Wealth=Wise(Investments+Strategies)

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I have been doing a fair bit of creative home budgeting this week. And I really get the kick out of it.

My husband love this cheap meal that I made and it cost less than $2.

When he comes home from his man bible studies and helping out in cleaning the church library, this is what I presented to him for his lunch ; and he absolutely love it !

I made a whole bunch of mashed potatoes from this week Win Dixie’s 99 cents for 5lbs Russet potatoes.

And the steak is from the buy 1 get 2 free sirloin steak from this week Albertson’s store.

I got 3 packs of steak like this which cost me $15 , and all the 3 packs of sirloin steak weight around 6lbs which comes out to be around $2.5 per pound . To me that is a steal.

My husband love meat and I do not want him to deprive of his meat even when I am in this smart budgeting. I still let him have his meat but with lots of vegetable and add on plenty of rice or potatoes. The $15 worth of Sirloin steak meat that I bought from Alberston this week should be able to last our family meat supply for 3 weeks with plenty of vegetables.

Besides the 2 bargains that I have posted earlier on : how-i-save-249-this-weekend and a-great-deal-to-stock-up-batteries-for-hurricane-season, some of the bargains I have gotten for these weeks are :

CVS

5 free 40 band aid (it was $1.99 but store gives back $1.99 store credit, store limit 5 per household.)

Walgreens :
I took the $5 coupon opportunity. I saw this offer from moneycommonsense’s blog.

I bought the Sun-Maid raisins

My son has a bit of constipation issue and I often buy raisin from him from Publix and I like the Sun-Maid brand more than others.

and honey crunch cereals

My son love honey crunch cereals, we should have enough cereals for the next 6 months !

Target.
Most days, my son and I have sandwich for our lunch, my husband has rice and all the other stuff I cook for him. He does not like to eat sandwich because he says it is not feeling :).

This week, Target offers Oscar ham meat at 2 for $4.

And with online coupon, it amounts to $1.25 for a pack, which to me is a steal because even in bargain store like Save-A-Lot, it is $3.99 a pack.

Smart budgeting is a form of investment.
I personally think the art of smart shopping is not merely utilize coupon, in fact, it is more complicated than that. The process needs a lot of planning and taking advantage of the merchandises that are on sales which are in your inventory list. It is very similar with how I invest in stocks. I have no emotion attach to any particular stocks. I buy stocks with 3 basic criteria : Is our present economy situation favors the stocks ? (ie. is that the right asset class for the economy I am living now) ? How is the management like with the stock that I am going to invest, well managed ? poor managed ? What are the technical indicators like with the stock, under 200 days moving average ? The stock will be under my purchase radar screen when all these criteria met.

A number of simple step that I have highlighted in my prior post (The Yin and Yan of wealth equation) concerning smart shopping :

1. Have a list of your inventory.
2. Find out what is on sales.
3. Find out if there is any coupons that are related to those sales (double your benefit).
4. Purchase and stock pile.

I look at this smart shopping as a form of investment, it certainly need some capitals. A lot of people are living pay check by pay check so it is quite a challenge to take out that extra cash to buy things which they might not need it now but I do believe one can always start small and take baby steps.

How you can do it with a small capital.
Let me show you some simple steps. Let’s say you only have extra $10 a week to invest in this smart budgeting. You can start off like this (this week scenario at our town) :

Budget = $10.

1. Use $6.99 to buy the 2 Oral B tooth brush, store give you back $6.99 credit and you keep that $6.99 for next week if you see a good deal.
Now you have 2 free Oral B tooth brush.

2. Use 99 cents to buy the 5lbs Russel’s potatoes. That 5lbs of potatoes can be used to make a lot of mashed potatoes.

3. Use the remaining $2 to buy the Oscar meat and if you are like me, that is enough meat for my weekly lunch.

You might be able to use your $6.99 for a lot of free stuffs that CVS offer.

Do not buy stuffs for the sake of sales or coupons, buy stuffs that you need them and REMEMBER to let your grocery bills work for you.

And all the best and I love to hear from you. Come back and visit me, I am going to write about what I have done on the Yan side of the wealth equation next week. I sold off some gold stocks and bought some gold stocks this week, that would be the topics for next week.

This post is submitted to :

157th edition of Carnival of Personal Finance which will be scheduled on Mon., Jun. 16, 2008 and will be hosted by Consumerism Commentary;

130th edition of Festival of Frugality which will be scheduled on June 17th 2008 and will be hosted by Out Of Debt Again;

64th edition of Carnival of Money which will be scheduled on 06/17/08 and will be hosted by Money Ning.,

17th edition of Money Hacks Carnival which will be scheduled on Jun 18, 2008 and will be hosted by Mrs Nespy’s Frugal World.

and Personal Finance Buzz .

Tags: Carnivals //