The February Challenge

A good friend of mine told me that their grocery budget for the next few months will be $350 – this is for a family of five (soon to be six)! She is such an inspiration to me in so many ways, and this is just another: her commitment to their family’s organic eating habits while sticking to her budget is truly impressive. I’ll admit that at first I thought it would be almost impossible for a family that size to stick to that budget, and it certainly wasn’t something my family could do.  But then I felt the rush of adrenaline (ya geeky I know) as I suddenly thought about how this could be an exciting challenge for me to do!

So here’s my plan:

Goal: ‘To see how much natural/organic grocery items I can buy while sticking to my budget of $350.’

1. I define ‘groceries’ as products I regularly buy at a grocery store. This includes food, diapers, household supplies (cleaning, toilet paper,etc), toiletry items.  Lucky for me, I’m well stocked up on everything but food, so this month should be ‘easy’.

2. As I have said before not everything I buy is 100% natural and/or organic, but I mostly focus on food items such as produce, meat and some dairy, but I will cover ways of saving in other areas as well.

3. I have a firm out of pocket budget of $350. If any necessary expenses come up – like milk – I will have to use free product coupons, rewards, gift certificates etc.

So far, as of today this is the breakdown of my February grocery spending:

Yup, that’s right! My spending for the month is almost done! Not to fear! When shopping for these items, I also look to earn things back to use on future purchases. This month included rebate offers, $25 gift card to Superstore, bonus points at Shoppers Drug Mart, PC Plus points and PC MasterCard points (I use my MasterCard for all my purchases).

So that’s my plan for the month and an update on where I’m at! Stay tuned for more to come!