If you follow many blogs you’ve no doubt seen this logo and lots of people talking about following along with this challenge.

I’ve decided that along with Precious’s Money Saving Challenge I will be joining this challenge as well.

Here are some guidelines they have set to help get started:

• Reduce grocery spending. We're talking about reducing grocery spending this month, not eliminating it. Set a goal that is lower than your regular food budget and shoot for not exceeding it.
• Take stock. Take an afternoon and empty your pantry, freezer, and refrigerator. Ditch what's gone bad and make a list of what's left. Knowing what you have will make you less likely to buy more.
• Use what you have. Check your pantry before you meal plan or head off to the store. Develop meals based on what you have rather than buying new.

Now here’s what we are going to be doing here.

• Starting January 1st we will be reducing the spending.  I will have to buy fresh fruits, milk and some veggies every week.  I will also be getting any free foods or foods under .50 that we use regularly.  I will be couponing all that I can to reduce those costs.
• I will be going through the pantry at some point in the next 2 weeks (after school starts again) and donating the things that won’t be used if they are close to expiring to the local food pantry.
• I don’t meal plan, I’ve tried and failed several times.  I’m trying to focus all my frustrations I mean energy on following a written budget so I won’t be attempting the meal planning this month.  But I will be preplanning what I can.
• We are going to make a big effort to eat every meal at home for the month of January.  Honestly the only draw to eating out is not having to clean up, most of the time I know I could make better food but I don’t want to be bothered.

We have no family coming up this month (that I know of) so we should be able to stick to this very well.  The money we save will be going into the new account I just opened with ING for a down payment someday on a house.  If you are thinking about opening an account with them please let me know there is a referral bonus and I’d love to send you the link, they have a good interest rate for a basic savings account (1.3% vs .25% at my bank)

Drop me a comment if you are planning on joining on to this challenge.  I’d love to hear how you are doing.