Reflections on January, Daily Savings Club and other general things....

Well here we are at the beginning of February. Did you manage to put your 25 cents away each day for the Daily Savings Club? You should have managed to save $7.75 in the month of January if you followed along. No idea what the Daily Savings Club is all about, check out this post. Now that we are in February we will now be saving 50 cents per day. So you will save $14 this month.

Okay now for a confession, I am doing this, but I am saving $1 a day, as in June we are going away for a couple of days for our Wedding Anniversary and I have calculated that if I save $1 a day I will have $169 saved up before we go. So that should pay for our meals when we are away.....hopefully.

I subscribe to Money Sense magazine. In the February/March issue it has a section called the Recession Guide, and a couple of things they suggest is growing your own food, cooking (!!)and shopping at the low end grocery stores.

One website they suggest is called EarthEasy I checked it out and it has a lot of interesting articles and ideas on there. It's definitely worth a look. Also suggested in the article is growing veggies amongst your flower gardens if you are short on space. Also some veggies are as pretty as flowers anyhow. Also they suggest growing blueberries, or gooseberries in amongst the flowers.

It does have a good point though when the article suggests, only growing food that is more expensive to buy than grow. As an example quite often it is cheaper to buy potatoes rather than growing your own.

They have a section on dining at home rather than ordering in or eating out. They suggest buying a basic no nonsense cookery book if you are not familiar with cooking and as a family pick out 7 easy recipes to have in one week. Make one a night and vote on if you like the recipe or not. You may not like them all but there is bound to be one or two that are keepers.

Another part of the article was comparison shopping at grocery stores. They went to four different grocery stores, from the basic no frills type of store to the high end grocery store and bought the exact same things at each store. The low end store bill came to $97.35, the high end store came to $198.14, that's over a $100 difference. That's mind blowing when you think about it, isn't it?

I have to say it has given me food for thought those ideas.

Then there is my grocery total for the month of January. As a reminder I was aiming for a grocery bill at under $325 and coupon savings of $100. I have to say I didn't succeed on either count. My monthly spending was $331.49, and my savings were only $86.34. However there were 5 Saturdays in the month of January, making it a longer month, so I suppose I didn't do that bad, plus my freezer is full.

Now I am expecting $15 in 3 x $5 cheques for the McCain promotion I took part in, here is a link to that: http://www.mccainpromotions.ca/pdf/McCain%20SuperBowl%20Mail-in%20Rebate%20ENG.pdf and a $4 off coupons when you buy three items: http://www.save.ca/mccainnfl_en/prod_page.php

So now I am stocked up on pizza and fries. I am also stocked up on pasta as there is a promotion going on for a free magazine subscription when you buy 6 different Catelli Healthy Pastas. There are $1 off coupons out there when you buy two, and it was on sale at Sobey's this week for 3/$3. Here is the link to that: http://www.wholegrainpasta.ca/loyalty_card/login.asp They also have some yummy recipes on that site that I would like to try.

Here's hoping I do better this month........I have to try harder, how did you do with your grocery budget in January?