When the Grocery List is Longer Than Your Arm…
Just don’t stray from it. The damage is going to be astounding anyway, so just try and minimize it and don’t stray.
My spouse and I jointly make the shopping list every week. Meaning, he makes the list, and then I go through it and add meal-making “staples” to it like meat or any other things I know we are out of. My spouse is the one that keeps track of our everyday items like milk and snacks and salad and fruit and other things like that. I don’t know why it is that way, but it works for us.
So when I got the list from my spouse this week, I audibly gasped. It was about twice as long as a normal week’s list. Add to that the fact that it is my son’s turn to bring snack all next week to school, and that I was getting a pork roast at Kroger on a big sale ($0.97/lb!) to cook up today for the week (in the oven now, yay!) and, well, I was wondering if I’d be under $100, never mind $75. I don’t know how we seemed to run out of everything at once this week but we certainly did. Hopefully that means that next week, the list will be short. Time will tell.
All told, I spent $86.29 this week - $52.51 at Aldi, $23.02 at Walmart, and $10.76 at Kroger. So $11.29 over budget, and I have about $80 left in the grocery budget for the month. If I can stay within budget next week, then things will work out okay. I am thinking that I should be under budget next week, since I seemed to buy almost every thing that ever appears on my list all at once this week, but we’ll see. The good thing, I thought, was that the snacks for school next week ended up being about $10, so without that grocery addition, I’d actually have ended up right at budget.
One thing I am much happier with this year in my budget is that I have separated out “cats” as a separate budget item, and that allows me to buy the huge bags of food once every two months or so instead of a small bag of food almost every week, and that should save us significant money over the course of the year. The small bags of food (4 lbs) are $7, whereas the 20 lb bags are $25. So I save $10 for every 20 lbs of food I buy compared to buying small bags. I did buy cat food this week for the first time this year, but that is not included in the grocery total since it is a separate budget item now.
I’ve never made pork roast before so I hope it isn’t a bust. I found a recipe on the internet for it, and hopefully it comes out yummy and my spouse likes eating leftovers for lunch this week. Off to come up with a creative side dish…
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January 20th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Pork roast is yummylicious. i know you won’t eat it but I bet hubby and kids enjoy it!
Yay for hitting budget (plus school snack!)
I hate weeks that it seems like we need everything at once.
January 20th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
If you don’t like your pork roast, post it too me. Mmmm pork.
January 20th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
When it is my son’s turn for snack it is a week long affair here too. I try to plan ahead for this, but I never know exactly when he will be bringing it until the last minute. Also, there are a lot of food allergies in his class, so we are limited. Lots of fruit gets served, which of course is a last minute deal. It sounds like you are doing great with your budget though.
January 20th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
That would certainly be disheartening. Still you’ve come under budget the last two weeks, right? And maybe you can continue eating some of this stuff next week.
I think making cats its own item was a great idea!
January 20th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
Right there with the cats is one place where a budget makes you do silly things. You should’ve been buying the 20lb bags all along. Sure, it might put you over one week, but balls it, you’d make it up and then some.
If I could, I’d buy food and litter a pallet at a time.
January 20th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
The budget was only kind of making me do silly things. I sucked it up in November and spent a whole lot over budget for one week to buy a 20 lb bag of cat food.
But the reality was, until I made it its own budget item, I couldn’t afford to buy the 20 lb bags in a week - I didn’t have the available funds. readjusting the budget made those funds available.
Budgets are okay lol.
January 21st, 2008 at 9:44 am
How can anyone see this headline in their feed reader and NOT click on it?
I think we’ve all been there, but with two teenagers, an 8 year old, a dog and a cat, it seems like we go to the grocery store 5 times per week and it still isn’t enough!
Gotta work on that budget!
January 21st, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Just curious. Would you be willing to break down what you buy at the 3 stores you shop for groceries? Just generally, if you could.
I’m especially interested in what you buy at WalMart.
Thanks.
January 21st, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Sure! I can incorporate some of that next week. For kicks though - generally at walmart I buy:
OTC meds that Aldi doesn’t have
organic milk for my kids
produce that Aldi doesn’t have
“instant breakfast” mix for my son who is too darn picky
sometimes day-old italian or french bread
cleaning supplies that Aldi doesn’t have
Basically, if they don’t sell it at Aldi I get it at Walmart. I only buy sale stuff at kroger.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Thanks…looking forward to it. Also, can you say a little about Aldi’s and Kroger. I live in central TX and have never heard of them. What would they be comparable to?
January 21st, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Kroger is like any grocery chain…. I have no idea what chains are in Texas. But like Stop and Shop or any grocery chian - not a discount one but also not like a mom and pop type of place.
Aldi is a big discount place that sells 90+% generics only. I don’t know anything else that compares. I buy the vast majority of our groceries there - all my canned goods, frozen foods, any prepackaged things like rice or pasta, soup…. and some of the produce. their produce is limited.
January 21st, 2008 at 11:07 pm
You are correct, in the end you should make it up, by smaller lists in the upcoming weeks. Budgeting is based on averages. If you are being sincere about budgeting any overruns should find themselves being made up by under-runs.
Funny how governmental agencies when winding up spending less money than what they were budgeted often end up trying to blow money at the end of the budgeting cycle just to make sure they don’t get their next budget lowered.
My wife and I are starting to get a handle on how much we spend on groceries. Right now it seems a little “fat” but we have a large number of lumpia made & frozen up, we have probably enough ingredients to make six or so pizzas, we are close to having enough ingredients for a tuna noodle casserole and my wife’s Asian tastes are satisfied for at least a couple of weeks.