We’ve been talking a lot about budgets around here lately. For pretty obvious reasons. Who doesn’t want to save a little money? Well, with my not-so-awesome-but-totally-awesome job, and Shaun delivering pizza at night, money definitely isn’t growing on trees. We have been EXTREMELY blessed wherein we have always had enough money for all necessities. We never have to worry about how we are going to eat or pay our bills. And we are extremely fortunate to have such a nice house to live in, in such a lovely neighborhood. Really, the thankfulness in my heart is immeasurable. But there is room for improvement when it comes to how we handle our income.

We aren’t that bad though. We don’t often buy things we don’t need, and we’ve been consistently making more than we spend in a given month. (Not by a lot, but still.) Where we seem to suffer the most is our grocery bills. For some reason we seem to spend a ton of money on food and there is magically never anything to eat when it comes time to make dinner. So I’ve been doing some research. And by this photo of my “notes”, you can see how well that is going. (Gotta love my cruddy cell phone camera.)

After reading several articles on budget meal planning and using coupons, all I managed to do was feel overwhelmed. How the heck do people pull that stuff off!? It’s kind of crazy and kind of amazing at the same time. While I don’t think I’ll ever become a coupon guru, I did manage to find a few coupons for things I was planning on buying anyway. Hyvee has a pretty good coupon section on their website. I also found this $15 for $35 worth of Yes To products deal on Plum District. Normally I don’t bother with sites like that, but I’ve been wanting to try their skin care products forever so I went for it.

So I guess what I learned tonight is that if I’m serious about cutting back our grocery bills, it’s going to take some time. You can’t just hop online, read a few blogs and magically come up with a new plan. I think I’ll start with meal planning and bulk cooking, and I’ll learn the coupon-ropes as I go along. If anyone has some advice, I would love to hear it!