Grocery Savings for October

My efforts towards saving money has taken a backseat and I have not been working the sales or the coupons. I believe in my last post I commented that I was going to work on this..Well, not much improvement has occured.

However, today I have jumped back on the coupon wagon again. I hope that I can stay on and keep on riding!!!

We found out last week that both of my daughters will be in braces next year. I need to make my grocery coupon shopping a priority again!!!

For October, we spent $631.00 and only saved 75 dollars. This worked out to a weekly grocery average of $157/week. This number is less than I was spending about a year and half ago. I remember when we were spending close to 200/week on groceries and came home feeling like we didn't buy very much.

Since there were very few coupons cut last month, I know that this is higher than it should be. Also due to time restraints, there were many Sam's club shops (which means no coupons -uggh!!) and last minute fast food runs.

With the braces coming and the reflection of the amount of fast food that was eaten in our house, I have decided to REALLY get our budget back in order and to go back to cooking dinners again for our family!

There was a moment last week that really resonated with me. One evening after a long day at work, there was no desire to fix a meal. We have been functioning on the help yourself method. With 2 almost teens in the house and 2 adults, we have been allowing everyone to fix their own dinner. Well, one of my daughters decided to fix french fries for dinner. The shocking part to me was that this was okay with me because I didn't have to fix dinner. Later that evening after reflecting, I realized how sad our eating had become.

The sad eating story continues...In the car on the way to drop off my daughters at school, I shared with them my new goal to make healthy eating a priority again for our family. My other daughter (not the one who had the french fry dinner) said, "Mom, it is okay. We eat a healthy school lunch. I always have a vegetable and a fruit." I had to agree with her that this was great that she was eating from the pyramiad but we all know school lunches aren't always as healthy as they seem. I knew that I really needed to get this together.

Another thing that I have noticed with my lack of "real meal" preparation is that we have strayed away from the family dinner table. I know that having children in middle school with lots of activities that the "family meals" are harder to coordinate but they need to become a priority again.

So wish me luck as I try to keep in mind that even though we are busy, my families nutritional health is important but so is the time together that we spend together at the dinner table!