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How I Cut $80 Off Our Weekly Grocery Bill

The 3 Books I Read Last Week

Welcome to my weekly Book-ish post where I share what I've been reading and watching recently. If you missed it, you can see my Reading Goals for 2018 and 44 Books I Plan to Read This Year.
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And it's week #6 of reading 3 books in a week! I'm so excited that I'm continuing on with this trend! Here are the three books I finished this past week:

1. Hotel On the Corner of Bitter & Sweet

This was a book I’ve been wanting to read for a few years. I thought it did a great job of giving insight into what Japanese and Chinese families in the US experienced during World War II — a topic that I feel like is rarely covered and is really important.

It was a sweet story. Sad, in many ways. But also very beautiful. It was quite predictable and I had guessed the ending pretty soon into it, but I still enjoyed it.

2. Finding Selah

I thought this would be a great book to read as my Word of 2018 is SLOW. It wasn’t what I expected, but there were some encouraging tidbits and good reminders. It reads pretty memoir-like and is the story of how the author discovered peace in the midst of a lot of grief and unexpected upheaval in her life.

3. Shrapnel

This book has been on my To Read pile for quite awhile. It was written by a reader who sent a long note with it to tell me she was inspired to find the time to write it as a result of reading Money-Making Mom. Those types of notes always humble me and blow me away!

Anyway, it was a pretty engaging read and didn’t end at all like I expected. That said, I thought parts of it were a little bit more dramatic and somewhat unrealistic, but other parts were beautifully raw and real and I loved that.

It’s not at all written from a Christian standpoint and I felt like it was missing so much that it could have because of this. It also has some language and is a little more edgy than most novels I read. However, I felt like it did such a great job of giving insight into some of the struggles that military families go through and I found a lot of insight because of that.

When I Find Time to Read
People are always asking me how I find time to read. Honestly, it's because I love to read, because I've chosen to prioritize it, because I don't have a lot of other hobbies, and because I can't not read. Also, when you love something, you usually can find ways to get creative to find time to fit it in — even if it's in the little nooks and crannies of life.
I wrote a post on 3 ways to find more time to read — even when life is busy. And here are 7 more ways to find time to read.

What did you read and watch this past week? Any books or movies or shows you really think I need to read or watch?

How I Cut $80 Off Our Weekly Grocery Bill

Wow! Easily cut $80 off your grocery bill with these simple tips! I love this testimony!

A few months ago, Naomi left a comment on one of posts and said:

“We are also a family of five but we have special dietary issues. My goal this past week was to reduce our weekly food budget to $100 and it was $99! Previously, I thought that I couldn't save money because of our food restrictions but I wasn't really ready to try.”

I wrote her back and asked if she could share some specific tips she had implemented. Here’s what she said:

First of all, our restrictions are soy, nuts, and seeds allergies (including their oils). I myself am supposed to eat as preservative-free as possible with high fiber thrown into the mix because of a chronic medical condition. As a point of reference, I was spending about $180 a week on our food.
Here was my strategy:
1) Create a food shopping budget. I based this off of the MyPlate recommendations for food consumption. On my shopping list, I put a dollar amount next to each category that I was shopping. For example, Fruits were allotted $20. Grains were $13 and so on. (My categories are Fruits, Vegetables, Grains, Dairy and Protein.)
2) Don't make a meal plan until I see the local sales. I got this tip from you! I looked all the sale leaflets up online and filled in my shopping list categories, being careful to write down the price of what I was expecting to buy to stay with my category's budgeted amount.
3) Shop the sales at my local Kroger, Aldi and Fresh Thyme Farmers Market. For us, Thursday is "Double Ad Day" at Fresh Thyme, where the previous and coming week's sales are all up for grabs.
4) I did all my shopping on one day and kept a running total of each category on my shopping list. I knew when I hit $13 for grains.
5) Don’t buy pre-packaged items. A big key for me to make this work for our family was to buy only "ingredient items," no prepackaged foods. For breakfast this week, we are eating muesli but instead of buying an allergen friendly muesli, I bought the ingredients to make my own.
6) Allow some wiggle room for extras. I gave myself $25 for extras. Fats and sugars fell under this category, along with coffee beans and tea. I used some of this to buy marked down ground beef I hadn't been planning on purchasing ahead of time. I saved so much, we used some extra money to buy our favorite allergen friendly pizza.
Thanks for inspiring me to try to save! Our pantry and refrigerator are stocked for the week and I feel pleased with myself for saving money.