Addictive Foodsalnadph.info

Food For Less Grocery

All Some of you may have noticed that I frequently whine and complain about living on a budget, while also bitching constantly about our fancy condo. And boy, oh boy did I get hit over the head with reality when we went and looked at cheaper apartments on Saturday!! That’s another story entirely, but the moral would be: I’m a spoiled, rotten, ungrateful brat. I forget the good stuff, like how we have zero credit card debt and enough money in the bank, thanks my (very modest salary) and Mr.’s parents’ foresight and continued generosity. It’s just not quite enough to maintain our shiny steel appliances, and DAMN does that future with a stove without an internal light and a kitchen faucet without a vegetable sprayer look GRIM. (Not sarcastic.)

So instead of constantly bemoaning my (not-so-bad-at-all) financial situation, I should just shut the h up and DO something about it!

The last few weeks I’ve looked long and hard at our account at mint.com, a free budgeting website that pulls in all of your linked credit cards, bank accounts, student loans, etc. and gives you a (nearly) up-to-the-minute glimpse of your financial health–net worth and all. There’s a nifty pie chart that shows you where your money goes, and you can manipulate your data any number of ways. It’s pretty  much awesome.

All of this research was to see where we could trim the fat in our budget further. We’ve seriously cut down on eating out the past five months (by about 300 percent), and my shopping is also way down by 100-200 percent (besides December which almost doesn’t count but was reasonable given the extra expenses of the holidays). And then I found my answer: the $530 budgeted for groceries for two people. That does not include Target trips for household items or the much smaller amounts we allocate for what little eating out we do indulge in. So, in case I have to spell it out, that is A LOT of money for groceries and leaves TONS of room for improvement!

(Wherein I admit we are grocery snobs who have shopped exclusively at Whole Foods and similar organic/high end grocery stores for the past four years in part to limit the processed and hormone-fed food we consume and in part to avoid the masses.)

So in the name of saving money on boring things like toilet paper for things we’d rather spend it on, like say starting my 401(k) or saving for a much dreamt of vacation, I am on a mission to cut our grocery bill. I don’t expect to see any savings this month since we were already halfway through January when I began my mission, plus my $50 up-front investment (to be discussed below), but I do plan on seeing a $100 savings on groceries next month, and then more (TBD) each month after that.

So how am I cutting our grocery expenses? I’m so glad you asked! Because I am a woman obsessed! I am a newly converted coupon shopper who will stuff her fear of chemicals and hormones deep down inside her, whore herself out for a $2 coupon and hit up FOUR separate grocery stores in ONE evening to save a buck. And on top of all of that, will–like a feign–drag her poor (but getting richer!) husband down each and every toilet paper and laundry detergent aisle and have him calculate the cost of toilet paper and detergent by brand and package size down to the cost per roll or load. All while taking meticulous notes for the new wonder spreadsheet.

I learned everything I know, which is admittedly not all that much, from my MIL who couponed as a young wife, my gal pal Mrs. Jones over at A Real Life Wife, and the super helpful, money-saving websites Mrs. Jones turned me on to such as i heart cvs, Bargain Buggy, RedPlum, SmartSource, and coupons.com. We don’t subscribe to the paper, but I got my start by collecting Sunday coupons for about a month, and I think that’s a solid amount to begin with.

Special Note: I am not out to save 80 percent like the couponing goddess Shannon at Bargain Buggy. At least not yet. Here are my rules: To buy only the things we actually use/eat regularly no matter how good the deal; to maintain my extensive home inventory list and purchase only the things that are a medium-to-high priority on said spreadsheet, and to buy only what we have room for (hence the need for the inventory and priority ranking system).

Without further ado, here is my first report!

First stop, CVS:

Ziplock bags on sale 2/$5 combined with a $1/2 coupon. The soap was regular price $4.99, minus a 20 cent coupon, and I received $2 in Extra Care Bucks (ECB) (essentially a $2 off coupon on my next purchase). The toothpaste was on sale Buy One Get One Free (BOGO), and I had a minus 75 cent coupon. So I got these five items that we would have purchased anyway, same brand and everything, for $11 plus $2 ECB. Not a windfall, but a savings I can appreciate!

