Life Lately: Savings Challenge – The Verdict: Success or Fail?

So… I am so far behind with all of this – now remembering why it is super hard to get anything done with a newborn… I am so used to getting up early and taking care of as much as I can before the kids get up. I now find myself sleeping in until like 7:30am – 8:00am when the baby decides to wake up!

I wanted to share with you all the results of our Savings Challenge in August. For those of you who are new here, my husband and I took out $800 in an envelope to use solely for food and grocery. We were honestly spending well over $1,000 on food over the previous months and we could not believe it, so we decided to challenge ourselves to try and save $100 from that envelope every month. You can read more about it here.

Success or Fail?

Well, it was honestly a total success in the fact that we were WAY more conscious of what we were spending every month. Now, we had two instances that set us back from being totally successful – when our son was born I literally could not move from the couch, so a couple nights we ordered food and had it delivered through Door Dash. We also had family drop off food and send us a gift card to use towards food which was super sweet! My husband also was traveling to a friend’s wedding and that chewed into the budget a bit as well! Those two things were out of the norm for us so we were only left with $3.67 in the envelope and weren’t able to save that $100 that we were shooting for! While it wasn’t a “complete” success, I am definitely going to continue doing this every month and here are some tips/solutions that helped make it work:

Physically in control
When you put everything on your debit or credit card, it is “virtual” money and something I wasn’t physically in charge of so to speak. I would just swipe my card and that was the end of that. Being in charge of our money and basically having to deal with what was physically in my hand was something new for me and completely eye opening. I actually couldn’t believe how much eating out really was for us and how frequently I would do it.

Meal planning
When you plan ahead what you are going to make for dinner and even lunches every week, that makes a huge difference. I actually found we were wasting less food because I was really only purchasing what was needed for that week. Which leads us to my next point…

The importance comparing store ads
On top of the meal planning, I found it really helpful to compare all grocery ads when I received them and base my meals around what sales were going on and/or what sides I was planning on making if I already had something in our freezer that I wanted to make. Like I mentioned in my mid-month update post, I like to shop twice a week (Monday or Tuesdays and Thursday or Friday) and really try to hit only 2 different stores per week. Comparing prices really helped me build out the next strategy I used…

The importance of having a detailed grocery list

I actually could not believe what I huge help this was to me. After comparing ads, I would mark down the price next to each item and then I knew what my projected cost at the store would be. Occasionally I would throw in a buffer of $15-$20 so I didn’t feel like I was depriving myself, ha. Once we got close to month end, I was WAY stricter on how I wanted to utilize the remaining cash and really didn’t allow myself that buffer.

Even having the list super detailed was completely eye opening because I could not believe the amount of random items that would get thrown into the cart. I was forced to really think about what I was buying and how necessary it truly was. We weren’t being wasteful with food and our money too.

So, needless to say, we are going to continue to use the cash envelope system for the month of September as well. I found this to be EXTREMELY helpful and we ended up saving at a minimum $250, which month after month, is a huge win in my book! I hope this is something helpful for you!

Follow me on Instagram @lisastwocents
Follow my blog with Bloglovin