On the way home yesterday we went to Aldi we got everything we needed there that we didn’t bother going to the fruit/vegetable shop. We only got milk, a dozen eggs, bananas, bunch of spring onions, asparagus and a bag (1 kilo) of avocado. It only cost $11.35.

The avocados are not ready for eating yet hopefully in few days DH can make smoothie out of them. DH is still making a batch of yogurt every week. Most of it he uses to make smoothie normally with banana and honey. Last night we tried pineapple, we had leftover pineapple when I opened a can the other night to use for our homemade pizza. So I can’t wait to try the avocado.

We pretty much spent the whole day out shopping. The weather was terrible; the sun never came out, non-stop shower and was freezing cold. First stop was the Asian shop, spent $79.61, $38.00 was for a big bag of Jasmine rice. We definitely got more out of money, for example coriander and Vietnamese mint were only 65cent for a bunch - normally it will be $2 a bunch at the supermarket. Then we went to the market, we got a whole chicken, over 3 kilos of pork (different cuts), a kilo of fish, 2 different kinds of cheeses, more fruits and vegetables.

We came home for lunch, just had some leftover. DH put the washing in the dryer and put on another load of washing is machine. While he did that I decided to make chicken stock to use for dinner.

We then decided to go to hardware/nursery store. We end up getting 4 bags of potting mix, strawberry seedlings and 2 metres of share cloth. We also decided to get my mum another gift, it cost just over $150. I called my brother to see if he wanted to go in with us, he will give me $50. I could have got her the cheaper version but I think this one is nicer and my brother was very happy to just put in money for it. I will just give her the steamer for her birthday in few months’ time. I don’t think I will receive it for another month anyway. So now mother’s day is sorted.

Then after the hardware store, we stop at Aldi which was next door. We got milk, bacon, honey, breakfast items eggs and paper towel.

We got home around 4:30pm. I decided to make my chicken stock into Vietnamese Pho soup for dinner … so good in this weather.

We got our car back today. In the end it cost $720. DH is really happy with the work, I think we finally found a good mechanic and the best thing is the shop is actually really close to us. The shop is only a block away from a train station which makes it so much easier for DH to go to work after dropping it off and pick up. They were very thorough with the car service and I like how they itemised everything in the invoice. They actually fixed the shaking problem that we’ve had for the last 2 years. The other places have never been able to fix it. I won’t mind going for drives again now.

I just created a big grocery shopping list. I’m planning to go to the market for meat, seafood, vegetables and fruits. I’m also planning to go to the Asian shop, not far from the market, to get a big bag of rice and other Asian goodies. And if we can swing it maybe also go to ALdi.

DH and I went to the market, it is only few minutes drive away from our house but the problem is parking, it gets crazy when the market is open. Today I ended up swearing at this lady for stealing our parking spot. We were just about to go in when all of the sudden she decided to keep driving forward to our spot eventhough she already had a spot just in front to that one (or should I say just behind where she parked). How selfish and inconsiderate, so I swore at her and all she said is sorry but can you go around and to take the spot right behind her. The thing is by the time we go around in the next lane it will be gone. There were cars everywhere lining up trying to find a parking spot. I really don't understand why she couldn't park at that spot, why she had to drive forward.

Eventually, we got there. A lot of the shops were having their end of the week sales. We got a loaf of dark rye and a bag of turkish bread for $1 each, they are still very fresh made this morning, we are having some of the dark rye now and it is really good. DH loves to grill the turkish bread with a bit of olive oil to go with the cucumber and yogurt dip. They keep well in the freezer for couple of months.

I got 2 fresh calamari for $4 and a bag of mussels for $6. I also got $4 worth of fish which I made into Thai fish cakes (a nice recipe I got from a Thai friend, a family recipe) for lunch. Some of the calamari and mussels I made into seafood pasta for dinner. DH and I made the pasta fresh today, fettuccine and lasagne pasta.

The lean mince beef was only $6 a kilo. I already cooked half of it today, I made lasagne for the freezer which DH can have for lunch on Wednesday. I won't be able to cook Tuesday night because we are going out so by preparing something now he won't need to buy his lunch, I'm pretty sure Tuesday night is going to be very pricey.

There are few nice deli shops there too. Today, we got a small block of mozzarella cheese (for the lasagne), couple of chorizo and filo pastry.

Apple and nashi pear were $1 a kilo. Also got lemons, spring beans, potatoes and purple carrots.

All up we spent $41.95 today.

