We are in the 9th day of the year and I have already found my first issue with the budget. Remember a few days ago I was talking about how I didnt realize how much we spent on dining out in a month and I also was not really sure what we spent on gas for our cars or our clothing. Well I obviously didnt know how much we spent on feeding our many pets. I had never bought all the pet food all at once before. If you are not a pet owner or are an animal hater you may want to skip this post.
We are the proud pet parents of 4 dogs Atlas the German Shepherd, Balder the Beagle, Thor the Chihuahua and Loki the ?. Loki was added to the mix a back in October he was supposed to be a mini pin. We were pretty sure he was a mix and knew he wasnt going to be a big dog so we didnt care. More on him in a later post he looks like a tiny Rottweiler and hes a hoot. Then we have Socks the cat, Roxie the Ferret, and Athena and Aphrodite the guinea pigs. I really love my piggies and they really love me. Then we have the livestock which are racing pigeons, the chickens I will list their names at a later post with their pics and the rabbits. I forgot the thousands of bees but your flowers feed them so not worries there.
So the dogs, cat, ferret and piggies were how I was shopping for yesterday. I had their food budget and the outdoor animals food lumped together at $150 a month, I normally buy animal food whenever one of them is out and grab it with the groceries which is actually a huge mistake when you start budgeting. I have even started separating toiletries and cleaning when grocery shopping to keep them all straight. I was also guilty of running to grab dog food and grabbing something else that caught my eye instead of sticking to a plan. So no more impulse buying, When really starting out or all over budgeting you almost have to do this to really see what you are buying and where. This is really where using cash comes in handy too. I dont use cash for all my purchases but if you are new to this budget things I highly recommend it.
I sat down and compared prices online for Walmart, Petsmart and Amazon. I was really surprised Petsmart was my cheapest option and if you order online and pick up in store you save an extra 5%. I will be taking advantage of that savings next month I needed to go in store to compare size and prices. My first stop was to Kroger where I purchased and only purchased a $150 Petsmart gift card. For that I scored 300 fuel points or 30 cents off per gallon of gas. We always take both cars to fill up together so that would be at least $6 savings. I grabbed food, bedding and a new water bottle at Petsmart and the total came to $167. Yikes I did purchase a $10 water bottle for the piggies since I am having leaking issues with theirs. So technically we are looking at $157 and if I ordered online would have saved that extra 5% It would have come out at $150. The issue with the budget is I still have $50 I need for the outside animals feed. Its not like we dont have the money I just have to take from either savings which I dont want to do or from other categories which I have some over estimated. I only hope I dont run into more of these issues but if I do I will get them ironed out and stick to my budget.
One of the things I hear alot as to why people dont budget or plan or coupon is that they just dont have all the time for it or its not worth all the work. Seriously it took me 10 minutes to compare my prices online and 5 minutes to run into Kroger and grab a card to save an extra $16 a month. Thats almost $200 a year and could be more with higher fuel point earning and when things are on sale. There are also deals on apps that pay you back sometimes. We are saving over $50 a month from keeping up with our dining out costs. Once I add in coupons and meal planning you are looking at lots of little savings that really add up.
Most of the stores have a new ad that comes our on Wednesdays so today I will look through them stock up on things that we need or will need and that are on sale. Last week I was able to grab the kids favorite poptarts for $1 off per box just because there was some sort of game code that had expired on the box. I bought 6 boxes.
I hope your budgeting is running smoother than mine and if it isnt just reevaluate it. Every day is a new day to start over and it will get easier.
No comments:
Post a Comment