I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Grocery Insanity

I went totally way over budget this week and I really don’t know why. Earlier in the week I bought a month’s worth of Diet Mountain Dew and catfood, and I was splitting the cost of those among the month’s budget, effectively making my budget $70 per week instead of $75. Well, I blew right past $70 and $75, ending up spending $88.07 this week.

Before anyone blames the credit card (which I did indeed use at Walmart), I blew the budget in Aldi alone and only spent $8.96 at Walmart. I spent $79.11 at Aldi. Yikes.

Speaking of the credit card I logged into my account to pay it when I got home and although the purchase amount is deducted from my available balance (so they know about it) the charge hasn’t posted to my account. Idiots. I’ll have to pay it tomorrow. lol

Anyway. I had a lot of impulse buys today. A few were well thought out while I was shopping (adapting to what was unexpectedly available), but some were habits or just totally impulsive purchases. For example, we have a loaf of bread left over for this week yet I bought another loaf anyway just out of habit. :shrug: Crazy.

So… the damage. Impulse buys:

$3.99 General Tso’s chicken family sized frozen dinner (dinner tonight, on special and $3.99 is a reasonable total dinner cost so I went for it.)

$1.49 chocolate chip muffin mix (the 3 year old is very into baking right now)

$1.99 yogurt cereal bars (I love them. I do. They are yummy. I replaced my customary granola bars on my list with these so not a total extra buy but still.)

$1.69 x 2 (Asian inspired pasta mixes. They are a “special purchase” item and not always available, so I couldn’t have put them on my list lol. We don’t exactly “need” these side dishes but we will use them.)

$1.99 (bag of red potatoes. Yum.)

$1.49 (the bread my brain forgot not to buy)

$0.80 (a loaf of price reduced french bread)

The extra loaf of bread won’t go to waste, we will eat it, just probably not until next week. Everything else wasn’t out of the realm of things we will normally consume it is just a lot of impulsive purchases at once. I must have been hungry or something. I honestly didn’t realize there were so many of them.

I did do one good thing at Walmart — I looked at my list and there were only 4 things on it to get there, so I didn’t use a cart. Kept me from being able to pick up extra stuff randomly. I think already knowing I spent $79.11 at Aldi helped keep spending there in check more though lol.

Anyway… total of $15.13 impulsive buys. Which is 17.2% of the total purchases. Ah well. We all slip up sometimes. Not anywhere near under 10% of the total.

Next week I just have to be better. I’m considering snowflaking for the yogurt bars, french bread, and muffin mix (would be $4.28 total) but I haven’t decided yet. I probably will. Yes we will use all of them but they were totally impulsive as opposed to planned-and-adapted-to-what-was-available impulsive.

It is only August 4th and I have spent slightly over 1/3rd of the monthly grocery budget. Eeek.

~J

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