Just did some grocery shopping. We decided to go to the market, they are a lot cheaper specially just before closing (around 12-1pm), a lot of the fruit and vegetables were just $1 a kilo, we got bananas and capsicum for $1 a kilo. The lettuce and lebanese cucumber were 2 for $1. Also got a bit of meat. We should have enough meat in the freezer to last us until the end of the month. The only problem I find going to this market is the car park, there are not enough and it gets crazy. This market is only open 3 days a week and on Saturday they just want to get rid of everything because they don't open again until Thursday. I think we will try to go to the market more often again, we used to go every week but just got tried with the craziness.

Near by the market is a Safeway, were we went and got milk and taco shells, DH wants to make tacos for dinner tonight.

We ended up spending $5.90 at Safeway and $31.05 at the market. All up we spent $36.95 and now have $75.85 left in our grocery budget for the month. So far so good.


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Exercise Update:
I didn't do any yesterday.
Thurs I put in $1 for sit ups and push ups.
Today I've done some sit ups and push ups already and I will get on the bike soon. Hoping for another $2 contribution today.

Two months ago I got a voucher from groupon or one of those online deals for a basket/box of mixed fruit and vegetables worth $35 for $19. Anyway, last week I ordered it to be delivered this weeks. It arrived today and this is what I got:





1 Cos lettuce
200g Mushrooms
1 big Cucumber
1 bunch Celery
1 bunch Asparagus
2 Zuchini
2kg Potatoes
1 big Yellow Capsicum
4 Onions
1kg Carrots
5 Tomatoes
4 Oranges
1 Avocado
4 Pears
4 Granny Smith Apples
1 Mango
3 Bananas
4 Pink Ladys

I really like how they deliver it right to my door. I'm seriously thinking of getting this on regular basis. If I get it on regular basis they waive the delivery fee of $2, so it will only be for $33. There is also a smaller size (couple pack), which will probably suit us better, the one we got today is what they call family pack. The smaller box is for $23, or we can get the bigger box every other week instead. At the moment we spend around $20 per week on fruits and vegetables, so it is about the same. This will also cut down on our grocery shopping time we won't need to go to the fruit shop.

There is no contracts and they only uses Australian produce. If I do go ahead with it I will probably start getting it on regular basis just before christmas. Even if I don't get it on regular basis I will definitely used them again in the future and just pay the $2 delivery fee.

I will see how we go with this box anyway, it's an experiment at this stage.

We managed to have a NSD yesterday. DH probably was meant to get a hair cut but didn't have time. He will try to go next week.

Didn't do much today but some light cleaning. DH did spend some money for light grocery shopping - he got some milk, bread and snacks. We just been spending the whole afternoon watching our Australian football team's game and now we are just waiting for another game tonight. Tomorrow will also be stuck on the couch watching Australia v Italy in the rugby union world cup. But we will need to go and do a proper grocery shopping tomorrow morning, we really need some fruits and vegs.

Friday night we did go to Costco. In my previous post I stupidly said I was only going to spend $100 (excluding membership fee), well umm that amount ended to almost $180! Yikes. Plus $60 for the annual membership. I spent the left over money in the grocery budget last month towards the membership fee, so I still had to add another $32 out of this month's grocery budget. In the end we only got $28 left for groceries this month. I really don't know how we spent that much, we didn't get anything that we don't need. DH wanted to get some mini Reese's and I even said no to that, no junk food at all in this shopping trip, we hardly buy them really. I will work hard not to go over too much this month but I think this will be impossible. We shouldn't need much anymore, maybe milk and fresh fruits and veg. We should have enough meat for the rest of the month. Being a shorter month should help too.

Items we won't need to get in the next 3-5 months:
-Toilet paper
-Toothpaste
-Coffee
-Shampoo
-Olives
-Gherkins
-Cheese
-Stag Chilli - DH likes to take this to work for lunch when we don't have leftovers.

So I weekend start very expensive and it continued thru Saturday. Spent another $630+ more on materials for the renovation, this included sound insulation for the external walls.

Thankfully, Sunday was a NSD ! I'm tired from all the spending.

Friday night we did go to Costco. In my previous post I stupidly said I was only going to spend $100 (excluding membership fee), well umm that amount ended to almost $180! Yikes. Plus $60 for the annual membership. I spent the left over money in the grocery budget last month towards the membership fee, so I still had to add another $32 out of this month's grocery budget. In the end we only got $28 left for groceries this month. I really don't know how we spent that much, we didn't get anything that we don't need. DH wanted to get some mini Reese's and I even said no to that, no junk food at all in this shopping trip, we hardly buy them really. I will work hard not to go over too much this month but I think this will be impossible. We shouldn't need much anymore, maybe milk and fresh fruits and veg. We should have enough meat for the rest of the month. Being a shorter month should help too.

