Nicte from Racine, WI

[Anonymous]

I repinned a post from here weeks ago and just got around to checking it out. I am a stay at home mom with a family of four, with two toddlers. My husband and I are both obese and our grocery budget (lack thereof) has enabled us to accrue serious personal debt. We are smart people, but this is our Achilles heel.

I never really learned to eat well (my mom struggled to maintain 110 lbs) and although there must have been a budget, it wasn’t transparent to me.

I’m hoping for motivation, inspiration, anything and everything to just stop getting sucked into big grocery bills. I can coupon better than average, but even non-obsessive couponing takes so much effort! My biggest challenges are getting my husband to eat food outside his comfort zone and maintaining reasonable portions for both of us. He is a meat and cheese guy!

The next biggest challenge is time management, my kids don’t nap reliably or at the same time 9/10 days, so my opportunity to get meals planned and executed is minimal.

And in case you were wondering my screen name is pronounced NISH-tay. Not that it matters, but I get asked about it more than you’d think!

[GB101]

Welcome to the site Nicte! (and thank you for telling me how to pronounce your name, even though I’m reading it and not saying it out loud, it would have driven me crazy wondering, lol!)

I completely understand your thoughts on the couponing- I like the savings, but hate the massive effort that it takes, watching all the sales, watching for deals, watching watching watching. It easily becomes a “lifestyle” rather than a method of savings. At one point, we had the entire family helping us clip stackers (from multiple papers). But then something wonderful happened, our local newspaper quit having inserts…

and I realized I could save plenty of money without spending hours on coupons. We still use them on occasion, but only for items that we would normally use. That was another issue we had- we would have a coupon and there would be a sale but it would be for an item we generally wouldn’t have eaten, but we’d get it anyway- a budget breaker and as my other half puts it, a middle-maker. (aka, usually something fattening that we shouldn’t be eating).

All of my guys are meat eaters and when we lived out in the mid-west, we had a lot of venison, which was very cheap. Now that we live in the South East we have to get creative with seasonings, spices and heartier foods so they don’t miss the constant steak/potatoes style meals. Anyways, welcome to the site, I’m sure you’ll find a ton of hearty man-friendly recipes here and also on our sister site, budget101.com !

As for the fitness, I hear you on that too! There’s a great section about here:

http://www.budget101.com/frugal-living-articles/fitness-life-deep-dark-secrets-3333.html

So glad you joined us and I look forward to your posts!

[Author]

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