Staying the Course

Joining in on Money Saving Mom's Financial Shape in 2008 Monthly Checkup! Last month I wrote about the beginnings of our Total Money Makeover. May was a really good month for us due in large part to our economic stimulus check, which came at the beginning of the month. We sent our entire stimulus check along with regular payment to our current snowball debt - our van loan. And thanks to an extra pay period in May, we were able to send another sizable snowball to the loan at the end of the month.

We're down to about $2400 left on the van loan. And now with the extra $600 each month we will have with Ashleigh no longer attending preschool (she'll be attending a free summer program at her new elementary school), we should have some really serious snow to sling! We're hoping to be done with the van loan in another two to three months.

That was the good news, now the not so good news. The grocery budget continues to be a challenge. I'm finding that each week we're spending an additional $20 above the weekly $75 budgeted amount. I think a combination of things are contributing to this. The increase in food prices, a change in my cooking style (moving to more from scratch cooking with fresh fruits and veggies) and lack of food stockpile. When we started our budget, I partly suspended my stockpile shopping to focus on getting what was needed to pull meals together for the week. I didn't really have much of a food stockpile to begin with - unless you count mayo and mustard LOL! Thankfully, my HBA stockpile is better stocked due in large part to CVS and Walgreens. I still stock up on freebies when I can, but there isn't much room for stockpiling on a grand scale. So maybe I'm feeling the effects of not being adequately stocked. Dave and I have thrown around the idea of increasing the grocery budget, but I so wanted to make this work by spending less.