Boost Your Budget Pantry Challenge Recap

Here are our assets, challenges, and goals for this challenge.

My goal was to spend less than $100 this month.  Since our grocery budget encompasses more than just food, I was hopeful but not going to beat myself up if we didn't make it.  We spent a $97.82 this month and that included me going to out to eat for lunch one day, an unexpected prescription, cat food, a library fine, The Grocery Game (which I haven't been using so I cancelled) and various other sundries that cropped up.  Plus we fed many extra mouths over the course of the challenge. 

I am fairly pleased with that total and Engineer is ecstatic.  The money we saved from our normal grocery budget has a greater purpose - getting us ever closer to a debt free lifestyle.  It also helped to balance out various things that cropped up this month - new windshield wipers, oil change, etc.

We are going to continue eating from the pantry and freezers until we can see the bottom.  :)  However, we will lighten up on the spending a little.  If there is a super good clearance deal I may go for it but I am going to intentionally not restock until we get down to a reasonable level.

The things I've learned and will take away from this exercise: 

1. Although couponing/stockpiling is fun and a great tool, I had lost track of just how much was available to me.  I need to keep better track of the food that is already in house before I buy more.
2. We waste very little generally but throughout this challenge I found myself using every last scrap of food, sauce, or ingredient to make us a zero waste household.  That has been a pretty cool byproduct of this challenge.
3. I have felt like I am living on the set of "Chopped" every day.  This goes along with being zero waste.  Even though I have a menu plan I have to look at the ingredients I have, find a recipe that sort of comes close to using what I have and substitute or wing it for everything else.   It has been mostly fun but sometimes mentally exhausting.
4. No matter how much I like to be in the kitchen, sometimes, I need a break a.k.a. thank you Lord for Subway gift cards from Christmas.  

Thank you Shopper Strategy for putting together this challenge.  It has been fun and eye opening.