Items we won't need to get in the next 3-5 months:
-Toilet paper
-Toothpaste
-Coffee
-Shampoo
-Olives
-Gherkins
-Cheese
-Stag Chilli - DH likes to take this to work for lunch when we don't have leftovers.

So I weekend start very expensive and it continued thru Saturday. Spent another $630+ more on materials for the renovation, this included sound insulation for the external walls.

Thankfully, Sunday was a NSD ! I'm tired from all the spending.

DH gets paid today and last night he paid an extra $1,000 into the mortgage principal.

We might try to go to Costco after work tonight, which means probably we will be spending a bit of money, $60 for membership and probably around $100 in groceries. I will try to not to spend more than that. We tend to overspend at Costco.

- NSD on Friday and Sunday, which make it 12 NSD for the month.

- Went grocery shopping on Sat, spent just over $56. Also picked up drycleaning for $31.90.

- Then we went to the Hardware store to get stuff we need for our renovation. Spent over $122. Sat afternoon and Sunday morning DH managed to take down the sliding door and it's frame. We also took out the old shower after, the only way it would fit through. It is weird seeing it laying flat in the garage now. We have taken about half of the wall off. Next weekend we hope to put up more studs to replace where the sliding door used to be, we have decided to move the door to the other side . BTW I hated the sliding door and so glad it is now gone...

- We also went to a skylight store, just to get an idea on what's out there. Now that we decided to brick up the window we will need a skylight. The one the both DH and I like is really good but it's not the cheapest (around the middle range). This window really need replacement, so we decided to just brick it up. By doing so it will solve few of our problems, one is noisy neighbour. And we eventually want to install a water tank in that space which should help the problem with the gutter overflowing too much when there is a really heavy rain.

I really really want to put more money into the mortgage but I have to hold off. Unfortunately most trades people only accept cash, which is fair enough.

The other problem we also have it that no one calls back when they say they would call back and the one that does over-charge a lot. The guy that says he will call back about 2 weeks ago now never did and when we tried to call him his phone is not working anymore. It's weird.

I remember 8 years or so ago we used to have people knocking on our door asking if we need worked done around the house. We did but unfortunately we didn't have the cash then to do it. I wish I had the money then but I am also glad that we didn't go on debt for it.

We will eventually get it done but now I know that it will take a lot longer than that I hope for.

I tried this out last month and it worked out so well that I decided to keep doing it for this month too. I've never really done a whole month menu planning before, I think the most I've done in the past was for 2 weeks. I like that I only spent about 1/2 hour writting it out and I even got some input from DH. For some reason he is craving for maccaroni and cheese, weird man!

I really like how I just get up in the morning, look at the menu list and just take out the meat (if required) from the freezer. It really helps me from agonizing on what to cook for dinner that night. This way I make the menu list and then from that I spend about 15 mins writting out the shopping list. A lot less work doing it this way than weekly or even every other week. Well so far so good anyway. The biggest reward for doing a menu plan and then having a grocery list based on that menu plan is the savings we make from reduce grocery bill. Last month we only spend $196.10, our lowest grocery bill since Jan. I don't know why I don't make menu plan all the time when it saves me so much time and money. Pure laziness I guess, which is stupid cause by having one I actually spend less time thinking about what to cook every night.

DH a I spent pretty much the whole day shopping. We end up getting:

3 pairs of shoes (2 for me and 1 for DH). They were around 60-70% off, and they are really good quality shoes and very comfy.

Got a gift for a friend, for next weekend.

Then we went grocery shopping, mainly got vegies and 1 whole chicken. I will make chicken stock tomorrow for soup.

And we also got some multi-vitamins.

We also had to go to the post office to send my application for CC. And had lunch out. I'm not sure how much we spent all up yet, it will be a bit. I planned for his month to be extra frugal - that kind of went out the window.

We were out for about 5 hours, and DH had to have a nap when we got home (soft!).

Having people over for 2+ weeks last month and having a couple of parties has now push our grocery budget for the year over by about $150. We really now need to pull it back, which means being creative with our meal planning.

Went grocery shopping yesterday and I hope we won't need to spend anymore (except for milk) for the rest of the month. From yesterday shopping we got:
a whole chicken (I've cut this up into different cuts and have made stock out of the bone/carcass)
4 cuts of steak (some can be cut into stirfry cuts)
a lot of fruits and vegies

Also DH picked one of the pumpkin from the garden yesterday. I will use some to make pumpkin soup and I will also make some minestrone soup out of the chicken stock today. Hearty soups like these are great to have for cold winter days (like we are now having).

Today is DH's payday, yea! Unfortunately, a lot of bills come out today too. Just paid the internet and the annual home & content insurance. Also $1000 is put a side for saving this month.

