I’ve Paid For This Twice Already…

Archive for the ‘groceries’ Category

Or at least, that is what I have to tell myself today. I stuck to my (insanely long) list, I did not stray one bit, and at the end of the day, I spent $134.06 this week on groceries: $63.14 at Aldi, an insane $55.80 at Walmart, and $15.12 at Kroger.

The new diet has begun for my spouse. He’s on a special diet to reduce his cholesterol and blood pressure designed by a nutritionist through his workplace, and I had to buy a whole lot of new foods this week. The positive side to this, budget wise, is that there were a lot of things I bought this week that I won’t have to buy again for weeks or months. All of the meats I needed to buy, I bought enough to last at least a month if not two based on portion sizes. There were also a number of other items, like reduced fat peanut butter, salt free seasonings, and different bakery items, that I won’t have to replace for a good long while (the extra bakery items will go in the freezer until use).

But will it all even out? I have no idea, but I am positive it won’t be this expensive every week. Buying frozen flounder and tuna at Walmart really drove the total up there, and that won’t happen every week. And I had to buy “Power Bars” which my spouse has for a snack every other day, and I bought a box of them that should last two weeks.

I do know this though: shopping only the perimeter of the store is much more expensive than the aisles, if this week is any indication. I bought almost no prepackaged foods (the power bars were about it) and I spent a ton more than I usually do when I by about half prepackaged and half fresh.

So… the diet has begun, and we’re not bankrupt yet. We’ll see how things go next week.

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My spouse is participating in a 12-week long class sponsored by his employer that is focused on teaching him how to eat healthier, exercise in the most beneficial way, and overall, improve his general health. This class is not mandatory by any means, but we feel like it is a good idea, not only because his employer offers health insurance premium deductions for meeting certain health criteria (he currently earns all 5 of the 5 available $10/pay-period credits, and would like to keep it that way) but because his cholesterol and blood pressure are both on the higher side of normal, and this class provides meal plans tailored specifically to him and his needs by a nutritionist and personal trainer.

If you want a laugh, head on over to my family blog, where I talked about the forms my spouse had to fill out with his likes and dislikes. You’ll see why I find it a huge challenge to cook anything for him that he’ll eat which has the word “healthy” anywhere near it.

Yesterday at his class, my spouse got his first week meal plan. This weekend, I have to shop for a specific list of foods, and start preparing meals around the specific guidelines in his meal plan. I am really hoping that budget wise, things will work out, because although I am buying many new-to-us foods, I’ll also *not* be buying some of my spouse’s snacking staples (sorry honey, no doritos on the list!). And although the list actually states specific name brand items, I’ll be comparing those to the generic equivalent and if there is no appreciable difference in nutritional information, the generic is coming home with me. The nice thing about the list is that it has the protein, carbs, fat, and calories for each item right on the list, so I can even compare in Aldi where I won’t have the name brand to look at, since I have that information on my list. What makes me extremely nervous though is the “meat” portion of the plan.

First off, the plan has no instructions on how to cook anything other than a general method. It just states a meat and the amount. I have said before, I am not very experienced at cooking meat. I don’t eat it, so I never bothered to learn to prepare it. And for that matter, I am not the greatest of people in the kitchen in general. I get by, but I’m not going to be serving anything at a restaurant anytime soon. So, there lies my dilemma. First, are these meats going to completely break my budget? Second, am I going to completely destroy them trying to cook them? And third, can I make them in a way that my spouse will actually eat?

Yikes. I am willing to spend the money, if it works out. I just hope it works out. Here are my “meats”, suggestions are welcome (there are not 7 because some I make more than one day, and one day he actually gets pizza) :

• 3 oz Yellowfin Tuna, cooked with dry heat
• 4 oz Flounder, broiled
• 3 oz Cod, Pacific, broiled
• 4 oz Flank, braised with fat trimmed off

Good luck to me.

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Last week, a commenter asked what types of things I buy at each of the grocery stores I go to, so as well as an overview of how spending went this week and this month, I’m going to do a quick outline of what types of things I buy where. That might make it clearer as to why I go to so many stores.

First off though - how did this week go? I set a $75 budget per week for the month of January, and so far, I’ve had weeks I was way under, and weeks I was a bit over. This week I came in at just slightly over budget at $75.98. I spent $56.55 at Aldi and $19.43 at Walmart (no good sales at Kroger this week). I did buy two impulse items - garlic bread for $1.20 and salad dressing for $1.89 (I’m sick of the one bottle we have left) for a total of $3.09, or 4% of my spending on impulse items. Things went pretty well this week and overall, I came in just $9 over budget for the entire month of January. That is partly due to stocking up on pork roasts last week when Kroger had the $0.97/lb sale. I think $75/week is a reasonably ambitious target for me to shoot for, so I am going to keep the same budget in February. Maybe by March I’ll feel confident enough in it to try and knock it down to $70/week.

So, why are three different stores part of my grocery shopping routine? First off, I don’t think I’d go to three different places if I didn’t have a fairly efficient route to get to all of them. The majority of my shopping is done at Aldi, which is also the furthest away from me (about 20-25 minutes by car). To get home, I practically drive by Walmart and I do drive right by Kroger. So it only adds a miniscule amount of driving to my trip and only the time it takes to actually go to two additional stores. I go to three different stores because one is generally cheapest but does not have everything I need (Aldi), one is cheapest on the things that the first does not have (Walmart), and the last runs good sales and I get their flyer in the mail every week to check them out (Kroger).

Aldi is a store that carries primarily their own generic brand and little else. They have a limited selection, but what they do have is very inexpensive. I generally purchase the majority of my breads, dairy, canned goods, frozen vegetables, produce, condiments, cereal, dry goods (pasta, beans, rice), paper products (toilet, towels, tissues) and some of my meat there. I also buy a limited number of over-the-counter medicines and toiletries there, but there is a very small selection available.

I then go to Walmart to supplement what I buy at Aldi with either name brand items or items that aren’t sold at Aldi. I generally buy over-the-counter medicines, cleaning supplies, bakery items, organic milk, and personal care items there. Then, some weeks I also go to Kroger if they have something on a big sale, generally pantry items I use on a regular basis or meat items. Kroger is a chain grocery store here, not small and local but not quite national.

So there you have it - where I go and why. I hope it saves me money.

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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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We include medicine and toiletries (toilet paper, shaving cream, etc etc) in our grocery budget. Sometimes, when we are out of quite a few things at once, that has a negative effect on the weekly spending. My budget per week this month is $75, but since the evil car repair I have been striving to get to about $50 per week. I didn’t do that, but I did get under $75, so that was good. My spouse was out of his daytime and nighttime allergy medications, which threw a little wrench into the weekly spending. At least I won’t have to buy those again for a while.

Also, I used the self-scanner checkout at WalMart because then I can use my own bags (I got reusable grocery bags for Christmas) without arguing with a checkout person, and the daytime allergy meds caused a cashier to come check to make sure I am over 18. He didn’t bother to card me though. Heh.

I spent $54.47 at Aldi and $14.58 at Walmart for a total of $69.05. I again bought another box of Oatmeal Squares for $1.99 (I’ll learn to make them myself soon, promise!) which means about 2.8% of my spending was impulse buys. No, I didn’t get under $50 but I still did well, and I am making much progress.

We are going out to a party (my spouse’s holiday party) tonight without the kids - friends of ours are watching the kids so it is a free evening of fun for us… unless my daughter protests and we have to leave early. Gotta work those free entertainment opportunities the best we can, for no more entertainment for a while yet.

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