re: Family budget question re: groceries/food/consumables

Also, the wife does that CVS Shopping game thing, where you combine coupons, CVS deals, extra bucks, etc to get some pretty insane cheap prices on stuff. Things like toilet paper, toothpaste, clothes detergent, etc.

It's not uncommon for her to do things like:

10 packs of 9 large rolls of toilet paper for 10 bucks

Enough clothes detergent for 120 loads for 3 bucks

Toothpaste basically free

She's one of these bargain shoppers, and game plans shopping for this stuff in a way that would make Nick Saban jealous. She likes to shop and find savings, thankfully she can apply that skill to cheap stuff and not just to Saks. =)

Also, since you have kids, something I am stoked about this year is we have a Xmas club account at our local CU, where we have been saving $50 a paycheck since last November. So, on Nov 1 of this year, we will get out $1200 back plus a bit of interest, which will be enough to not only pay for all our christmas shopping, but also our greetings cards, postage, and probably holiday meals as well! She has no problem doing Black Friday shopping, so we can get a lot of the presents cheap on that day.