I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘groceries’ Category

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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A month ago, my spouse as part of a class he is taking was put on a specific and regimented meal plan for 12 weeks designed to help him lose weight, lower his cholesterol, and lower his blood pressure. None of those three things are in the “danger” zone, but all three are a little higher than they should be. The good news is, he’s lost 13 pounds so something is working (and in fact, if he loses more than a few more, he’s going to talk to the nutritionist about changing the diet to a “maintaining” plan vs a weight loss plan). The less good news was that the meal plan really wreaked havoc with our budget. Which is okay - but we’re trying to figure out ways to minimize the diet’s impact a little more financially.

Before the meal plan, our budget for food was $75 a week for a family of four, two adults and two kids (3 and 1). The first week shopping for things on the meal plan, I spent about $135. So it was a bit of an adjustment. Some of that was buying things that would take many weeks to use up (still working on the same bag of frozen flounder) but some of it was just that primarily fresh food with some select frozen items vs a mix of fresh, frozen and processed foods was just more expensive for us. Because the meal plan is very specific, I couldn’t really shop for things on sale at first, and had to buy them as they were. Now that I know the meal plan and know what to expect, I can shop around sales a bit more, and stock up on certain items (my freezer has a lot of frozen salmon right now) when they are available.

So, this week, I spent $36.19 at Aldi, $33.07 at Walmart, and $6.71 at Kroger for a total of $75.97. This brings my average per week for this month to about $98, which honestly, is better than I expected after the first week of shopping. The meal plan only lasts for 12 weeks, but a number of the meals and snacks from it are going to end up being incorporated into our general rotation of foods, so I expect a permanent upswing in the grocery budget as a whole. I think with planning and creative shopping, I might be able to meet my original goal of only raising the grocery budget by $10 per week. We’ll see what happens in March.

I probably should get on the diet train (although I’d need a completely different menu) because I’d like to lose 13 pounds in a month, too.

I also think that buying more expensive foods is also going to be balanced out in the long term by smaller portion sizes. The biggest impact the meal plan is having, I think, is showing what realistic portions are. And they are a lot smaller than either of us thought. My spouse is adjusting really well though, he is doing a great job. When he gets frustrated and hungry he cheats on his meal plan with an extra stalk of celery. If celery is the worst cheating you are doing, well, I think you are doing good.

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So far, buying groceries according to my spouse’s specific meal plan has been… interesting. I think, in the long run (once the 12 week meal plan is over), it will only add $10-20 a week to the grocery bill. Or at least, I hope so - but it isn’t blind hope, I have been paying attention to what types of things go on sale that I can plan meals around in the future. Really, all the fish is killing the budget. But, after the meal plan is over, I doubt my spouse will eat fish 4 times a week. He’ll be eating more fish than he had been (not hard to increase from zero) but I can also buy frozen fish on sale. This week Kroger had frozen cod and salmon on sale, so I bought some. But since he hasn’t tried either cod or salmon yet, I couldn’t buy a huge amount. If I knew he’d eat it willingly, I could have really stocked up.

This week I spent $78.47 at Aldi, $18.51 at Walmart, and $11.82 at Kroger for a total of $108.80. Kroger was mostly frozen fish on sale as well as frozen whole turkey breasts on sale (a few of my spouse’s lunches have turkey breast with them). The big spending was at Aldi, and that is because they had a canned Minestrone soup as a special item last week, and my spouse liked it much more than the Campbell’s version. The stats were almost identical, so I bought ten cans of it this week (special items are only available for a limited time) to last the rest of the meal plan (he has one can a week for lunch). So that was $14.90 more than I would have spent otherwise. We’d also run out of a lot of “plastic” items all at the same time (ziploc bags, freezer bags, trash bags) so that added a bit extra to the bill.

It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t great either. I’m already $25 over my monthly grocery budget and we have a week to go. Eeek! I’m averaging about $105/week for these three weeks so hopefully I can get that down a little next week. Or down a LOT. One can hope.

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So it is week 2 of the meal plan for my spouse. Last week I spent about $60 more than my pre-meal plan budgeted grocery amount, so the next few weeks will show if the spending will average out over a month to close to what we used to spend, or if we will have to seriously reevaluate our grocery budget for March.

So, this week I spent $49.50 at Aldi and $30.50 at Walmart for a total of $80.00 exactly. Which is $5 over my pre-meal plan budget. That’s not too bad, although it makes my two week average about $108, which is not all that great when my budget is $75. I am willing to raise the grocery budget for our family to eat healthier foods (I have been incorporating some of the same things my spouse is eating into my kids and my diet as well where appropriate) but I was hoping it would be more like a $5 to $10 increase per week. There is the fact that right now, I am following a specific meal plan and therefore cannot really take advantage of sales and plan the meals around those, so when the 12 week class is done, I’ll start having more flexibility which will help me save money. My spouse is taking a 12 week class through his workplace and is committed to following the exact prescribed meal plan as well as he can for that period, but when that is over he is happy to start varying the order of the meals and reincorporating other things he used to eat (healthy things, of course, and in the correct portion sizes).

We’ll see what happens - I’m encouraged that the total went down, but I was hoping it would go down a little more than it did. On to next week!

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