Budget and Money Saving Journey Day 5 & 6
Day 5 & 6
July 21, 2022
Amanda Hilton
Today we had an unexpected expense come up. Our pup was feeling under the weather so we took a trip to the vets. She is fine but we had to put her on some antibiotics and a few other meds to help her get back to feeling her best. Overall, the appointment cost us $200. Thankfully, we had some money in our vet envelope from the previous budget to cover most of the cost. This is another reason I think budgeting is so important. Unexpected things happen and it's nice to have a plan to cover the cost instead of creating debt.
Amanda Hilton
Today we had an unexpected expense come up. Our pup was feeling under the weather so we took a trip to the vets. She is fine but we had to put her on some antibiotics and a few other meds to help her get back to feeling her best. Overall, the appointment cost us $200. Thankfully, we had some money in our vet envelope from the previous budget to cover most of the cost. This is another reason I think budgeting is so important. Unexpected things happen and it's nice to have a plan to cover the cost instead of creating debt.
I also did some saving today. I LOVE coffee and my favourite brand, Ethical Bean, has a program where you can send your empty packages back for recycling and they will send you another bag of whole bean coffee totally FREE. That's a savings of $14!
Dinner today was spaghetti and vegan meatballs with salad. I save a bit of money by making my own pasta sauce because it is cheaper. I buy a few large cans of crushed organic tomatoes on sale for $3.99 each and use that as my sauce base. A jar of organic pasta sauce can be anywhere from $5-10 depending on the store or brand. Bonus, I don’t add sugar to our homemade sauce. Check the label on your pasta sauce, there is a good chance that there is sugar in the ingredients. As a nutritionist, I'm always looking for ways to make our meals more nutritious and cut down on added sugars.
Dinner today was spaghetti and vegan meatballs with salad. I save a bit of money by making my own pasta sauce because it is cheaper. I buy a few large cans of crushed organic tomatoes on sale for $3.99 each and use that as my sauce base. A jar of organic pasta sauce can be anywhere from $5-10 depending on the store or brand. Bonus, I don’t add sugar to our homemade sauce. Check the label on your pasta sauce, there is a good chance that there is sugar in the ingredients. As a nutritionist, I'm always looking for ways to make our meals more nutritious and cut down on added sugars.
Day 6
Today I picked up our organic CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). For those of you who don't know what this is... we subsribe to a foodshare that we pick up locally once a week and it is full of so much delicious produce. The shares are completely customizable and can include other items such as eggs, wraps, oils, even fair trade chocolate. We selected a large share and add on extra fruit and extra "lunch" items (like cucumbers, peppers, avocados). We still need to buy produce throughout the week since we eat a whole lot of it but the CSA saves us lots of money. Organic produce can get marked up quite a bit in the grocery store and although our share isn't local only (that is an option), a lot of it is grown close to home so it's nice to know it is fresh and great quality. I often post pictures of our share on instagram @amandahiltonrhn and facebook cert.holisticnutritionist if you want to check out what we get each week.
I also had to pick up a few groceries today that we were out of or running low on. We run our budget weekly from Tuesay to Monday because that is what works best for our pay periods. So today's grocery pick up and CSA order will be the start of this weeks grocery budget. Groceries were $150 and CSA was $65. Our new weekly budget for groceries is $400.
While I was out getting groceries, I stopped at Starbucks for a coffee which I got for FREE because I had accumulated 150 stars. Sadly, this also means in the past I spent way too much money on drinks there because stars are earned when you spend money.
Tomorrow I will be meal planning for the next week and hopefully, I'll be able to stay within the remaining budget.
Total spent for two days: $200 vet, $150 groceries, $65 CSA =$415
Total saved for two days: $14 -a free bag of coffee, $2 or more on diy pasta sauce, $7 for Starbucks latte, and at least $15 weekly saved from buying through the CSA = $38
