Three Year Olds Like Shopping
Well, my three year old does, it seems. Next week is his week to bring in snack for the kids so I brought him with me to help pick out what he would bring. Before we got to the store, he had one idea, “Snowballs” (bagels with cream cheese), but once at the store he saw more things he would like to bring for snack than could fit in the cart. Too bad he only got to pick out 4 days worth…
But good for my wallet, because if he’d had his way, I wouldn’t have any money left at all for debt reduction! It was fun though to watch him make choices and decide between different options, even if that meant we had to backtrack through aisles 14 times to put back what he’d changed his mind about and retrieve other options. I gave him a $10 budget and he managed to stay within it with a little negotiation (we had to dump the yogurt for a bag of oranges instead of getting both) and the only thing that pushed the snacks over budget wasn’t his fault so I let it slide. We get assigned a specific item for Friday’s snack because the three classes at his school get together and do a snack project, and the one he was assigned (EL Fudge cookies) cost $2.68 at Walmart, which would have been more than 1/4th of his budget on a single day for something he didn’t choose. So he got a little leeway about that and we went overbudget by about $2.00 on school snacks. Without the oranges it would have been even less over budget but I like that he wanted oranges versus cookies. 
Because of the school snack week, I set the overall budget for the week at $95 and we spent $69.29 at Aldi and $37.60 at Walmart for a total of $106.89. I did buy 2 impulse items, another of the pomegranate flavored drinks like last week for $0.59 and a slice of orange pound cake for my son at Walmart for $0.60, for a total of $1.19 on impulse items or 1.1% of our total spending. I’m not too dismayed by going $11 overbudget because some of that was the added snacks, and we were out of quite a few things, but it will be interesting to see if it will even out over the next few weeks or I’ll keep going over budget by 10% or so every week. I noticed that prices had gone up on a number of our staple items, which does explain some of why we went over. Prices… stop. Bah.
It is hard because it seems like food is one of the “controllable” expenses, that if I just work harder at it I can knock it down some (unlike my mortgage) but at the same time, I have to balance feeding myself and my family healthy foods with trying to control spending. So, we soldier on and I keep pondering it. I need coupons for celery and canteloupe.
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March 9th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
I now have a little extra money coming in with my seasonal job and while I do want to use much of it to reduce my debt, it feels good to be able to treat myself at the grocery store with a drink I want or some Cliff bars. I think a little indulgence now and then is good for the soul!
I am in awe of your 3 year old picking out his class snacks…he’s learning well from you!
March 9th, 2008 at 4:55 pm
I told you that you’d like pomegranate!
Sounds like a fun little shopping excursion. I wonder what my 3 year old would choose as snacks. Oh yeah, yogurt yogurt and more yogurt!
March 9th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
It’s really cool that you gave him an assignment and a budget. I think when kids are learning how to shop it helps that they learn that spending has limits, even if he’s too young to do most math.