The bane of my budgeting

June 23rd, 2007

Groceries.

I have a $75/week grocery “budget”. I say budget in quotes because I rarely can manage to stick to it. I try, but I don’t do all that well. I feel $75/week is a reasonable number for my family and where I live (frugal but do-able) but maybe I am wrong because I rarely hit it.

I buy the bulk of my items at Aldi, a store-brand only discount food store, and then supplement at Wal-Mart for the things I can’t get at Aldi (like my spouse’s diet Mountain Dew lol). My budget includes all cleaners and paper goods and diapers and wipes and stuff like that, so that may be why I can never stay under it. I am going to try this week to check out both the dollar stores in my area and see if I can do better on things like that by getting them there. But anyway.

Today at Aldi I spent $51.30.

Today at Walmart I spent $39.56.

For a total of $90.86. Which is $15.86 over budget. :sigh:

I went through my receipts very critically and I have come up with a number for the “non-essentials” (meaning stuff not on “the list” my spouse and I compiled before the shopping trip).

$2.25 for 4 hamburger patties and buns for dinner tonight (discounted cause their sell-by is tomorrow)

$2.18 for bagels and cream cheese, my son’s newest favorite snack.

$2.88 for yogurt covered raisins and dried cranberries for snacks for me.

$0.99 for on sale animal crackers for my son.

$1.49 for a quick freezer dinner for my spouse.

$0.89 for on sale pack of 6 plastic drinking cups, kid size.

and $0.32 for a “notebook” (a la Blues Clues) to amuse my son.

For a total of $11.00 of semi-frivolous items. Even with that eliminated I’d still be $4.86 over budget.

I’m trying. lol