Celebrate the little victories in savings

Sshh, Eden is sleeping...which is giving me a chance to blog, YAY!

Last night, (Tuesday) we went grocery shopping. Generally we go once a week with a budget of $75.00 a week. We don't always include our diapers into that budget because it varies on how often we have to buy them.

When Josh and I first got married, we would grocery shop every two weeks; and we did that up until last year I would say. I am so glad it's weekly...it makes shopping for things a lot easier, things don't get forgotten and the produce is always fresh.

But, normally there will always be a week within the month (almost always the last week before our first pay check of the month) where things are "REALLY" tight. Last night, was that shopping trip. On top of the groceries we had to buy, we also had to buy diapers, cat food, cat liter, and a genie refill...plus hair gel for Gracie. (we want to try something different with her hair) All of that, had to fit into our budget. Yikes...that's a tall order.

First we went to Target. I almost always like to go there first because most of the time their prices are a bit cheaper and if I already know what something will come out to at Fred Meyers, then I like to check there first. So...my list of things at to buy at Target Consisted of:

Diapers

Genie refill (for the diapers)

Cat Food

Cat Liter

Feminine product

hair gel (last minute item)

I will only buy Pampers diapers. Call me a snob if you like, but Huggies, gives my girls a rash, and I will not go generic brand. Pampers is just awesome and there is always a coupon. :) You all know how I love coupons. We ended up buying all of this:

Diapers

Genie Refill

Cat food

Cat liter

hair gel

Mayo

I had a coupon for all of those items except the hair gel and genie refill. The mayo was free because I had a try out this product coupon. So our grand total for that shopping trip was $37.43 but we paid $29.75 for a total savings of $7.68 Whoohooo!!!

Now onto Fred Meyers. I'm not going to go into my whole long list of things, but I will say that Josh and I worked very well together and we compromised on some stuff and put some stuff back with the promise of buying it next week. Our grand Total at Fred Meyers came out too $69.46 but we paid $56.27 for a total savings (with just coupons, not including sale items) $13.19!!! Whoop Whoop

Okay, enough celebrating. Back to reality now. I said our weekly budget for groceries is $75.00. We ended up actually spending $86.02 which puts us over budget by $11.02 :(

Though the savings for us were huge and should be accomplished, we were still over budget. Now I can reason and say, well this trip had things we don't normally buy except for maybe once a month or once every 2-3 months...such as Fem. Hygiene, cat food & liter, etc. And Honestly, if I were to subtract the total spent on those items, we would of been under budget. But I'm still disappointed. I'm proud that Josh and I work so well together as a team and can get the job done...but, I still would prefer to be right at budget or under. Hopefully, Next Month will be better. A lot of it depends on what coupons are out there and what were needing at the time.

But at the end of the day, I celebrated the victory that I, saved us $20.87 in coupons all together. Now that is something to smile about!

Comments

Anonymous says

June 09, 2010 at 11:04 pm

We were over budget this week too. Usually it's $100 a week. But this week it was around $145.00 :( Byron insisted we buy a fire extinguisher $20.00, he hasn't felt comfortable not having one lately. He says it's because Lacey is coming and he is just being a protector. :) Awww. Then we had to buy those much needed toiletry items, like mouth wash ($8.00 for Byron's huge supply thankfully he doesn't go through that fast) and TP (I'm a snob here I like Quited Northern which we spent $15.00 for 16 rolls I believe) they all went out on the same week. :( So hopefully next week will be a better week too. Of course next week we will need Shampoo & Conditioner. I've held off 2 wks on buying those and we are getting low. I'm dipping into our travel containers & samples.

Anonymous says

June 10, 2010 at 8:34 pm

Good for you, Chels. I need to stick to a budget for real. I will say how great I did for the week and then go to the store 2 days later. Not good. But I'm trying to use what we have first now. Like today I went and spent $86 which was terrific and I didn't buy any meat. So lets see if I can hold off going until next weekend lol! My "budget" (in my dreams lol) is about $125 a week. I'm trying hard to stick to it!
Emily

More Confessions & Stories

Comments

Leave a Reply Cancel reply