Used up the zucchinis last night for dinner. Made zucchini and pasta with cream sauce. Had some salad to go with it. I think we could go for another week without going to the shop. So far we are on track with our goal of only spending $100 on groceries this month.




15 Jan - 11am

I told DH about only spending $100 this month on groceries, initially he said it is doable (when he thought there were only 2 weeks left in the month) but then he realized we still have 3 weeks to go and now he thinks it can't be done...lol. This is definitely streching it, so I need a plan for this to work. Firstly, I went through the pantry and the fridge to see what we have. And then I wrote out a rough menu plan base on those ingredients. Basically, we will have to make a few pasta dishes, curries, beans and vegies to stretch out our stock. Hopefully it can be done if not then no big deal.



11 Jan - 12pm

DH and I went grocery shopping today for the first time this year. We actually run out of fresh milk 2 days ago but we held out until today. We just open one of those long life milk. They are great for emergency usage such as the other day.

Anyway, today we went to Aldi, the butcher shop, and fruit & veg shop. They pretty much next to each other. All up we spent $73.49 and this is what we got for that amount of money.




What we got from Aldi($50.74):
4kg bag of Potato (was on sale for only $1.49 a bag)
1.5kg of Bananas
1kg Carrots
1kg Raw Sugar
Can of sliced pineapple
Hot Dogs*
Cream
Juice
2pk Sponges
Sour Cream
3lt of Fresh Milk
1lt of Long life Milk
3x Fabric Softener
Cranberry Sauce
Bacon*
1/2kg Broccoli
Coffee
Marmalade
2x Biscuits*
2x Bread
2x Can of Tomatoes
2x Can of Tuna
Oats
Muesli
Box of Tissue
Cleaning Cream
Dishwashing Liquid
Disinfectant

What we got from the Fruit & Veg shop ($10.75):
Spring Onions
1/2 Celery
Apples
Lemons
1/4 Pumpkin
Capsicums
1/2 Cauliflower
1bg of Turkish Bread


Only thing that's not in the photo are the 3 whole chickens that I got from the butcher shop for $12. It was a very good deal, it saved about $1 per kilo compare to Aldi.

Tonight's dinner will be roast chicken and vegies, one of DH's fav. And I'm thinking for lunch tomorrow will be leftover roast chicken with salad wrap in Turkish bread.

I don't think we will need much more for the rest of the month. I'm hoping to only spend another $25 for the month. I think I might make this a goal - to only spend $100 on grocery this month.




10 Jan - 2:30pm

Well it's Sunday 7pm here, so it is very safe to say that today is a NSD, This add up to 3 NSD for the week. Yesterday was a very spendy day. First we went out for a birthday lunch and then we went shopping for some items for the house that has been in our to do lists/ to get lists for a long time now. We were not as busy this weekend so we actually got some house work/repair done. We also got two pairs of work shoes for DH, he definitely needs new ones now. We decided to get two because they were really cheap. The store that we got them for was having a massive sales. The last thing we got yesterday was some groceries. We got some eggs, milk bread, vegies and oranges. All up it costs $9.75. Other expenses that we spend this week was for insurance, fuel, and $100 to my managed funds.

We spent just under $20 on the weekend, which leaves us with $13 in the grocery budget for the rest of the month. Probably enough for milk more milk. Might have to have some powdered milk. We will see if we can hold out.

Today DH got paid and we finally able to find out his new monthly salary. It is $60 more than I anticipated, which is fine by me! This will most likely change again in two months time because of the new tax cut that the government is giving us, I think it should take affect in July. It should be another $15-20 a week extra to his salary. We also found out that his company is contributing almost $600 per month to his superannuation (retirement) fund. So that's over $7000 to his retirement per year.

It's the middle of the month and we only got $32 left in the grocery budget. So it is going to be tough trying to get through the month without going over. Hopefully we can get by without going over by much. We only need to get few essential items; we are running out of milk and don't have anymore eggs. We will be going shopping for these items tomorrow and will probably also get some fruits and vegies and maybe some chicken. Hope to only spend $15-20 this week. Oh boy this is going to be tough. With the prices going up so much it is getting a lot harder to stay under budget. Unfortunately, we don't have much competition with our supermarkets The big store pretty much can put up the prices as much as they want. Luckily, Aldi is around but I think we need more competition.

We are also already over our fuel budget but this was intentional. DH has been driving to work instead of taking public transport. So we are putting the money for his fare ticket to the fuel money. We are just testing this at the moment, hopefully it won't be costing us too much more (even better hopefully it might even cost us less). Also he gets home a lot earlier this way.