Now we can, we sometimes will have take away one night a week.
Occasionally I'll go out for lunch or coffee, but only every few weeks. I'll go to friends houses for that instead.
I do meal plan every week. Always have. Occasionally if something is on special, I'll buy extra to get a bit ahead, stocked up.
I do all our shopping at once, once a week. We might slip down the supermarket for bread & milk on occasion, or sour cream or something, but if I do that I try really hard to not look at anything else, lol. I buy what I need & thats it.
I buy cake mixes for dessert etc. Last week though, I indulged & bought a mudcake.... Might be hard to avoid that every week
I buy mostly home brand stuff. Shampoo & cond, toilet paper & stuff on special only.
We get 3 pays each week. One of DH's has $50 that goes into savings every week. The other 2 have $20 a week go into the same savings account. I also have a seperate savings account that I put $10 a week into, but it's only been able to stay there the last 2 weeks. Thats my christmas money.
Actually for christmas this year I'm doing Chrisco. Not much in the way of food etc. I got one thing each for the kids for under $2 a week, one alcohol pack, one thing for DH & $500 in vouchers for Kmart & Woolies/Big W. Everything else through them is a higher price, but the vouchers work out even. You get a $100 voucher & you only pay $100, no extra iykwim. The bigger the voucher is, you do start paying extra though.
I think that'ss make a huge difference to christmas this year.