Budgeting?

Wow, so I just went through my checkbook for January.  I have a few goals that I need to work on apparently.  MONEY being the first and foremost, hence the checkbook thing.  I came across another blog not too long ago, where someone was saying exactly how much they were spending on certain things.  So I broke down my checkbook and was absolutely SHOCKED!  First with how much we spend at the commissary.  Please keep in mind that we don't have Walmarts, or Targets, or coupon Sunday papers, or anything like that over here, so I guess its not as bad as it could be, but a whopping almost $700.00 is definately excessive to me.  I know I like to cook, but sheesh, I didn't realize we were spending so much on groceries.  My first goal:  To Lower my Grocery Bill.
Next I went onto gas...now granted, I'm sure there are a few entries that I just wrote PX when it was really gas, but I didn't and don't know, so I added those to our misc. funds, and found that we supposedly only spent about 100.00 on gas.  I'm going to have to check more thoroughly and figure out the gas for this month a little better later.
Bills are a given, I'm not going to not pay them, and we really don't have that many bills that I have to pay, most just come out of his check automatically.  Insurance is one of the bills I pay, msn, penn foster, and our water service, culligan.  I'm not going to be changing those things anytime soon.
Then we moved onto eating out.  I know that we had literally just come home from Texas and had no food, and we were also feeling very very jet lagged, so this can account for some of the spending on eating out, and the grocery list as well, but not all of it.  Our eating out bill was about $240.00.  So my second budgeting goal for 2010 is: To either not eat out as much, or to eat cheaper!  (I'm realistic, I know there are times that we are going to want to eat out.  But spending 20+ on Taco Bell, is not good.  Especially when there are cheaper options.  The girls always eat from the value menu, although that particular visit Paul let them get a happy meal thing...he didn't know.  I eat from the value menu, so we should have a lower bill next time.  We also really enjoy going to Popeyes, well that costs us an arm and a leg, about $35 for a meal that feeds us four, as well as lunch the next day.  But we don't really need to be spending that much money.  If we want Popeyes, we need to just order a smaller, cheaper meal.  I'd like to cut down on that bill by about 100 dollars.  That would be ideal for me.
Misc purchases, who honestly knows what these purchases were, a lot of them just say PX in them, but they do suspiciously look as if they could be gas.  Some just say shoppette.  Some just say aafes.  I honestly don't know.  But I do know that I wrapped up all of the misc purchases, along with all of the money withdrawals, euros and cash, all of my online purchases, ect.  Needless to say this amount was very high, and I felt my stomach drop.  So I'd like to keep better track of where our money is going, and on what.  I like to write in my checkbook if its a gas transaction, or if its just us going to the shoppette.  The problem is that when we are over here, nothing is itemized, almost everything comes up on my online account as aafes.  So it won't be easy, but I'm working on it.  I would like to drastically make this amount shrink, but I'm not going to really post it because I don't feel its an accurate rating of our misc purchases.
Online purchases, I included in the misc, but decided to go back over my checkbook, just to see whats going on in there!  The good news is that my misc purchases went way down, the bad news is that I spent way too much online the month of January.  One of the things I have to realize, is that we don't have shopping here, like we do in the states, so this is all clothes, and extras, that we probably don't really need, but I buy anyways.  I get great deals...but it all adds up.  Itunes, gymbo, old navy, ect...sooo my goal for this section, is to definately reduce this.  I will allot myself $100.00 per paycheck to spend online, if I need to.  But no more than that.  It shouldn't be more than that.  I find it somewhat naseating that it was much more than that.  So those are my goals, and even though we are week into February, I can already see that my plans, are NOT working for this paycheck.  I will impliment my new goals next paycheck though definately and start from there.