Frugal Friday

I know you guys are dying to know just how I made it on my $10 from September 23 to now... and I'm happy to report, no one starved!  We stuck to our menu for the week, made up mostly of items that I had on-hand, but I did have to make a few purchases.  Here's the rundown:

Big Lots:
Pasta - 2 @ $.90
Rigatoni -  $.80
Dish soap - $1
Dishwasher soap - $3

Central Market:
Bananas - $2.98
Broccoli - $1.65
Milk - $1.88

So my grand total was $13.44.  $3.44 over my goal, BUT I didn't have to pull any money out of my stashed envelope to do it.  Between the change in my wallet and the $1 I found in this weeks wash, I was set!

We did do a few things differently than I would have, had I had more money at my disposal, but no one suffered.  We ran out of cereal mid-week, and instead of purchasing more, I just made sweet potato muffins.  I had all of those ingredients on hand, so this was a totally free switch-out.  We also ran out of paper towels, but no fear, regular towels work just fine!

Bottom line, it just took a little ingenuity and creativity!

We should be back on track this month with our budget.  Our big problem this month was that we didn't receive  our CSA distributions of fresh fruit and veggies.  This is a pre-paid program, so I pull money out each month to fund it.  Since our distributions got behind, I was somewhat double paying for produce this month - buying it at the store and putting money aside.  Distributions are now up and running, so we shouldn't run into this problem again.  Since our grocery budget is so tight, a small thing like this really does make a big difference.