Confessions...

Up to this point, my blogs have consisted of our daily happenings here in the Streff household. I wanted to share a little more about the other happenings that don't, necessarily, involve the girls. A quote from our pastor, Matt Chandler, and pretty much the theme of our church is, "It's okay to not be okay, but it's not okay to stay that way." Kipp & I have been doing some evaluating...mostly coming from the stress this time of year brings... looking at priorities, changes & progressions from this time last year... where we're headed... you get the idea. With Kipp's profession, we are, unfortunately, at the mercy of the insurance companies. January & February are typically slow months, this year was no different. Deductibles aren't met & most patients aren't wanting to spend their out-of-pocket money, who can blame them?! Sure we've made some sacrifices by me staying at home with the girls and, honestly, I haven't missed all the extra "stuff" that my paycheck would've bought. I've attempted this in the past, but for some reason I didn't have the extra will-power to stretch my legs over the roadblocks I would face, but this time is different. I feel that my role as a "stay at home mom" consists of finding ways for our family to save $$$. With that I have stumbled upon a new book/cookbook that is keeping me on track and I just wanted to share my success story from the last week!



Typically, in a weeks time (Sunday to Sunday), we would eat out 4 of those 7 nights. ( I am just figuring dinner at this point.) We would spend from $20-25 each night, and that's if Kella shares a meal with one of us, which is typical. Figure that to be $80-100 a week on dinner, that's in addition to at least $100/week in groceries for the house. (that really makes me wonder what we were buying...???...) I can't tell you how many times we would come home, unload our countless number of bags and say 'we don't have anything to fix, let's just run somewhere & grab dinner' -



We bought the "$5 Dinner Mom" cookbook. All the recipes consist of meals that feed a family of 4 for $5 or less! In the author's testimony, she explained how to significantly decrease your families grocery spending, she took hers from $500/month to $300. Even though it took her an hour to sit down, clip coupons, plan the meals, etc. it saved her family $200. That's pretty good wages!!! So, in order for me to be successfull, I had to look at it that way, with the money I would be saving, it's like I was, or am, earning a paycheck. We put it to the test for a full week, Sunday to Sunday, and here are the results:



Sunday: $5.99

Monday: $6.00

Tuesday: $4.65

Wednesday: $7.95

Thursday: $5.75

Friday: FREE - we had leftovers =)

Saturday: 7.53

Sunday: $5.99



Week's total: $43.86!!!!!

That's a savings of $56.14/week AND $224.56/month!!!!!



Once I saw this number on paper, I got excited. Mostly because I know this number is even bigger since it doesn't include the savings from lunch. I was completely guilty of grabbing a "cheap" snack, hitting sonic's happy hour or whatever drive-thru was along my route as I made my way around town. It really adds up when you're spending about $7 a day on useless food. I'm explaining all this, not for your knowledge, but for me to hold myself accountable. I have always wanted to be a good cook. I love that Kella is right alongside me helping. I love that with each meal my confidence is growing.