Ok, once you take the big leap, things need to change a bit on the finance front.  No longer can you just stop at the local coffee shop for a fill up whenever you get the coffee bug, nor can you just wander through the grocery store putting every little thing your heart desires into your cart.

During our lean years, when the kids were young, I had become the master grocery shopper, spending minimal amounts of money, while still feeding the family well.  The basics, I would stock up on when they were on sale, things like pasta sauce, noodles, canned tuna, beans, rice and such.  Then, I shop the sales to put together awesome meals.

I will be cooking more at home obviously as well, so the basics will change a bit, adding back in potatoes, onions, peppers and those things used to put together basic meals.  Anyway, today I started back to the old shopping ways, going to the store with my basic recipes in my head, and no list. This is the key! A list, unless it was created from the sales flyers, and leaves room for deals, will kill you at the grocery store. You will easily spend double what you will spend with my method if you take a list and stick to it.

So here we go! Today, I spent $29.01 including $2.40 worth of coupons, one for chicken, a free container of yogurt and $1.00 off the same batch of yogurt.  I purchased the following items for $29.01:

4 lbs of chicken breasts

2 bags of lettuce

10 containers of yogurt

onion and peppers

cantelope and bananas

2 boxes of organic frozen waffles

1 lb of cheese

lg  jar of baby dill pickles

garbanzo beans

2 pkgs of soft baked chocolate chip cookies

2 bottles of ranch dressing

gallon of soy milk

18 eggs

baking cocoa

I am currently cooking up the 4 lbs of chicken with the onions and pepper, which will be used to make chicken salad, and mexican chicken for tacos, as well as being used for salad topping. I already had a package of taco shells from a coupon last week, so I can use those up. 

Daily breakfasts will be either 2 frozen waffles, with syrup and cantelope or oatmeal with raisins(basics that I always have).  I will also do some protein shakes either for breakfast or lunch with the soymilk and bananas.

Snacks can be fruit or yogurt and I will be making a pan of chocolate muffins with the cocoa and some of my other basics, using some applesauce I found in the fridge to keep them low fat and healthy for me!

Lunch is always a salad with either chicken, boiled egg, tuna or garbanzo beans and some cheese. I make my own salad dressing or can use some salsa or a bit of the ranch dressing I bought.

Dinner is generally simple around here, since I teach yoga at 6, but being home, I can now put on some potatoes and a venison roast, and they can round it out with a frozen veggie or a salad. I can have a 1/2 of a chicken salad sandwich with some fruit or some pasta with sauce.  I am not a big meat eater, so the chicken will keep me in meat for the entire week, plus feed the boys at least once!

So, for a small amount of money per week, you can eat well and healthy.  I will probably need to pick up a couple of things during the week like milk, bread and possibly some snack items, but I am going to go back to the $50-$70 per week plan for groceries.

I am excited to start the challenge to see how little I can spend and we still eat well! 

yogajen