Groceries

This week was a great grocery store week, though I had help in a few different areas. I spent a total of $28. The breakdown:

Target $9: flour, yogurt, milk, Cliff bar

Everything but the Cliff bar are usuals. Though work travel can save a lot of money I've learned to keep a bit of food in my bag when traveling to really small towns with a tight schedule. I didn't use it on this trip so I'll save it for the next one.

Safeway $19: 4 packages of lunch meat, Sara Lee bread, 2 mango's, potato salad, a dessert kit, tofu, and 2 packages of cheese

The lunch meat and bread was $11.16, but netted a $10 coupon. The rest was a combination of planned purchases (mango's, tofu, cheese) and impulse buys (potato salad, dessert kit). I picked up the dessert kit, which was marked at $.99 and rang up $.59. Gameboy picked up the potato salad because it was on sale, though looking at my receipt tonight I realize that it rang up full price ($5.99). I'm going to bring the receipt with me next time I go and we'll see what they'll do.

Lessons learned:
-Game plan before we go into the grocery store.
-Check the receipt before leaving the store.

When we got home we had a discussion about the impulse buys and what it does to the budget. We decided on one per person per trip, but keeping it under $3. We also decided to discuss what we are going in to buy. This way we're on the same page and can keep each other in check.

The things that helped:
-I was traveling for work so I didn't eat at home for two days.

-Remember that babysitting job a few weeks ago? On the last night their freezer started dying, so the mom sent me home with a big bag of hamburgers, chicken, and other little bits. All of these things filled our freezer, so we won't need to buy that stuff for a little bit.

The goal for the month is to spend less that $200 a month on groceries. So far, despite the impulse buys we're on track.