It is sad, but I was actually having trouble sleeping last night due to worrying about grocery day today. I feel doomed to over spending failure. I did finally manage to go one week last week without visiting our discount warehouse store for supplies. (You know, that big box store that's supposed to be saving us money, but so far seems to be costing us more instead due to the bulk amounts.) But it seems like that just means there will be twice as much this week instead, so I'm not that impressed with myself anymore.

Other than our mortgage, groceries is our single biggest monthly expense (followed by my student loan), and I really feel that getting control of our finances is going to require some soul searching in this area. Looking over warehouse store list (20 items!), I would say that close to half these items are things that are going to last us for quite a long time, so perhaps it is once again that we are just still in the bulk up phase. We've been in this phase for a month and a half now then though. And we really need to be out of it by next month because I am projecting Dec and Jan to both be particularly tight. And then I look at the news and see things about food cost increases due to the drought this past summer, and fiscal cliff payroll tax increases, and I just want to scream a throw things. A little help please??

My husband is not much emotional support this week either as he seem to be struggling with it worse than me. I think it is mostly brought on by his job kind of sucking right now. But he got really annoyed the other day when I said he'd need to wait until pay day to get another new charger cord for his new iPhone (of course the old ones are no longer compatible) because we used up all of last paycheck's discretionary budget getting the phone itself. He got annoyed and said that it sucks to work hard all day at a job he doesn't like to make all this money, and yet still not have $20 for a phone cord at the end of the day if he wants one. To which I was like, well we do have enough, if you want to prioritize that over credit card debt, but we can't do both. He grumbled and went downstairs and was moody for the rest of the night even though he said he did think we were doing the right thing.

My thoughts from upstairs were along the lines of, "Come on. You got an iPhone 5 this month. I got an iPhone 4. That's certainly not nothing. And you only need to wait 1 extra day!" He's not normally that whiny (though money issues does seem to be one of his buttons) so I think it's mostly work. And I think it's more generally the idea of not having enough money period that bothers him a lot more than the phone cord specifically. None the less, its hard to feel like a motivated, goal in site, on the ball team when faced with tirades like that. Also had to explain to him this week that planning a meal with beef instead of chicken because that's what we still have in the freezer doesn't actually save us money if we still have either chicken or beef every time in roughly the same ratios. To actually save money, we have to use less meat. He is a smart man. I'm not sure why that was hard for him to hear.

I, personally, have still been feeling quite motivated and very happy that we are working on this. I just wish it were not so mind numbingly slow! I've seen a number of blogs that mention the idea of "snow flaking" your way through your debt snowball. That is, finding lots of small ways to contribute regularly to the total sum. I think I need to look into more ways to do that, because I really need to find more chances to celebrate in what will undoubtedly be a long and somewhat frustrating year. I also need to get more comfortable with throwing this extra money immediately towards debt instead of holding on to it "in case", because it always gets spent that way. For instance, I realized out of the blue the other day that our bank check cards have been racking up points in one of those rewards programs for months (if not years) now. Turned out we had a little over $100 in cash back savings. Half of that went directly towards a credit card, but half of it got used for things like diapers and wipes this week due to funds being low after the phones. Should have just sent it in.

As long as we truly stick to our budget, that extra should still be there at the end of the month to pay then. But we all know what often happens with things like that. And it was mailing in the buffer at the end of last month that caused us to be too short for the phone cord this week, and just look how my husband reacted. Its hard to not want to keep some on hand to avoid situations like that. I think perhaps we need to have a discussion about keeping our state of mind in the right place for each other during this "small account buffer" period of our finances. I know it makes him uneasy, which in turn makes me uneasy, but this is how it's going to be for the next few month if we are going to make any real progress. We need to be each other's cheerleaders more often. We are doing something awesome and very worthwhile!

I wish my next money goal could be getting our grocery bill under a certain amount, but to be honest, until we get done with these initial bulk purchases (maybe this week?) I just don't think I can budget as well as I would like for that yet. One thing I am finally going to bite the bullet on though: a "best" price spreadsheet for groceries. We have up to 5 different stores we get things from at this point (though only 3 main ones) and trying to keep track of which place is best for which thing is driving me crazy, especially when sales come up. Granted, the idea of being the kind of crazy, price checking, coupon clipping, store hopping lady who has a list like that also makes me cringe. But as mentioned before, groceries is really the number one things we need to get a handle on in this house. Something must be done.

I already have two items I'm going to price check at two places before I purchase this week. As well as two coupons I printed and then discarded when I discovered the store brand is cheaper anyway. I did totally fall for a $5 store card with diaper purchase, only to realize as I was getting in my car that they had just marked up their regular diaper price by $5 (Bastards!). Actually, I think that was the very moment I finally accepted that I needed to make this spreadsheet. To redeem myself, I made sure to cut up and freeze the two extra bananas I didn't use after all this week, so that I can use them next week instead. To me, these are the true Baby Steps of Dave Ramsey's process right now. Because the distance between this Baby Step and the next one in the Total Money Makeover book feels more like an Olympic hurdle to me right now. But I am slowly finding small victories in this stage, and there are many milestones yet to come.