Coupon savings and spending

One month is (almost) over for the new year, and already I've failed at my budget.  Boy do I hope this isn't a sign for things to come.

As a reminder, my goal is to spend less than $300 on groceries, dog food, makeup, beauty and bath products, and household cleaners.  

I not only failed to keep it below $300 this month, I also didn't even keep it below $330 which was my budget goal for last year. haha!


Here's how I did:
I spent $361.53, saved $67.63 in coupons, and  $60.80 in advertised savings on items towards my budget.  
Going over what I spent, I know that the majority of that was on groceries and I bought dog food twice this month.  Early in the month Husband and I got items for several dinners that we normally only make every couple of months because we freeze it.  So I know that was part of it.   I also know that each time I went to Whole Foods I went on the weekend and Husband decided to come with me, and he bought meat.  I'm not saying I don't want meat bought at Whole Foods, because I do, it's just that I wouldn't have bought the meat and it would have kept the spending down.    I was also out of a lot of basics that we keep on hand at the beginning of the month and that caused the bills to be higher.

I am happy that very little of that spending was on health and beauty items and cleaning supplies.  In fact, the only cleaning supplies bought were laundry detergent and dishwashing detergent, both of which were great prices.  The health and beauty supplies bought were also at great prices or were needed (such as the bottle of store brand Ibuprofen I bought because we were out and I needed it).

Still, I was only about $62 over the goal.  That's not too bad, until I remember that I also used a $75 gift card at Whole Foods.  If I hadn't used that, we would have gone way over the budget!

I'm hoping next month will be better. We have plenty of ground beef, or at least I think we do, but I have no idea what Husband plans to cook next month.  We have other meat too.  We have lots of soups and other items in the freeze that we made in January.

As far as spending and coupon savings for items that don't count towards the budget, I did pretty good.  I'm keeping track of all the savings, but only the spending on clothing and shoes.  I spent $120.64 on clothing in January.  Other than one coat that was discounted to $61, the rest was spent on running clothes.  I should be set for winter though.  No more running clothes being bought unless it's at a deal I just can't pass up.  I saved $57.68 in coupons and an additional $276.14 in advertised sales.  Not to bad!

When combined, here are the totals:
Total saved: $462.25
Broken down that comes to $125.31 in coupons and $336.94 in advertised sales.

Total spent (for items I'm keeping track of): $482.17