Saving Spree!

I have never been more excited to announce that I am going on a $500 SAVING SPREE!

Why Tana, don't you mean a shopping spree?

Nope! I mean a saving spree and I'd love for you to join me!

Trying to budget a family of four, even with two incomes, can be quite difficult (not to mention our terrible economic situation) so we have decided that we are going to tighten our finances even more. Here are a list of the small changes we've made in order to save big! Please feel free to share what you've done lately to save your family money! If we put our minds together in just a few months I guarantee we can save atleast $500 or more per family. (Everything in bold are the points of what we do to save money, and un-bold is how we do it.)

I cook dinner for my family every night.
I plan our meals 2 weeks at a time but I can usually stretch it to 3 weeks, and then I make one trip to Sam's Club.
I spend about $250 for 2-3 weeks of meals.
I avoid the grocery store because I always end up spending more and splurgin on things we don't need.
I tried using coupons but I still saved more when buying in bulk at Sam's Club. One small jar of peanut butter at the store costs as much as 2 giant jars at Sam's Club.
We don't consume very much red meat which saves us a lot of money.
I don't buy pre-packaged items such as frozen lasagna, burritos, etc. because 9 times out of 10 you can make it for much cheaper and healthier too.
We avoid a lot of processed items such a pre shredded cheese because we can save money by shredding it ourselves.
I freeze mostly everything that might go bad, including vegetables. For example, we buy 10 pounds of onions and then I figure out our menu and chop the onions accordingly - small dices for soups, strips for fajitas, etc. then freeze in individual bags. We also freeze our bread and meats.
I can cook a meal for our family of four for under $5 most of the time with leftovers.

We make our lunches everyday.
I will pack the girls a healthy lunch and Jeff will take leftovers or make a sandwich. When Alissa & Jeff pack their lunch we save $40 a week or $2080.00 a year!
I also bought the girls these reusable $2 sandwich containers at Wal-Mart recently. They are super cute and they hold one sandwich. In turn, I am no longer using as many plastic sandwich bags and I'm helping the environment too.

FREE Entertainment.
As much as we love going to the movies and out to dinner we've made the decision to cut way back.
Instead of taking the girls out to the movies we wait for the movie to be available for rent and then we have family movie night. I bring out the girls sleeping bags, make popcorn and turn the movie on. We save atleast $30 doing it this way and the girls seem to enjoy it more than going out. There are times when we even watch movies that we own and haven't seen in a while.
Jeff and I recently had dinner out at Chili's for $1.30! For Christmas I asked for gift certificates to our favorite restaraunts. On our recent trip to Chili's we shared an appetizer, entree and even desert for under $25, after tip we only ended up spending $1.30 of our own money!

These are just a few of the things we have done and I plan to share more on a weekly basis. I know these changes aren't always significant but every little bit helps.

I must admit that we have not cut out everything completely. I have treated the girls to Chick-Fil-A recently but when you look at the grand scheme of things we are saving significantly more now than we were before and the stress that money causes has been nearly eliminated. In the long run we have been much happier about it as well.

If you would like some meal ideas or recipes please feel free to ask and I will kindly share.

Please feel free to post a comment about how you've saved your family money. I know one thing, Tiffany recently made curtains for her house and I'm sure that saved her and Jon a BUNCH!

I can't wait to read your responses :)

Hugs,
Tana