The next stop was Walgreens, where I had a lot more items on my list!

Highlights:

• Oust was BOGO, and I also had a BOGO coupon. I only paid sales tax!
• Scrubbin’ Bubbles was BOGO minus a $1 coupon, so I got 2 bottles for about 2/3 the price of just one.
• Lysol toilet cleaner was BOGO, minus a $1/2 coupon, same deal as Scrubbin’ Bubbles.
• Soleil razors were on sale 2/$7, and I combined this with a BOGO coupon. Total price: $3ish for 8 razors.
• Neutrogena hair/body/cleaners were on sale Buy One Get One 50% off, and I combined this with a $2 off coupon. So the two items that would have normally cost $22 together cost just $14 (and is also why our bill was so big).

Total Out of Pocket (OOP) was $38.36, still a lot, but my savings were listed out: $3.81 Walgreens store coupons, $29.74 sale savings, $16.23 in manufacturer’s coupon savings for a total of $49.87 saved. That’s a savings of 42.7 percent!

Then it was time to pull out the big guns and shop at our most expensive grocery store, Randall’s. It’s like a Tom Thumb/Kroger/Albertson’s. I shopped there once out of laziness a few months ago and spent $30 more than we spent per week at Whole Foods, which is just insane. For the first time in my life I actually paid attention to the sales flyers in the Sunday paper, and found enormous savings on meat!

Highlights:

• Jenny O lean ground turkey 1.25 pounds for $1.99 for store rewards card holders. I stocked up and bought 3.75 pounds! (Saved $9)
• Two pounds 90% lean all-natural ground beef on sale for store rewards card holders. 2.25 lbs for $5!
• Two pounds frozen shrimp for $10! (Saved $5)
• Four+ pounds of lean pork chops for $8! (Saved $9)
• Two pounds top sirloin steak for $4! (Saved $5)
• Three pounds boneless skinless chicken breast for $8 (Saved $2)
• Carnation breakfast shakes 50% off, plus a $1 off coupon! (Saved $4.50)
• Digorno pizza on sale for $3.50 (as compared to the sale prices $5-6 elsewhere this week)
• 18 eggs for 99 cents with store rewards card and coupon! (Saved $1)
• Saved $5 on the produce purchased on sale here as compared to prices advertised in other stores’ flyers

Total OOP for 15(!!!) meals worth of meat, a month’s worth of breakfasts and brunches, plus sale veggies and salads: $65.64, with $37.56 with store rewards card savings and $9.85 in coupon savings for a total of 42 percent in savings! And really, probably 100 percent savings on meat if we’d paid for the not-natural-but-still-more-expensive meat at our regular grocery store.

And lastly, we went to our go-to cheap regional grocery store, HEB, to finish our big stock-up:

I had a coupon for absolutely everything except the tortilla chips, salsa, and produce, so while I did not do much sale matching here, I did save money on the things we probably would have bought anyway!

Highlights:

• Reach Floss was FREE after coupon!
• Tortillas cost 25 cents after coupon!
• 10 SmartOnes (at $1.88/each) with a $3 off 10 coupon (which also saves us $3 a lunch from when I ate Amy’s frozen lunches for $30+ savings)
• $2 off Tide (a very high priority item this week) for the absolute cheapest per-load cost in town (Among the three laundry brands I will use–this is one department where I am somewhat brand loyal!)
• Rice-a-Roni 3 for $2 after coupon
• Steamers veggies for 75 cents
• 12 cups yogurt for $3 after coupon

We spent the most here, a whopping $84.99, but saved $19.75 between store sales and coupons, for a savings of $19.

Best of all, we spent just $50ish more this week than a regular week and got at least twice as much food and goods. I expect our next several grocery bills to be significantly less than usual! Yay savings! And thanks again to Mrs. Jones for getting me so excited to save!

Thanks for sticking out the longest post ever,

B