Make it stretch

Freebies. Lots and lots of freebies.

Most frugal/personal finance blogs include links to sign up for freebies. If you don't already sign up for these freebies, you should start. It's amazing what you can get and it costs you nothing more than a little bit of time. You don't even have to go get your freebie (though, sometimes there are ones where you can print out a coupon to use in a store), it just shows up in your mailbox! Mailbox freebies are much more fun than bills. Sometimes there are even freebies for dog snacks. Those are the best! Some websites with good freebies are:

www.moneysavingmom.com

www.couponingtodisney.com

www.andfreebiesforall.com

www.hip2save.com

...but I digress...

...back to how to stretch your budget. If you're getting these freebies, they are a PERFECT way to stretch your grocery budget. While a toothpaste freebie isn't going to last you a month, it might last you 3-4 days. Get 2 of these and you've got a week's worth of toothpaste. Same thing with body wash or lotions/facial products. The more of these freebies you get, the longer you can go between buying the full-sized products. If you're super coupon savvy, you can even get the full-sized products for free after coupons, in which case you're really stretching out the time before you need to actually pay for the product.

Here are some examples of freebies I've gotten in the mail over the last month:

Toothpaste

Hair samples

Body wash

Lotion/face product

See, lots of stuff, right? And that's just in about a 4-6 week time frame. We also got dog snacks, which I (reluctantly) ate (Science Diet ones--blech--I had to force those down), otherwise you'd see those too. Anyway, the point is, don't underestimate how far you can stretch your dollar when you use freebies to supplement your stash 'o goodies!