Changing Habits

I am so sorry it has been so long since my last post!!! Life has a way of getting in the way of intentions. :)

Anyway, something that I have just implemented into my household this last week or two has to do with changing habits. And I see that it has the potential of saving my family ALOT of money.

How many of you drink pop? Well, I drink Ruby Red Squirt and in my area this costs me about $0.45 a can!! I was getting to where I was drinking anywhere from 1 to 3 cans every single day! I saw that this was a very expensive habit of mine and went on a mission to change that. I knew that I usually drank it because I was simply craving a sweet drink.

Well, my solution? Kool-aid!! I am now keeping kool-aid made up and in the fridge and it costs me about $0.53 for 2 quarts of it! But, then when I was doing my shopping this last week (another habit change I'll tell you about in a bit), I saw kool-aid was on sale at one of the stores I shopped at! That has cut my kool-aid cost down to about $0.31 for 2 quarts!! I can already see this is going to cut my grocery bill by quite a bit!!! I could drink a gallon a day now for less than the cost of 2 cans of pop (of course I won't, so that's even better)! Another idea would be sweet tea, my family also appreciates this sweet drink and it also is very inexpensive!!

The other habit changing that I am changing is how I do my shopping and meal-planning. I used to plan my meals and then go shopping, but I am now trying to do it backwards. Last week was my first week, so I'll have to let you know later if it is really working for us or not. I am looking over the sale ads for the local grocery stores and stocking up (not a ton, but enough) on the things that I know my family uses that are on sale. Once I have done that, then I will plan my meals around the ingredients I have on hand. There are a few items that you obviously cannot do this with, but I find that the majority (especially non-perishable) of groceries I can do this with. This last week I stocked up on bacon, pork chops, potatoes, napkins, trash bags, poptarts, canned pears, noodles, hamburger helper, bread and a few other items. I had also received some tomatoes and cucumbers from a neighbor's garden. So, today we had BLT's for lunch (lettuce was on sale last week too, so I got one head). Some other meals we might enjoy this week might be loaded baked potatoes, sweet and sour pork chops, hamb helper, tuna noodle salad (tuna was also on sale).

Anyway, these are a couple of ideas that I just implemented in my household this week with the hopes that they will save us a lot of money. :) I hope they can also help you! Have a great week!!!