I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Expand the Budget - Spend Less Money

So I am back from another exciting grocery shopping experience.  Apparently the key to spending less money is to budget for more.  Or at least, that’s what happened this week.

I had been consistently spending about $103/week every week for the past two months grocery shopping, so I set my budget for this month at $100/week for three of the weeks and $50 for the week we will be on vacation (we’ll need food for the weekend before we leave and snacks for the car ride, our trip is Tuesday - Saturday), so a total budget of $350 this month.

This week, I spent $63.45 at Aldi and $18.32 at Walmart for a total of $81.77.  Well below my $100/week budget.  My Walmart list was pretty short this week, so I could feel myself wanting to spend more money there just because I knew I had some leeway.  But I resisted (mostly) and only two impulse items hopped into my cart:  Red Velvet cake mix ($0.82) and frosting to match ($1.12) for a total of $1.94, so 2.4% of my total spending was on impulse items.  They were on sale and well…. have you ever had Red Velvet Cake?  Oh my goodness….  I doubt the mix will be as good as from scratch but well, I am lazy.  And busy.   I did resist many other things including double chocolate cookie crisp cereal and about 15 types of frozen dinners.  And iced tea.  But that is probably because it isn’t on an end-aisle display any longer.

So groceries were a success this week.  Almost 20% under budget ($18.23 to be exact) and less than 5% on impulse items.  Once this month is done I’m going to start re-evaluating the actual items on my grocery list and see where I might be able to make better, less expensive choices.  I’m sure there are places to wiggle.

~J

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