After my last post I was asked to share my thoughts on budgeting and meal planning..
I'm not an expert and I make mistakes...sometimes big ones!
My budget isn't foolproof, but if I stick to some basic principles I can keep my family well fed and happy without having to worry too much.
So let me get one thing straight before we start. Budgeting and living a life even remotely bordering on
frugality
doesn't automatically mean you're going to have to live a life of dismal deprivation, eating the boxes other peoples food came in and going completely
freegan in a last ditch attempt to keep your head above water on the money front.
Keeping within your budget and being frugal means you're going to be living more conciously... this is a good thing. It means you're thinking about the wider picture and keeping within budget means you're more likely to be able to eat as well at the end of the month as you did at the beginning, which is never bad, especially when you have children.... things can get ugly when children are hungry!
I've always tried to live a conciously frugal lifestyle, but in the UK I didn't run my budget from my own purse. I wrote a bi-monthly list of everything we
needed and then worked with whatever I had to hand. I had a moderate stockpile and things on the grocery front at least, were pretty peachy.
My journey into the word of proper grown up budgeting was born out of neccessity after we made the move to Algeria in the spring of 2008. We had no choice but to tighten our belts and take a cold hard look at our finances. We had no desire to end up back in the UK, but staying in Algeria meant being financially stable, and at the time we were very far from that.
Now for the
lovely sister that asked, I can give you the lowdown on my budget but remember its all relative. What works for my family won't work for anyone else. However I'm all for taking the gist of an idea and moulding it to shape my own needs...alot of my budgeting strategy has been picked up along the way after seeing what worked for other people and then adapting it to fit my own familiy's needs
My first top tip is that you make sure that you and spousey are on the same page. Which means you need to sit down
together and take an honest look at your finances and what you can and can't do with them. You won't be able to work magic but you can draw up some kind of a plan to make it easier to spend your money wisely, reduce debts and stay afloat.
This is the boring grown up bit... list all your expenses..' ALL of them!
Everything from the utility bills to the children's pocket money. Include every single expense you can think of. And then start the weeding out process. Some of what's on your list will be an immovabe part of your monthly budget, but take a good look at everything and see if there are things you can reduce spending on or even stop spending on completely.
What you're attempting to do is live within a financial framework, which can be quite daunting at first..especially if like me, you have an aversion bordering on insane to anything remotely grown up and responsible. Which is a somewhat shocking admission from a mother with seven children, but there you are.
To give you some idea of how a budget can work I'll give you a quick glimpse at mine insha'allah
My "payday" is the first of every month. Although sometimes life conspires to make me go ever so slighty over budget and then I
may have to start my new month a few days earlier.
We put aside each month what we think we might need to cover utility bills, tutors fees, medical bills, etc. More often than not we're pleasanly surprised to have money leftover, which then gets carried forward to next month. My household allowance then covers everything else, groceries, school equipment, drinking water, internet. basically everything household including clothing.
The first thing I do when I start my new month is to pay for my next months worth of internet. It's a bit pricey at 2500da a month, but I'm in Africa..I need the contact with the outside world and quite frankly the children need me sane!
Next comes water, my other big budget buster. It's not that I don't trust the tap water here... ah heckers who am I kidding.. I
don't trust the tap water here and if it's a choice between the raging runs and putting my hand in my pocket for bottled water, then guess what? I bulk buy 10-15 cases in the winter, more in the summer of course..and have it delivered, which mean I score low on being eco friendly on the transport & packaging. But sometimes a compromise, no matter how ugly it is has to be made somewhere.
I also buy my milk in bulk at the start of the month, one day I hope I live somewhere where I can easily get hold of fresh unpasturied mik on a daily basis... in the meantime it's Candia.
After that the only other bulk buy I do is flour and semolina. I buy a 25kg sack of flour for 700da on a good day..and seeing as a 1kg bag of flour currently retails at 55da where I live it's a saving audacious enough to blow your socks off.
Once that's taken care of I do the veggies. I write up a list based on what I know is in season and send my boys off to my regular veggie man.. who will quite often let me have any poorer quality veg he has on my list for free. My veg will normally cost me anything between 1500 - 1700da a week..sometimes I have enough to carry me through to the following week although I constantly have to top on potatoes...but I blame that on Irish genes.
As far as fruit is concerned I'm a total opportunist and willl buy whatever I can whenever it's cheap enough.
Dried goods I buy as I need them. If I can sort my storage issues I'd be happy for this to change but at the moment I can't bear to think of laying out money for dried goods only to have them get infested with moths and other wildlife and being useless.
Eggs are bought by the tray at the start of each week for roughly 300da..and depending on how much baking we do wil normally last us a week perhaps less.
Twice a month I buy about 250da worth of peanuts and make peanut butter... I've also just started making my own
applesauce and
easy pickles.
Meat, I score lucky on, dh is a butcher, so meat these days comes to me for free. When I was having to buy meat out of my budget we hardly ate any meat at all , and ALWAYS the cheaper cuts... It's amazing how tasty turkey neck is!
Oil I buy in 5ltr bottles, though if it's not Ramadhan I try not to use too much and normally a 5ltr bottle if kept out of the hands of those who cook with gay abandon will last me the whole month.
I also buy a large tub of ghee at the start of the month and a couple of large bottls of olive oil.
Everything else I buy (apart from rice and pasta) is by mizan (weight) which means I can buy as much or as little as I need or my purse can cope with.
Anything else like clothes, unless it's an emergency buy has to be saved for...which is no bad thing, certainly in terms of teaching you to seperate your wants from your needs.
Of course the biggest hurdle you may have in your new endeavour to save money and stick to a budget are teenagers! If you have one at home it's a good idea to bring them on board and explain to them why you're jumping the good ship spontanious and suddenly changing tactics... after all your decision to spend less or at least spend more wisely will no doubt have a knock on effect on the teens lifestyle somewhere.
Once you've decided to keep a budget, try and keep track of where your money is really being spent. For the first few months of my budgeting life I kept a tally of everything I bought during each budget month...and I mean
everything. It was soon easy to see where my money was going and to spot any wastage. I was then able to weed out any budget busters and save some money.
At the end of your month it's always useful to review your spending. Are there things you need to change or things you could have done better?
It might take a while for you to get used to budgeting and fine tuning it the needs of your family. Mine is constantly evolving to take into account the needs of my children or price hikes. I've got used to it. But even I have to go back to the drawing board occassionlly and take a really good look at how I'm spending my cash.
My goal for September is to start having some no-spend days. it's been on my list of goals for ages and it's complete laziness tempered with a dash of disorganisation that's stopped me till now. But I'm hoping it will change next month.
In my next post I'll give you the lowdown on menu planning insha'allah. And saving time and money in the kitchen.
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