I'm stocked

**These pictures are about 3 months into my adventure**

Ohhhh mylanta, I have to tell you this! From playing the grocery game I've managed to save $4,717 on groceries, health & beauty products, cleaning supplies, pet food and so on and so forth for the last six months of 2008. Now, I know you are probably thinking well how much did you spend? Well, that my dear friend is $4,487. So roughly I saved 50% and I am excited about that!

Still think that is alot? Let me tell you, I was spending about $2,000 a month - yes, you read that right, a month - on these types of items to run the house. I would make my list and go to the store for my big shop once a week. But then you have those moments of "oh, I need _____" which when you go back to the store for the one item you end up with sixteen other items in your cart that you didn't know you needed until you got to the store LOL. I guess I should mention we are family of seven and have 3 dogs & 1 cat.

Obviously before I joined I had no grocerybudget LOL. I just bought what I needed *clears throat* thought I needed. I had no idea how much I spent each month until I was preparing my case for my better half of why we needed to join this game. When I joined I set my budget to $600 a month. I had no idea how this was going to work out as I had already been buying store brands and sales......but I was determined.

I was sooo overly afraid of missing a deal that I went over budget by a few hunderd dollars each month for the first few months but realized "hey, the deals do come around again" and backed off and now stay in my $600 month budget. Heck in November and December I had money left over in my grocery envelope so I moved it to our emergancy fund!

Right now I only HAVE to go shopping each week for milk, eggs, fresh fruits & veggies. You notice I didn't say bread. That's because my darling husband figured out the cost of the ingrediants and I make a loaf myself for about 60cents. And to my surprise I found out I like making bread. As a matter of a fact I LOVE making bread since I got the breadmaker for Christmas :).

The goal is to stockpile items you use on a regular basis while they are at their rockbottom price. Needless to say I am fully stocked on everything from shampoo to cereal. At this point I have to be careful on shopping because my basement pantry is pretty stuffed and I don't have hardly any room left to store things.

Plus, I started saving all the coin change I got from my grocery budget and after 3 months it totaled $100. Now I am saving all my $1 bills in addition to my change and in the last three weeks I've already accumulated $44 in dollar bills. I am so excited to see where this game takes me because I got to tell ya, it's been a great ride so far!

**If you check out the grocery game and want to sign up please put me as a refernce - email me @ohhh.mylanta@gmail.com & i'll give my email addy that I use for that**