Can I SAVE $$ on groceries?

Since I have been laid off from work I have been working to try to budget our meals better and figure out how to save money on groceries. In doing this process I have found that there is a lot of money to be saved it you can just budget and be somewhat frugal! Frugal is a word that has never been in my vocabulary but starting now it is! I decided to make this blog worthwhile by sharing some of my findings, ideas, suggestions, etc. I want feedback to know if what I am providing is helpful or not so please comment and let me know!

First let me say that I am the most unfrugal(is that a word)person you will ever met. I have always been spoiled, gotten what I wanted, and pretty much ever needed or wanted for anything. So to use the terms saving, penny penching, coupon clipping, frugal…WOW that is way out of my vocabulary! I have started very slowly and hope to turn this into something BIG! Welcome to my PERSONAL CHALLENGE! My challenge is to plan, save, and just try new things! Let’s see how I will do!!!

First I decided that I needed to take an inventory of exactly what we had in our house as far as food so we inventory the pantry, the outside freezer and everything in the inside refrigerator and freezer. Once I did that I decided to come up with a monthly meal plan-YES I am planning our meals out a month in advance to try to save some $$. If anyone wants me to email them my monthly meal plan spreadsheet let me know and I will forward it on to you. My next thing was to figure out what I needed to buy at the grocery store. As I was doing this I starting researching Angel Food Ministries, http://www.angelfoodministries.com/, to figure out what kinds of deals they have. Angel Food is a Christian Organization that distributes food on monthly basis to those that sign up for it. It is NOT any kind of low income based program. It is for any family that is interested in it. I had never done it so we decided to try it for once month to see if we liked it. They have many different packages and we chose two of them. We spent $53 and got what I consider a good amount of food. Here is what we got this month:

My next goal is to start trying to save/clip coupons. I have found some great websites to help with that. Once of the sites I found was http://www.cellfire.com/. On this website you can pick coupons you want and then add them to your Kroger card. Also on the iphone they have an application where you can see what coupons you added to your cellfire so that it can help you shop. Another site that does something similar is http://www.print.coupon.com/

These are just a few things that I have found to being helping me save, save, save.

Please let me hear your comments. If you have things you want me to research and find out more about them let me know!!!!!!