Grocery Shopping

I recently discovered that a few Kroger stores in the area double coupons up to $1 (most other Kroger's only double coupons up to 50 cents!), so I went there yesterday to see how well I could do. I don't usually like doing my "full" shopping at Kroger, because they do tend to be more expensive than several other local grocery stores, but I had a ton of $.75 and $1 coupons...  

Thanks to a large stack of coupons, many of which were going to expire soon anyways, I scored tons of free & really cheap stuff. The freebies included yogurt, toothpaste, air freshener, deodorant, pet snacks, and candy. I think I'm going to have to make a more conscious effort to set aside those $1 coupons, and then head up to Kroger every week or two!  

June Grocery Budget

Aside from restaurants, groceries have been the biggest source of unnecessary spending. For just the two of us, our typical weekly grocery bill was $100-125, depending on how many personal care items (shampoo, toothpaste, etc.) we threw in the cart. 

We'd have a good mix of food, from healthy produce to convenience items and everything in between. We tended to buy name brands for many items - soda, cake mix, lunch meat, chips, cereal, cleaning products. We had a few things that we would only buy the premium brand - ice cream, hot dogs. And then we'd buy store-brand for other things - frozen vegetables, flour & sugar, bread. 

I noticed that certain grocery stores (especially the local chains or smaller box stores, like Kroger) tended to be more expensive. If I did a full week's worth of shopping, the bill at the checkout would be $25-50 more. Many of their items, even with a sale price, were more expensive than the everyday price at some of the other (bigger) grocery stores in the area.

I tried several months ago to reduce the weekly grocery budget to $50, and I failed miserably. I could make it for two weeks or so spending only $50 a week on groceries, but then we'd have run out of all the useful food in the house, and I would have to stock up on essentials (noodles, baking stuff, canned foods and sauces), produce, and/or meats - so we'd end up with a $150 or $200 grocery bill, and it would all even out to around $100/wk. 

It took some practice, but I've gotten better about balancing out the grocery bill. I peruse the weekly sales circulars looking for good deals, I buy a newspaper (or two) on Sundays for coupons, and I've cut out many of the convenience foods (prepackaged portions of chips & cookies, baby carrots, etc). I've also had to get creative with some dinner meals.... 

For the month of June we're actually going to come in under the grocery budget. I'm still shooting for an average of $50/week, so $200/mo. As of today, we're at $146.70.  I'll probably go pick up a few things this weekend (maybe $30 worth?), but it'll definitely be less than $200! 

Sloppy Spending

I sat down with the intent of totaling up everything that we've spent money on this month.

The mortgage, car and student loan payments are fixed amounts and are easy to budget for. Utilities fluctuate a lot by season, but it's also fairly easy to predict. Groceries and gas are even more variable, but I've always just taken the viewpoint that whatever it is, it is. If I go to Walmart and the grocery bill is *gulp* $250, oh well. And if I only spend $30 on groceries for another week, excellent. It sort of balances out in the long-term anyways.

Same with automotive gas - it doesn't matter whether it's $1.50/gal or $4.25/gal, I still need to drive to work everyday. I don't have the option of public transit (there isn't any), and I can't bike or walk that far. So last summer, when gas prices were at an all-time high, we were spending close to $500/mo on gas. We tried to cut back on groceries, and we stopped leisure drives, but mostly we reallocated the money that was supposed to go to credit cards, and used it to cover the increased cost of fuel.

I looked through the joint checking online account log, finding very few charges. We also have separate (individual) checking accounts, so I looked through my account transactions. Then I looked through my husband's checking account. Found more charges, but definitely not everything - I could only find $47.90 worth of grocery bills since June 1st, and I know I've spent more than that. Likewise with gas.

We also each have a few rewards credit cards, and we tend to use them (and then pay it off) for month-to-month expenses, just to capture the extra rewards points back. I looked through the statements for each of our accounts, and found more charges.

So far the totals are at a bit over $200 in automotive gas, $75 in groceries, and almost $100 in lunches out... since June 1st! The first two don't worry me (gas was about what I thought it would be, groceries were slightly less than I expected), but I hadn't realized how much we've wasted on eating lunch at restaurants while at work.