I'm taking account of all the food that's being wasted every week because we forget about it and it goes bad by the time we find it. I think the problem stems from our shopping habits. So, about two week ago I made a daily meal schedule for the week. This schedule gave me direction on what to buy, and made sure that we use/eat everything we buy. Most the time the vegetables were going bad before we ever even looked in the crisper. This shows just how much we were actually eating our greens, eh.
This last week we followed the meal planner almost to the T. We ate a salad every day and fruits and vegetables have all been consumed. There was one zucchini that did go bad, but that was there from a few weeks ago, when I had "planned" on making zucchini bread and had forgotten all about it. Also, I've been able to go shopping for less and buy more because now I'm not planning what I want to eat as I'm walking down the grocery isle. My past habit usually ended me up with a shopping cart full of chocolate fudge cookies and pints of Ben and Jerry's!
I'll upload the meal planner as soon as I can find my USB drive.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
My first blog ever: message to the world
Well, the last few years have been an economic party that we've all enjoyed. The party's over and we're all spinning with a serious hangover (will the spinning ever end?). If you're like me you probably didn't enjoy the party quite as much as some (I was stuck in college enjoying econometric papers and eating ramen). But nonetheless, I did come out of college with some pretty heavy school debt that haunts me to no end. Oh, and I also came out of college with a wife and a child. They don't haunt me, but the very words "we're out of pampers" do. Finances have been tight, to say the least. I landed my first job as a Mortgage Loan Consultant...let's just leave it at, though I did learn a lot. As a loan consultant, I heard a lot of peoples' stories about the financial difficulties they were going through, which in turn scared me into thinking about getting my own budget in order.
I've been giving a lot of thought about how to lower expenses and, at the same time, NOT lower my and family's life style any lower than where it's at now.
The solution from many sources is telling us to look for a quick fix, i.g debt consolidation companies and bankruptcy or make money quick schemes, but I'm finding the best way to get things in order is to go back to the good ol'fashon basics; work and smart budgeting.
Currently, I'm in the middle of a career change and am living off of commission checks that periodically come in from my last job so, if I've ever given this topic a lot of thought in the past it's nothing like now.
So far, what's been helping to get by the most has been 1). finding new creative ways to budget the family finances and 2). coming up with ways to make good tasting "poor people food". I've found that cooking is a skill that helps the family budget like no other.
The purpose of this blog is to 1.) share my experiences in my quest to find effective and simple ways to plan and create budgets and 2). to share recipes that me and my family enjoy and show how they may relate to cutting the fat off the family budget and 3). I'm going to explore what the most efficient use of our saved money from budgeting may be.
I've been giving a lot of thought about how to lower expenses and, at the same time, NOT lower my and family's life style any lower than where it's at now.
The solution from many sources is telling us to look for a quick fix, i.g debt consolidation companies and bankruptcy or make money quick schemes, but I'm finding the best way to get things in order is to go back to the good ol'fashon basics; work and smart budgeting.
Currently, I'm in the middle of a career change and am living off of commission checks that periodically come in from my last job so, if I've ever given this topic a lot of thought in the past it's nothing like now.
So far, what's been helping to get by the most has been 1). finding new creative ways to budget the family finances and 2). coming up with ways to make good tasting "poor people food". I've found that cooking is a skill that helps the family budget like no other.
The purpose of this blog is to 1.) share my experiences in my quest to find effective and simple ways to plan and create budgets and 2). to share recipes that me and my family enjoy and show how they may relate to cutting the fat off the family budget and 3). I'm going to explore what the most efficient use of our saved money from budgeting may be.
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