Where is the Money Going?
By: Kathy Danner
Where is the Money going?
Start to take inventory with a Baby Step. Analyze you last grocery store
receipt. If the concept of a full blown budget and tracking every dollar
is overwhelming, start with the baby step of analyzing your most recent
grocery store receipt. This is a great way to start to take inventory of
where the money is going. Your grocery and drugstore bills are the
easiest to control and the best place to feel some immediate savings.
1) Start by getting out a red marker and circling the convenience items.
For example: ready made pizzas, complete stir fry or crock-pot meals,
pre-cooked chicken strips or meat balls.
2) Next, in a different color pen, circle any “end cap” items that you
threw in the cart that were not on your original list. Things like
powdered donuts that were screaming your name, light up lollypops, or an
adorable ladybug garden decoration.
3) Give yourself a star next to any coupon deductions you had at the end
of the receipt. What percentage of items were left un-circled? Most of
those un-circled items were probably staples. Things like sugar, flour,
milk, raw meat, produce etc. The goal it to have more and more of these
items and less of the circled items. You also want as many stars as
possible.
I believe that there are different seasons of life that offer different
incentives for saving money like trying to become debt free, live on one
income, or save for your future. Therefore, I divide saving money into
three levels: Crawlers, Walkers, and Runners.
Here’s the breakdown by type of saver:
Crawler: You might have had less than 10% of your
items starred with a coupon deduction, and half your other items were
staples. This level of savings is better than none and will at least
save you the cost of tax if you live in a state that taxes food.
Walker: You should have purchased 25% of your items
with coupons and had only one or two ready made convenience items. At
this level, you will start to save $50 to over $100 off you your monthly
grocery bills
Runner: At this level, you should be handing a stack of
coupons to the cashier and matching your coupons with the sales items of
the week. You will also highly annoy the person waiting in line behind
you, so plan to go early in the morning or late at night. You will be
working with a planned weekly, or even monthly menu that is based on the
area store specials. You will also be shopping at more than one food
store per week. The benefit to this level is that you will be bringing
home hundreds of dollars of free food every month. When my husband and I
were at this level, we were living in NJ, where they did not tax food,
and where they offered triple couponing one week out of every month. The
rest of the weeks, they doubled the value of coupons and matched other
store specials. We saved up to $80 a week and we spent only $250/ month
including drug store items, cleaning and beauty products. Our pantry was
stocked and we truly experienced having more with less.
So get started today and fight the joy thief of financial stress.
© 2007
Kathy Kline Danner
Article Source:
http://faithandfamilyarticles.com
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Where is the Money Going?
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