Different families have different circumstances, budgets and priorities. While my husband works full time, my main job right now is to makes our household run smoothly, take care of our 4 children and stay on budget. In the past 10+ years since working full time, I have helped bring income in by working part time as a preschool teacher, babysat my old coworker and friend’s children and neighbor’s child and tutored Spanish. With a 18 month old, my focus has been to get him on a schedule and I will probably return to tutoring in the evenings this fall. While the following tips and ideas are not by any means…

About a year or so  ago, I changed the way I go about making a grocery list. While sticking to a monthly grocery budget (I strive for about $520 a month including our toiletries and paper items), I changed the way I planned my menu and wrote my grocery list. I used to just write my menu then list the ingredients I needed for these meals on my list and then shop typically at Walmart and Aldi. When we moved to a new town, I finally discovered why so many people enjoy shopping at Kroger. While I still do the majority of my shopping at Aldi, these are the steps…

My husband and I love our ribeye steaks. When asked to choose a steak, we will ideally choose a ribeye every time, medium rare. But ribeye steaks are definitely not something too friendly on our budget. A few years ago, the hubby came home with some chuck eye steaks and I was sold! Chuck eye steaks have a very similar taste to ribeyes but the cost per pound is a lot less. We usually can find them for around $6-7/lb versus $13-14/lb for ribeye steaks. Since they can usually only cut two chuck eye steaks from a cow, you may not find many on the beef shelf at the grocery…