Games

Money has always been just a little bit of a game to me.  I know that’s sounds slightly insane, but it’s true.  I Love with a capital L any sort of puzzle or game, and turning money into a game has allowed me to succeed.

Ok, so I can’t really say I’m succeeding yet, what with those nasty loans hanging over my head, but –sad as it is- I didn’t know better with those, and I’ll never make the same mistake again!  But because of those poopsters, I’ve had to get creative with our income so that our biggest priority can be to get rid of them.  We’ve already paid over $11,000 since Septemberish, so I’d say we’re doing just fine!

Anywho, I shared before that our grocery bill is one that hits us the hardest.  I don’t know why, I just have a really hard time saying no when the HB wants late-night ice cream or I become a chocolate goblin and absolutely positively canNOT live another second without it.

So, I’ve turned it into a game to help motivate me!  February is the first month that I started keeping track of every single trip to the grocery store, and therefore being more proactive about saving.  I looked for more coupons and sales, and tried to limit myself.

The good news is that over the entire month, I saved a total of $127.97 using a variety of tactics, and averaged 31% savings every single trip!  The bad news is that I went to the store a total of...  15 times.  Oy.  That’s almost 4 times a week, and sometimes I even went twice on the same day!  Obviously this is something I need to be more aware of…

Anyway, I’m going to keep updating this every month to hold myself accountable, and hopefully be a wee bit of a braggart when I get things more under control!