Thursday, March 13, 2008

Grocery/Out to Eat Challenge: Week 5 I Went Way over Budget this Week

Well, I did not even come close to my budget of $110 this week. I really blew it this week. I have to admit I am discouraged, but not defeated. You are not going to believe how much a spent….drum role…..$186.24….this was on grocery items, household products, and out to eat food….ah! You probably think we went out to some very expensive dinner….wrong. What happened was CVS sent me a coupon through e-mail for $5 off when I spent more than $30, and I had to do this by last Saturday. So, I completely ran out of laundry detergent and spray and wash so I thought it would be good to use this coupon on the items I ran out of and did not plan on running out of. After coupons, and using my $5 in extrabucks I spent $27.01 and earned $2 of bucks during this purchase. However, this purchase put me $27 over my budget. Next, I ran out of diapers and had not come up with a plan. So I went back to CVS and spent $23.09 on diapers because I had two coupons for Huggies diapers that I got online and CVS had their Huggies diapers on sale last week and I knew I would earn 10 percent of my purchase from buying my diapers there. So, now I am $50 over my budget, and I had run to Walmart to get spray in wash refill that was about $4. This week, I just could not come up with ways to save on the major household items that I ran out of. I did not plan on running out of them all in 1 week. But, I have learned my lesson! Any tip on saving and planning for running out of detergent and diapers, I would love to hear!

Today, I went to Kroger (they are having amazing sales this week - go to moneysavingmom.com to see all of them), and saved $26.32….wow. I had $5.80 worth of coupons that I got from Sunday’s paper and coupons online that I found again at money saving mom’s blog. Last Sunday’s paper had some amazing coupons…they even had a coupon for bagels which Charlie loves for breakfast and we have not had that in a while. Kroger does double your coupons up to .50 cents but for some reason they only did that for a couple of my coupons. I saw recently that Bi-lo doubles your coupons up to .60 cents now. It seemed like everything I bought except bread, milk, and eggs was on sale. I did spent $68.60 at Kroger, but I got a tremendous amount of food. God gets all the glory for helping me save so much money today at my trip to Kroger…I was on Cloud Nine!

I really want to try doing the Dream Dinner plan. Has anyone tried it besides Callie? I really think it would be worth it once Jackson eats more. I am so tired of trying all these new recipes and foods that we do not like. This is how it works in Columbia, SC: you go to the Piggly Wiggly on Forest Drive, you need to book a session, and you pick out what dinner you want to make online before hand. Then for like $150 you go there for about an hour and assemble your meals that you have selected (everything that is needed to make the meals are online). For our family, I would be making 12 dinners (3 servings worth) a month. You freeze the dinners and then pull them out on like Sunday (and put them in your refrigerator) for the meals you want to put in the oven for dinners that week. You do not have to go up and down the grocery store looking for ingredients. I would love to go to a place that helped me make meals for an entire month worth of dinners. I do not know if it would be worth it though since Jackson really does not eat that much. Go to http://dreamdinners.com/main.php?static=howitworks for more information and let me know what you think about it! I am really on the fence about it now since we went so far over our budget last week on household items.

2 comments:

Mommy Reg said...

I have never tried the meal thing but, it comes out to being 4.16 per person per meal. So.... I think it would not be worth it for me, I spend no more than $2 per person per dinner meal. But if you do it once to get an idea of what you like then it might be worth it in the long run for you to do it once to see how to do it yourself in the future.

I try to buy my household items when they hit the half way mark. Then I have a little time to buy them one at a time and on sale. I have done what you had to do many times and then it finally dawned on me to buy before they run out in succession so that it doesn't hit all at once.

Emily Wallace said...

Yeah I am still on the fence about it. I might save up the $150 and then just try it one month. If I ate the leftovers for lunch the next day it might be worth it.

That is a great idea about buying your household items when they hit the halfway mark. I am just really trying to stretch every penny of the $105 for the week. I cannot seem to keep up with all the items that we keep on running out of.

Thanks for your advice...you are always so helpful!