I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘groceries’ Category

Yes, indeed, the grocery budget is taking a beating with the ever-increasing prices on staples here. But that’s not what this post is about.  Yesterday when I shopped I totally broke the grocery budget, and it wasn’t solely because of rising prices.  I found a clearance sale I could not refuse and spent about $50.00 I wasn’t planning on taking advantage of it.  I’ll recoup that (and more) but it will take months for that to happen.  But I was so excited once I got home I reconsidered leaving some behind and went back to clean Kroger’s out…

So, that first.  My spouse eats these high protein/low carb snack bars as part of his diet.  Depending on his mood and how many snacks he eats a day, he goes through anywhere from 5-8 of these a week.  Last night at Kroger (not where I usually buy these, Walmart has them in bulk much cheaper) I came across a “Manager’s Special” on the individually sold ones of these bars for $0.50 each (usually $1.59 each).  They might be discontinuing them, I don’t know, but the bulk boxes of 5 at Walmart are $4.77 so this is a substantial savings over my usual price, almost half in fact.  I checked the expiration date and they don’t expire until October…  so I bought about 60 of them.

So that was $30 I wasn’t planning on spending right then.  And the poor cashier had to ring each individually because apparently at Kroger they have to punch in some code first for Manager’s Specials…  I felt bad a little bit.  But not really.  Then, when I got home, I thought more about it, and went back to get the rest.  So I bought close to 40 more (with a different cashier, who honestly looked like he was going to cry) and in total, spent about $50.00 I was completely not planning to.  But I feel good about it.  May’s grocery budget however - completely blown.

I spent $144.31, exactly $51.00 on Balance bars of some sort, and the rest on everything else.  Which means I spent $93.31 on everything else, a little over $1 under my $95 budget.  My son has to bring snack this week to school, so my budget was $95 not $85.  So, I didn’t do badly.  And I have a LOT of balance bars for my spouse - months worth.

The other interesting thing about groceries this week - I had my meatless chicken nuggets, which were on sale for $2.50, ring up at the regular price of $4.09 at Kroger.  Kroger has a scan-right guarantee that if something rings up incorrectly, they give you the item free (or refund the purchase price if you notice afterwards, which I did).  So I got $4.09 refunded (I brought the receipt in when I went back for the rest of the Balance bars).  So, actually, I spent $140.22.  :) 

An expensive but a great week!  I like when I can take advantage of deals on things.  That’s one of the great benefits of being more in control of our finances now - I can figure this out and absorb it into our budget and be okay.  Oh, and my spouse says they are in “outdated” packaging and that is why they were marked down he thinks, the Balance bars have new packaging now that looks different.  Or something.  Whatever, they were very cheap. 

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I haven’t written a grocery update in a few weeks because I was becoming boring and predictable.  I think I’m more interesting when I’m messing up, heh.  No impulse purchases, pretty much coming in right around the budget, things are going pretty well.  For March overall, I ended up only $7 over my total grocery budget for the month, so pretty good.

Two things of note happened in April - one is that Kroger is having this Mega Event where if you buy 10 of a big list of sale items (mix and match) you get $5 off your order.  So I have spent about $30 extra this month over the past two weeks stocking up on 6 month supplies of a number of things I buy anyway - most notably goldfish crackers and bags of pretzels (both at a final price of $0.50 a bag, a price I have never seen before).  I also got mozzarella cheese cheaper than I usually buy it at Aldi, as well as some miscellaneous pasta mixes and turkey chili.  That’s pushed the grocery budget up a bit, but I know what I usually pay for these items, and I know they are a great deal.  Keeping the kids from eating 5 bags of goldfish a week has required some creative storage solutions though. 

