Budgeting

It's a pretty well known fact that I am not a lover of math.  Whenever my siblings and I would play Monopoly growing up, my sister Anna was always my personal banker and handled all of my transactions for me.  When I learned how to knit and crochet in high school, I voluntarily  limited my hand-made pursuits to simple patterns that didn't involve detailed counting.  Those are only two examples of the great lengths I went to throughout my life to avoid having to regularly navigate numbers.  The one mathematic endeavor that has been completely unavoidable in my adult life has been budgeting.  I come face to face with big and small numbers on a daily basis as I provide food for my family and manage our household.   I am continually striving to make living within our means as seamless as possible so I thought I'd share with you a few of the resources that have really helped me to grow in this area.

1. I shop at Aldi.  I can't usually buy everything I need for the week at Aldi, but I get pretty close.   By making Aldi the first stop in my grocery shopping endeavors I automatically save money off my overall grocery bill because in almost all cases, their prices cannot be beat.  If you are intimidated by the idea of shopping at Aldi, or have had a bad experience in the past, I encourage you to try again.  One of my favorite food bloggers just wrote a buying guide for all of the things that she buys at Aldi, most of which are organic.   Additionally, she wrote a series a couple of years ago about why she shops at Aldi,  how to shop at Aldi, and what to buy at Aldi.  All of the tutorials were very helpful for me when I was trying to find the motivation to shop there more often.   

2. I make a rough menu plan and stick to it.  I was doing a pretty good job cooking for myself and living within my means when I was single.  Then I started hanging out with this incredibly captivating guy named Shawn and all of the balance I had achieved as a single person quickly went out the window.  While we were dating, it was fun and easy to go out to eat together which quickly became a new normal.  As much as I enjoyed the burrito bowls I was consuming from Chipotle each week, my budget was in shock and  I quickly found myself facing a lunch crisis since I had established a habit of packing my dinner leftovers for lunch the next day.   This short-lived season of my life was enough to teach me that eating at home is not only less expensive than eating out, it also creates a large amount of flexibility for future meals.  As Shawn and I worked towards re-establishing the habit of eating at home more often than not,  I learned that the only way to avoid impulse meals out is to have a rough idea of what I want to cook for the week.  It feels like a lot of work at first, but it's totally worth it in the long run! 

3. I checkout cookbooks from the library.  This is especially helpful when I'm feeling bored or unmotivated to cook the recipes I have on hand and I would rather eat out.  Usually browsing a new cookbook is exactly the change of pace I need to switch things up a little bit and get excited about cooking again.  It's not always fun to cook at home but I have found that a new recipe in hand helps me turn a chore into a hobby.  One of the best cookbooks I have ever gotten from the library is ten dollar dinners by Melissa d'Arabian.  I cooked so many recipes from that cookbook that I renewed it three times! 

4. I keep learning new ways to save.  My goal is to get a little bit better at managing our money every day.  I'm all about sustainability so I know that if I work to add new routines/disciplines into my life one at a time, I'm more likely to keep them up over the long haul.   Thankfully, so many people have already put time and effort into creating tools that assist with budgeting that the resources in print and online are seemingly endless.  I have recently been utilizing many of the tools posted on blog faithful provisions such as the free provisions iPhone app that helps me know a good price when I see it.    

What are your best budgeting tricks?  

With love, 

Erica 

P.S. I was informed the other day that people here don't wear long sleeves until November.  I miss the crisp, cool fall air of the midwest and I miss you!