New Year, New Ideas on Budgeting and Planning

I'm not really into New Year's Resolutions. I feel like if I put a formal title on something like a "Resolution," then I end up wanting to rebel against it and eventually quit. Sometimes I think I get too much satisfaction out of quitting things. 

So instead of setting resolutions, I've just been thinking about our life and ways we can simplify and improve. In our family, I pretty much handle all the finances and shopping. We don't live paycheck to paycheck or anything, but money is still something that tends to cause me stress. I think part of that comes from being a stay at home mom and knowing that while I add a lot of value to our family, it's not in the monetary form. 

I recently clicked on a Pinterest link talking about how to reduce your grocery spending bills. It took me to the website Fun Cheap or Free. Her article mentioned that you should only go shopping once a week and if you run out of food or forget something, do without or that 1 gallon of milk will end up costing $50. She also has an article The 7 Bank Accounts Every Family Should Have. This really resonated with us. 

Ben and I have talked about setting up separate accounts to help with budgeting things, like saving to finish our basement, but we haven't done it yet. This article really lays it out clearly. Budgeting is something I've struggled with. When I was still working, we really didn't have to worry about it at all. But now that I'm a stay at home mom, I feel like we should probably keep better track. I tried using www.mint.com, but I would frequently forget to sort through the transactions and then months would go by before I would log on again. I think I need more of an automatic system, like having money directly deposited into different accounts.

The biggest area in our budget that I see room for improvement is in food spending. I usually end up making multiple trips to the grocery store a week and I'm sure that increases our costs. Over the years I have greatly improved my ability to make a full meal out of a seemingly empty fridge and pantry. But there are definitely days when it's 6 o'clock at night, I'm tired, have no plan for dinner and we're hungry now. I'm going to try and be more focused on weekly meal planning. My goal is to make our meal plan on Sunday and do the shopping on Mondays. 

Hopefully this will help simplify our life, reduce my stress and improve our finances at the same time. Plus it sounds pretty easy, so I'm thinking I'll actually be able to stick with it.