The other thing is that as our financial situation improves, and as I become a better overall grocery shopper, I find myself making “greener” choices as far as our cleaners, detergents, and other non-food items, because I feel like we can afford to do so and I really want to.  I have been making organic choices for food basically since I’ve had kids, as far as produce, dairy, and meats, but I have been hit and miss on cleaning items.   But in the past few weeks, I’ve bought phosphate-free dishwasher detergent, non-toxic and biodegradable dish soap, and I’ve tried my hand at cleaning many things with baking soda (with mixed results).   I’ve also bought a number of the “Green Works” cleaners to try them out.

So, we’ll see.  I’d like to say I am saving the world but really, I’m just trying to be consciously frugal.

As for this week, in total I spent $95.53, which is $10 over my normal grocery budget, and that $10 is almost directly attributable to the fact I bought $20 in items at Kroger when I usually just buy around $10 because of the 10 item Mega Event.  Oh, and I bought my spouse a steak.  I’m nice like that (and it was half off because the use by date was tomorrow.  He’s already eaten it, so no problem there).  I only have about $140 left in April’s grocery budget, so I think I will most likely go over a little bit for the month, but I won’t be buying pretzels for a long time. 

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It has been so long since I bought an incandescent bulb I forgot how truly inexpensive they are.  The bulb in our refrigerator burned out, and since I don’t know of any “appliance version” CFL bulb (feel free to let me know in the comments if there is one!) I bought a two-pack of appliance incandescent bulbs today.  I wanted to just buy one but there were only two-packs available where I shopped.  They were in a display without a price displayed, so I trotted myself over to an automated price-checker stand to scan it and see how bad the damage would be, and they were only $1.84 for the two of them.  My brain has officially switched over to thinking that light bulbs are a major expense.

To add injury to insult, when I brought them home, I felt around behind the screen in my refrigerator to find where to screw the bulb in (I had already removed it to see what kind of bulb I needed and forgot exactly where the socket was) and I accidentally stuck my thumb in the socket and shocked myself.  Ouch.  I am an idiot.  At least no permanent damage was done, although I did screech and my hand still aches.

That all being said, this week I spent $52.55 at Aldi and $23.19 at Walmart for a total of $75.74.  I didn’t buy any impulse items this week so I get a 0% racked up for that.  Score!  I was about $9 under my weekly budget this month, which will help offset some of my more expensive weeks.  I hate that I spent so much at Walmart, because I only got 9 items there as opposed to 53 at Aldi.  But wheat pita bread, Balance Bars, organic milk, and allergy medicine add up, I guess.  I was happy I only got 9 items there though.  Although I forgot peanut butter.  That’ll just add to next week’s bill. 

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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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I’ve raised the weekly budget for groceries in March to $85, and March is one of those evil months with 5 Saturdays, so overall, the month’s budget is $425. Which is high, and the extra will most likely end up coming out of the potential snowflaking money, but we’ll get by. If only the 5 Saturday month could have waited until April when the utility bills are bound to be lower… but, oh well.

This week I spent $38.26 at Aldi, $30.86 at Walmart, and $16.09 at Kroger for a total of $85.21. So very close to budget! I went overbudget because I bought myself a $0.59 “flavored beverage” at Aldi (pomegranate, it was tasty). I hadn’t eaten lunch when I shopped and I needed to tide myself over before I spent a whole lot more than that on impulse items. Oops. Still, that was only 0.7% (not 7%, 7/10ths of 1%) of my overall spending on impulsive items so I did not do too badly. It irks me though that if I hadn’t spent it I would have actually come in under budget.

I find as I am shopping with the specific meal plan in mind, I am buying a higher proportion of things at Walmart or Kroger than before and a lower proportion at Aldi. This is basically because Aldi has a very limited selection, and as I buy specific fresh items or leaner meats, I have to find them elsewhere. I bought turkey breast at Walmart this week, as well as chicken at Kroger. In fact, a third of my Walmart spending this week was for the turkey breast, which will last several weeks but still was more expensive per pound than my usualy meat purchases.

We’re adjusting. We’ve got more adjusting to do!

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