On The Road to Becoming a Frugal Mom

Last December, I pitched a fit about my family's finances. My husband and I make good money, but we never seemed to be able to hold onto any of it.

After doing a bit of research, I discovered the painful truth:

I was the problem.

I had to own up to the fact that I was an emotional spender, a horrible accountant, and that I'd pretty much accepted every credit card offer that was sent to me. All of these together amounted to one very scary reality: I'd thrown my family into debt. It wasn't anyone else's fault but my own.

So, what was I to do? Should we file for bankruptcy? Go to counseling?

Actually, the answers to those questions were no, and no.

Through the discovery of frugal living websites, I learned that I could make a few small changes to my family's routines that would yield some positive results in the family finance department. Thus, my goal to become a frugal mom was born.

One of the first things I did after creating my goal to be a frugal mom was to create a monthly menu plan.

I did this after I downloaded our December 2007 bank statement into Excel and discovered that we'd spent almost $800 dining out.

Shocking? Absolutely.

But, when I also found that we'd spent over $600 for groceries, I became sick to my stomach.

When did I cook? Why were we buying so many groceries? Did we throw it all out?

It was all a big mess. I'd spent $1,400 of our family's money on food and meals that I didn't even remember eating. No wonder our finances were in peril!

So, I went back to a system that I'd tried to implement in the fall of 2007: The Monthly Menu Plan. I compiled an entire month's worth of recipes, put them in an order so that we weren't eating chicken for five days in a row, secured them in a binder, and put it on our kitchen counter.

The plan hadn't worked before because the recipes I'd chosen were too ambitious for a mom that pretty much had no time to cook. I ended up giving up about two weeks into the plan, and the family was back in the booths of our local restaurants.

With a few modifications (and lots of crock pot recipes), I devised a system that I knew would work well. I'd grocery shop for about 10 days worth of meals so that the ingredients for meals were easily on hand. The menu binder was to be kept on the kitchen counter, so that the first one home (sometimes me, sometimes my husband) could start dinner. Follow these steps, and we'd be done with family dinner by 6:30pm, relaxing as a family by 7:00pm, and counting the money we'd be saving as a family by the end of the month.

It was a win-win-win.

So the meal plan was in place, we were avoiding the dining out trap, and the comma stayed firmly in place in our checking account. What was next?

"Face the fear, and do it anyway."

It was time to scrub the monthly checking statement and clean it (or perhaps, liberate it) from the throws of automatic payments for services that were no longer needed.

The unused gym membership? Gone. XM radio service? No longer needed. The three audiobook accounts that were running concurrently? Cut.

All in all, I'd found over $100 in automatic payments that I could stop because we were no longer using the services. Add that to the $800 that we weren't spending eating out, and the other $100 or so that I was saving on groceries because I was prepared, and I was looking at $1,000 a month saved.

Now we're talking.

My journey to become a better spender has not been without its difficulties. Last month, after buying $200 in groceries, we were hit with a storm that knocked out our power for three days, resulting in the loss of the newly-purchased groceries as well as what was already in the fridge.

Additionally, we're having to learn how to prepare and eat meals during weeks that contain events like recitals, games, family gatherings, and other unexpected surprises.

Just like any program, if I found that we were getting off track, I'd go back to the basics, review the binder, and start over again.

I can't wait to see what our finances are like in six months. Our debt will still be there, but at least the knowledge that I'm doing something about it every single day makes the challenge of paying it down that much more achievable.