Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are…
Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect Tomorrow.
One day I shall dig my nails into the earth,
or bury my face in my pillow,
or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky
and want, more than all the world, your return.
- Mary Jean Iron

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Back to Basics Challenge Update

I promise I won't always post when I go to the grocery store. Right now I'm just trying to document for myself and anyone else who's interested how my battle to reduce our grocery budget is going.

Are those grocery weekly deals really such a good thing? The jury's out. Maybe it's whether or not I can handle them that I really need to ponder. I scoured my weekly flyer, made a list and went to the store to buy the things that were on sale that I knew were a really good price. That's all well and good. What's not so good is that it cost me $70.58 and it feels like I really didn't get that much...certainly not that much. I did mostly get legitimate groceries, things we needed, things I needn't feel guilty about buying, boneless chicken breasts on a fantastic sale, ground round, bread, cereal for the Sunday School offering, soup for my daycare. I did however buy some things we don't need: cinnamon rolls, crescent rolls and pizza bites; because they were on a 10 for $10 sale and because I had coupons for them. They worked out to be a great price, but that's certainly not where I need to be spending our grocery money.

Running total:
$450.00 biweekly grocery/household goods budget.
Giant Eagle $265.00 less the $21.00 fuel perks reward...$244.00
Kroger--de-ice/rock salt $16.00
Whole Foods--milk, milk boxes, bagels $34.00
Kroger--weekly specials, cards, SS offering $71.00
Amount left for next week's groceries: $85.00

Will I make it? Time will tell...

4 comments:

Erin, Nick and Merrick said...

I did the "we don't really need it" shopping too.
Did we need cheetos?
Did we need taco chips?
Did I need fancy new Aveeno facewash? (even though I LOVE IT)
As long as you keep track, you are doing better than most of the population!!

Stephanie said...

Hang in there. You are off to a good start. Remember that this is the first couple of weeks of doing this quite this way. You WILL get there!

I was on couponmom.com earlier. There might be some help there for you. I like her suggestions for organizing the coupons, and fliers from the newspaper. I checked out the grocery game too, but who can afford to pay for that service?!

Victoria said...

I must say that cresent rolls are quite handy though. I will be posting about Taco Ring on my blog and I have also made other things with them. :)

Stephanie said...

Don't let it get you down. Trying to start a stockpile of food can be frustrating at first. I have a food budget I must stay in as well, and I go shopping weekly for grocery deals but I make it a point to buy only what I know we need or will eat/use. I don't buy a lot of the makeup items because I don't really need them, less than a $1 though and I am all on it, if I have a pretty good supply of shampoo, deodorant, etc I don't buy unless it is a GREAT deal. However, I do make it a point to purchase items we will use like soup, pasta noodles, cereal, things like that. There's a learning curve to shopping with coupons, and it will all come together in time.

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