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Grocery Tips Giveaway and $1,436 in Extra Income

Last Updated: BY Michelle Schroeder-Gardner - 35 Comments

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Happy Monday everyone! Above are some pictures from my Instagram again. Having an iPhone now really makes it easy for me to share pictures with you all every week.

Didn’t do a whole ton this week and probably should have focused more time on my work certification. My dog (more on that below) took up my whole day on Saturday and on Sunday I pretty much slept for 13 hours. AH I KNOW!

I also have a giveaway today, just scroll to the bottom if you are interested! I hope you are all loving these giveaways because I have 3 more in the works already. These giveaways will be for another iPad, $75 to Novica, and a gift certificate to an Etsy sellers store. And if you haven’t yet, check out my Aldi giveaway from my Weekly Roundup post on Saturday.

I also announced the winners from my iPad and Cash giveaway and everyone has collected their prizes. Congrats to those who won!

My updates:

Spending:

I didn’t spend a lot of money on clothes or anything this past week. I was too swamped with work and everything else to really spend any money.

However, I did spend money on one of my dog’s this past week. On Saturday I woke up to her hacking up her lungs pretty much and took her to the vet. $300 later, the vet is still not sure what she has but gave her some medication to see if kennel cough is one of the reasons. She hasn’t been to a kennel or seen other dogs so I was pretty confused as to how it could be that.

But if she doesn’t get better then she’s getting x-rays next week to rule anything out. I was very sad on Saturday! I am a big baby and crazy dog momma though. 🙂

Extra Income (this is on top of my salary from my job):

Another great week. I made around $1,436 from online income and rent from my sister (staff writing, website, etc.) last week. This is before fees and everything else though. I am still in the middle of drafting my extra income explanation post and I PROMISE that I will post it soon. Sorry that it’s taking forever.

The $1,436 is not the exact number shown above because my sister just gives me cash for her rent of course, so that is why they don’t add up.

Food: 

We did pretty well with our food spending last week. Spent a little bit on groceries and ate in a decent amount.

Also, in my last Extra Income, Life, Food Weekly Update, a lot of you said that you either do batch cooking or want to. I plan on possibly starting this soon and will keep everyone updated on it.

I don’t have a meal plan set for this week yet, so hopefully that doesn’t kill our food budget! Not the greatest way to start out December.

Being healthy:

I’m still doing good with this still. Lost like half a pound last week but that’s alright with me. My overall goal is to lose 5 pounds so WOOHOO!

And we are still eating healthy. W has recently gained a lot of weight. In the beginning he was trying to gain weight because he was so skinny, but now he has finally realized that he is gaining too much. Funny how that works out right?

So now our plan is to eat healthier all the time together. This will make it a lot easier for me because before I would make HUGE meals for him.

How’s your spending, working out and extra income going?

And now on to the giveaway!

The theme for this giveaway is saving money grocery shopping. The prize is $100 either through Paypal or an Amazon gift card.

As you can see every Monday, I am always talking about what we are doing to save money when we go grocery shopping. There are many new things that we will be trying out:

1. Eating less meat.

We eat a TON of meat. Since we are trying to eat healthier and to gain less weight, we are working on eating more vegetables and everything else. No more of us eating a pound of steak or something similar each night.

2. Batch cooking.

This is something new that we are going to try and do. I’ve seen some other bloggers do it. The thought of cooking for 8 hours in one day sounds scary, but the main reason why we go out to eat is because we hate cooking after a long day at work. I’m hoping that with batch cooking that we will eat out less.

3. Meal planning.

This is something that we didn’t do for this week yet (as I said above), but I am a big proponent of meal planning. It cuts down on waste because we know exactly what we will be buying for our meals.

What are you doing to lower your food costs?

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About Michelle Schroeder-Gardner

Michelle is the founder of Making Sense of Cents, a blog about personal finance and traveling. She discusses how her business has evolved in her side income series. She paid off $40,000 in student loans by the age of 24 mainly due to her freelancing side hustles. Click here to learn more about starting a blog!

Comments

  4. John S @ Frugal Rules says

    We're pretty big on meal planning and having a grocery budget to stick to. We regularly come out under it, so we generally have extra money going forward.

    Reply

  6. Nichelle says

    I could buy so many books with this!

    I do crock pot dinners by the month typically. Buy everything, divide it into ziplock bags, freeze, put in crock pot viola. Do not freeze potatoes raw…bad life choice!

    Reply

  12. Budget & the Beach says

    Can't wait to read that post! Sorry about your dog. 🙁 My tip for switching to less meat is more beans! They are just as filling and have a lot of fiber-very healthy, and cheap!
    My recent post Believing in Yourself

    Reply

  13. Miss Jessie says

    Wow! Great job with the extra income. I am working on increasing mine this month!
    In order to save money on food, I meal plan and clip coupons. It works, but I always feel like I could do more.
    My recent post Good Appointment

    Reply

  14. Ashlee says

    Oh no, hope your doggie gets to feeling better very soon! I am loving seeing their pics on Instagram! & as always, Congrats on the extra income, woohoo!!!

    I most always plan my meals before I go to the grocery and make a list. I also check my cabinets/fridge/freezer to see if there is anything I can base a meal around.

    Reply

  16. kimateyesonthedollar says

    So sorry about your doggy. We had one who got kennel cough once without going to the kennel, and she recovered just fine. I think you are teasing about the extra income post. Are you really just robbing convenience stores or something, LOL. I would highly recommend the batch cook. It is a long day,but so nice afterwards.I can't bring myself to cook much at the end of the day, so this gave us tons of good meals without having to do that.
    My recent post My Most Memorable Christmas

    Reply

  17. alice says

    The same thing happened with my dog a few months back. we never did figure out what it was…but we think he may have eaten something he shouldn't have and it irritated his throat. Hope your fur baby feels better soon!

    Reply

  18. Angella says

    Hope your dog feels better soon! Your weekly extra income is amazing, would love a detailed post on that (unless I missed it??) To save on our food costs we buy certain items in bulk (items we use frequently that have long expiration dates), shop with coupons and hit up sales. I also try to get to know my stores mark down dates for meats!

    Reply

  19. Veronica Hill says

    Our spending is in check, but extra income is non-existent. Can't wait for your post on your extra income 🙂
    My recent post 10 Cheap and Practical Gift Card Ideas that Don’t Suck

    Reply

  20. Renee S says

    I use groupon for coupons when dining out, i split bigger purchases with my roommate, we plan meals! Thanks for the giveaway!

    Reply

  24. C The Writer says

    Er, working out could be better as I have skipped the past six days (which, luckily, is only four workouts by my estimation, but still). I'm getting right back into it tomorrow, though. My life is AWESOME because I have just found myself an apartment! My extra income is even getting better, someone posted a very nasty, vitriolic piece about me on their blog but it drove a lot of traffic to my site and enabled me to get more hits and a bit more blogging income. I'm also dabbling in a bit of freelance writing and hoping to find more, better-paid gigs.

    So things are pretty good.
    My recent post Quick note.

    Reply

  28. Jason Clayton says

    Talk about keeping us in suspense! Looks like you are tearing it up in extra income. Congrats, and I can't wait for that post!
    My recent post 7 ways to enjoy Traveling, have an amazing Vacation, and still be Frugal

    Reply

  32. Madison says

    I stick to the list of things I planned on buying. And usually it's just the staples. I also limit the amount of snacks, because we are big snackers!
    My recent post My James Bond Streak Has Been Broken and an Interview

    Reply

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