New Year's Budget Goals!!

Ok so with this new year I have a few budget goals I am going to try and do!! Since it is a start of a new year I am completely starting from scratch. I have decided to make a list of every item I buy and for how much I bought it- hopefully for the whole year! I am wanting to try and find out what the lowest cost I can buy and item at is and how much of that item we use. Like: do we usually eat on average 10lbs of hamburger or 20lbs each month and what is the cheapest price I can find it?

I have now been majorly couponing since June of 2010 and have seen a huge difference in our grocery budget! We shopped cheap to begin with, but it has gone down even more with couponing and I get way more stuff than I ever did before. There are things I never would have thought of ever buying because they are so expensive, but I now have a stockpile of 10 of them!!

Last year in July- I bought two huge packages of toilet paper when they were on sale, I had a coupon for each, and I got a $5 gift card for buying 2 of them. We are just now running out of this toilet paper and will have to soon go and get more toilet paper. Which means theoretically I can go a whole year on 4 of the huge packages of toilet paper! My goal is to get this much toilet paper for as cheap as I possible can!!

My hopes in doing this is for me to get a better understanding of what and how much stuff we actually go through and what is the bottom dollar I can spend on that product. If I at one time bought toilet paper for $.25 a roll then I don't want to buy toilet paper unless it is on sale for $.25 a roll, which means if I find if for this price I want to know how much I need to buy to get us until that item will go on sale again.

So far my spending report this year is:

Movie- Inception- $.99!

2 Redbox movies- $2.07

Total savings: $9.00

We are trying to also follow Dave Ramsey's guide and only use cash! I purchased the billfold a couple months ago (seemed to have miss placed it over the holidays :( hope I can find it soon!)

Last month we paid the last of my $1,200 medical bill from 2 years ago when it showed up I had a slow ejection fraction when I was pregnant with Kellie (my heart is now showing nothing!) We are hopefully paying off our Geothermal bill in Feburary. We have already paid half of it, but have to pay the other half by the 15th to not accumalte back interest. We can't wait to start using the monthly payments we were paying for these two bills and start snowballing them onto another bill! This is really going to help us start knocking down our debit!

Hope you have a few goals set for you during this New Year and that we will all be able to accomplish them!

Sarah