Budgeting….

Budgeting has been something I’ve struggled with for several years. I went from making no money to making about $500 a month in high school and college to working full-time making minimum wage to making (to me) a somewhat decent wage but still not that much.

One of my goals in 2013 is to stick to some kind of budget. I have set up budgets before in mint.com, iBank, Spreadsheets. I have about 10 different type of “Budget Spreadsheets” in my documents (I wish I was kidding). I kind of have set up “budgets” and then just forget about it. Or just spend whatever I want anyway.

However in 2012 I had set a goal to spend only $200 a month on groceries and I’m really proud to say that we averaged spending about $250 a month. Here are the details.

For the year between Publix, Winn Dixie, CVS, and Walgreens $3,050 which averaged   at $255 a month or $65 a month. For the year I saved $3,500  which is about $300 a month and $75 a week.

In the end I saved 55% for the whole year. I thought this was really good for my first full year of couponing. Many of the trips I didn’t have any coupons and I only bought items on sale. This also includes things like meat that you don’t get coupons for. For meat my trick is to shop Winn Dixie’s Buy one Get one Free Sales.

These totals also included all the toiletries I bought and donated throughout the year at CVS and Walgreens.

I also want to highlight all my Black Friday and After Christmas Sales in this post. For all of my Black Friday deals I saved over 60% which was over $1,363.65. I spent a little more than I wanted but we got a lot of things that we really needed like Microsoft Office, Virus Protection, an External Harddrive, A Disney Monorail for the Christmas Christmas Tree,  Ornaments and the beginnings to my Christmas Village.

After Christmas Deals

Out of all the after Holiday Sales I have shopped I have found the best deals for after Christmas and I now can’t wait until next Christmas to use all the awesome stuff I have bought!!

How did everyone do on their budget for 2012? How did you do on your grocery budget? How much did  you save this year? Do you have the same goals for 2013? I think I will keep the same goals and see where we end up!! Goodluck to everyone!