Step 2.

STEP 2 PART 1

After you've figured out where you want to be I want you to do some more calculating.

I want you to sit down and think about what you eat in a week. You can do this literally with a food journal or you can estimate ( I estimated and it worked just fine). I think I went by meal-type instead of by day.

Here are some questions I want you to answer:

1. What are the staples that you use on a regular basis? (ie. how much bread, eggs, flour, milk, butter etc. do you use in a week?)

2. What do you eat for breakfast every day? How much of each item do you go through in an average week?

3. What do you eat for lunch? How much of each item do you go through?

4. What do you eat for dinner on a regular basis?

5. What snacks do you eat regularly? How much do you go through in a week?

6. Are there any dietary restrictions in your family that cause you to need certain products? How much of that/them do you go through in a week?

Now comes the tricky part. I want you to try and figure out the approximate cost of each thing on your list. You don't have to get every one of them but chances are if you use them a lot, you probably know the prices almost off the top of your head.

Here are some of the things on my list:

Milk $2.65/gallon $0.33/cup

Cheddar Cheese $11.13/ 5lbs $0.14/oz $1.11/cup

All Purpose Flour $6.43/ 25lbs $0.06 a cup

Eggs $2.48/3 dozen $0.07/egg

I have pages and pages in a notebook full of the prices of things. When I made freezer jam, I even figured out how much per serving it was. Knowing how much things are, helps me know exactly how much each meal costs. Once I figure out how much something I eat on a regular basis costs, I add that to the list. So if I know that a piece of bread costs about 2 cents and peanut butter is 10 cents a serving and freezer jam is 6 cents, then I automatically know that a peanut butter sandwich is $0.20.

Right now, I'm working on a spreadsheet with everything I have priced and ready to go along with where to go to get that price. Whenever I find something on my list that's a better price, I make a note to purchase it there next time so I can bring down my totals. If food prices go up (and they have recently), I begrudgingly make a note and change the price to reflect that.

I guess the goal here is to be as honest as you can be with yourself. That way you'll always be able to feel justifiably accomplished.

STEP 2 PART 2.

Once you start your list, try and find out places you can purchase your staples for less. For us, this meant getting a membership to Sam's Club. Sam's Club has been a really big blessing to our bottom line. Because Paul is a student, we get a year's membership for only $40 and it's definitely paid for itself by now. Another thing that is handy is that all of their prices are available online so if I think of something I haven't put on my list now, I just look it up .

Sometimes if I see a really good sale on something I use a lot, I'll stock up but I always make a note of that so that I don't continue to use the sale price after I use up the food. If it's a sale on a perishable food, I tend to stay away from it. With just the three of us I don't want to risk wasting the money. The only exception I can remember was a sale on cream cheese. I bought 10 of them for $7.80 right before the holidays because 1, they don't expire as fast as other perishables and 2, I knew I was going to be making a lot of holiday goodies (pumpkin rolls, cheesecakes etc) and they'd be used.