I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

There are 5 Saturdays in September

And I just realized it. I guess I need to adjust up the grocery budget for this month. September is turning out to be an expensive month already and it just started! I knew in my brain there would be 4 months in the year that had 5 grocery days (4 weeks per month times 12 is only 48 not 52 after all) but I hadn’t thought too much about it. Lesson learned, budget adjusted up to $375. Belts tightened everywhere.

Which, in all honesty, may not even matter. I am starting to accept that $75/week was too ambitious. In July I relied on using up a lot of what I already had to make up the gap, but we are running out of my hoarding stockpiler stuff left and right. Today was… expensive, and I’ve decided for September I am not going to talk about how much over budget each week was, but instead, what percentage of the purchases were impulse buys vs list items. In October I will set a new (realistic) budget per week amount based on what August and September have shown. There is only so far I can scrimp… we have to eat after all and I’m not giving up my organic foods for the kids… and my spouse won’t give up his diet mountain dew. Heh.

This week I spent $107.45, which was $78.25 at Aldi and $29.20 at Walmart. A new high since the tracking began in earnest… yay me? Heh. I had to get a lot of stuff, as my spouse said the list was “enormous”. Of that, $7.34 was impulse buys, including:

$2.29 x 2 for two bags of Malt-O-Meal cereal on special at Aldi (fake Golden Grahams and Apple Jacks… my spouse cheers loudly!)

$1.00 on one 2 liter of Diet Mt Dew on sale at Walmart (I meant to get 2 but the cap was broken on one and I didn’t notice til the checkout), I will always get some when it is that price

$0.98 on… Herbal Iced Tea! lol

$0.98 on a canteloupe, Walmart had them on sale fresh from a local farm I love. Yum…..

Of those, only the tea cannot be justified. The melon can be partly made into baby food for my daughter, the cereal is just buying ahead because I’d be buying cereal at some point anyway, as is the mountain dew. Mmmm tea. $7.34 is 6.8% of the total, so that is well under the 10% goal. Honestly, as I am sitting here eating a sandwich for dinner and drinking my iced tea, life seems good. There are worse things in life to spend money on than some herbal iced tea and a melon. Melon for dessert! With vanilla yogurt (on the list! lol). Life doesn’t get a whole lot better some days.

~J

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