Monday's menu plan

I start my month of skimpy budget this week, even though it's not January yet.

• Chicken enchiladas with Mexican restaurant-style rice
• Bierock
• Homemade pepperoni/veggie pizza
• Bean burritos
• Potatoes au gratin with smoked sausage
• Hot dogs with potato salad and coleslaw

I have most of the ingredients for these meals in my pantry and fridge/freezer, but will need to purchase:
small package of corn tortillas
a couple of tomatillos
small head of green cabbage
one bell pepper
1 lb. ground beef
1 lb. breakfast style sausage (I might have a roll or two in the freezer - I need to check)

I will also need eggs and milk before the week is over. I plan to bake all the bread we'll need. My goal is to spend $25 or less total on groceries this week!

Goals for January 2014

For some reason Blogger will not let me add any images to this post, so I will share a quote from Pablo Picasso without his picture;

"I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money".

I think I will get into why I feel that way at some later time.

I have made some financial goals for the month of January. These goals are a way for me to challenge myself and to be creative and imaginative rather than spendy. Hopefully at the end of the month I will also be well on my way in making progress toward some good habits. The goals are:

• Spend only $100 for the whole month on groceries by eating food we already have on hand, menu planning and shopping sales; 
• have 20 no-spend days in January by grocery shopping once per week, 2 bill-paying days, and combining errands and other shopping on the other 5 days; 
• spend no money at all on craft supplies by finishing projects I have already started or have the materials for; 
• check out books and movies from the public library for free entertainment instead of going to the bookstore or movie theater; 
• find one free thing to do each week to spend time with my BFF instead of doing our usual shopping-as-entertainment; 
• be diligent about tracking spending by writing down receipt totals and keeping receipts. 

Stay tuned to see what I'm going to do with all the money I save in January!