, I will have a better idea of what to buy when I get groceries. Husband often tells me to buy easy to prepare food, but that’s so vague to me that I end up getting my usual stuff and then we’re stuck again. 3) We could also plan a “cooking day” where we cook up a bunch of meals for the week/month and then freeze or otherwise store them as appropriate. While I like this idea, it just isn’t convenient for us right now.
We’ll probably have to wait until August, or even September to see how these ideas really work, because the next two weeks are super busy for me and then I’ll be out of town for two weeks. We can still try and work the ideas in a bit, but we won’t be able to really test them out until mid-August or even September. Feel free to check in with me and ask how it’s going, though!
Categories: budget · challenge · food
Tagged: budget, challenge, food
