One of THOSE Blogs

(I swear I'm not turning this into a home/cooking blog. BUT.)

Several months ago I started posting a series on how to establish and use a budget for your household, based on a living situation that roughly resembles a college student. I've been working on maintaining a fairly strict budget for over a year now, with some specific goals: I want to save enough money each month to build up a nice little savings egg, and I also want to allow myself to spend enough each month to eat well and afford little extras like coffee or a new sweater.

One of the biggest areas I've been working on to maintain my budget goals is grocery spending. Luckily for me, I live one block away from a well-known, deep discount store called Aldi. You may or may not have heard of this place, or even shopped there, but I seriously encourage you to find a location near you if this is a place you've never heard of. I can find almost everything I need at Aldi. Some things like produce and lean meats or specialty meats/fish I look for at the regular grocery store. But most other things like cheese, pasta, canned goods, butter, and milk are things I get at Aldi.

Almost every single time I check out I approach the counter thinking that I've either met or gone past my spending goal for the trip (I tend to impulsively grab multiples of things I'm purchasing since I'm there)-- and almost every single time I am literally astounded at how CHEAP my purchase is.

Eric and I are planning to go shopping this week. We have planned our meals for the remainder of this week and next week and we're going to shop for all of our ingredients. I'm going to be posting my meal plan as well as my shopping list (and the final cost). Hopefully you'll get some delicious meal ideas and some inspiration-- it IS possible to eat well and save money.

In addition, I'm planning to post a few other things that I've started doing over the last year to save money and live healthier, so be sure to come back and check out what I've got up my sleeve!