I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘groceries’ Category

There are 5 shopping weeks in May for me, and I entered Give Me Back My Five Bucks’ grocery challenge with a goal of spending $435 or less on groceries for the month of May ($85/week plus $10 for my son’s snack week at preschool).  A few weeks ago, I found a great deal on Balance Bars for my spouse, and spent $50 more than I budgeted for May on them (but we’ll be all set for many many weeks now!).  So, well, that went out the window.  But I am still trying to keep the shopping total as low as I can.  So this week, my goal was to spend $80 or less on groceries (since I bought Balance Bars already, I’ve knocked $5 off my weekly budget goal).   It doesn’t help that the price of groceries keeps going up each week, but I am trying to economize as best I can.

This week, I spent $44.98 at Aldi, $27.13 at Walmart, and $8.05 at Kroger for a total of $80.16.  Yes, overbudget but only by $0.16 so I am pretty happy with that.   However, that only leaves about $2 in my budget for the month of May for groceries, because of the Balance Bars as well as generally going over my budget the past few weeks.  I don’t see that happening, but I am going to try as much as possible to live out of our freezer and pantry for the next two weeks and buy as little as possible.  To that end, I thawed a pork roast I had in the freezer and cooked that up today, it provided dinner for my spouse and kids tonight, and will be dinner tomorrow night as well as at least one lunch if not two this week.

So, we’ll see.  I’m pretty happy with how I did this week, and if I can limit next week to $50 or so I would be pretty happy with that.

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I’ve been participating in the Grocery Challenge at Give Me Back My Five Bucks this month, and I set my goal at spending under $435 this month for my family of 4, considering we have 5 shopping weeks in May.  Well, after 3 shopping weeks gone by, I have to say I am not doing well if you only consider that metric, and I am bound to go over by the end of the month.  However, last week I found a great deal on the protein bars my spouse eats and bought him enough to last until October, which added $50 right then and there to my May spending.  So, honestly, If I go over by less than $50 I think I will consider that a victory.

Before this week I was at $280.72 for the month.  This week I spent $34.60 at Aldi, $18.10 at Kroger and $10.26 at Walmart for a total of $62.96.  Which is well under my normal $85/week budget.  The first week of the month I spent a lot more than my budget stocking up on a few things like meats and staples, so I knew that would be reflected eventually in my spending.  I thought it would last week, but, last week, I bought a lot of stuff anyhow.   That brings me to $343.68 for the month, which means I have $91.32 left for two weeks of groceries.  I doubt that will happen, but I am going to give it my best effort.  We will see.  But I am happy with how I did this week at least!  If I didnt buy 4 generic “lunchables” type meals at Kroger (I planned to, they were on a big sale) to try and tempt my son into eating normal food, I would have $4 more to spend… that was a failed experiment.  :)  Otherwise, the key to spending less this week was buying basics, staples, and nothing fun.  No chocolate. 

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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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