budget calcualtions

so this living on $8 a day is quite challenging...not really food wise, but calculating the budget and how much you spend a month...i think that we finally have a handle on tracking it, but my son's crack-like addition to milk is quite out of hand...we are offering more food, more times a day and it seems to be helping...hopefully august will be better for us cuz we have already busted the budget this month (if i'm counting our CSA) and we still have one more milk delivery this month and a small trip to the store today...i will work on calculating exactly how much we are spending on milk alone and adjust the budget for august accordingly...wish me luck:) xoxo

inspired...

so i have been inspired by a blog called 'The Tasty Cheapskate' to focus my family's eating and food consumption on spending a certain amount of $ a day...she originally had a goal of $6/day for a family of 6, but has settled on $10/day to be able to include her CSA and milk share...i think that my original goal is to aim for $8/day ($240/month) and try to get down to $6/day ($180/month) once little man starts to eat more solid foods instead of drinking milk like its going out of style (2-3 gallons per week!)...Here are the approximate costs that i know that we have (food-wise)...not sure if we should include the delivery costs for the milk share or not yet...

Groceries--$100
CSA Veges--$10/week--$40/month
Milk Share--$20-25/week--$80-100/month
Farmers Market--maybe $20-30/month

I think that once our overall milk intake goes from 2.5-3.5 gallons of milk a week down to 2 gallons or less that we will be able to cut about $10/week or more out of the grocery costs and get closer to the $6 to $7/day goal that we have...

So our plan initially is that we are going to pull out $100 in cash each month for the groceries other than the milk share and CSA...and since we have already paid for the CSA in full up until now, we will be 'living' off the veges we get without having to actually pay the money out each month...we also have a garden plot at work that we get veges from on a weekly basis so that will help out with additional costs too...when we plant our fall garden I will be able to better guess what the garden output costs are when we buy our fall garden seeds this month.

Wish me luck!

lost in mommyville...

so i have been MIA for almost a year now...but thought it was time to reflect on the last year as i stay at home with little man who has hand-foot-mouth disease...poor guy...

my new goals are to do more freezer cooking and canning and to be more consistent with my workouts/yoga...all realistic goals and nebulous enough to accutally get accomplished:)