Grocery Cart Challenge

I told you this thing is quite the challenge, didn’t I?  Well, this week, I went over over budget.  As a matter of fact, I’ve just about used up my budget for the month! Ahhhhh!!

The night before we went shopping, I planned all the meals for the week and completed our grocery list.  I counted 26 items!  I was so excited I bugged Steve in his sleep and told him that for certain we will either come under budget tomorrow or right at budget, assuming each item cost $1.  Wrong!

First stop was Kroger.  Wrong move.  Then Walmart.  A little bit encouraged.  THEN Sam’s!  Really disappointed.  Sigh!

Lessons learned:
1. Kroger is not the best place to go shopping.  Sure, there may be some good deals of the week but I think Walmart still has better deals even with just their store brands.  Kroger may work best when shopping their deals along with coupons and I don’t do couponing right now because we don’t get the Sunday paper.  The really useful online deals are few and far between.

2. Menu planning requires mindful planning.  I think I chose recipes this week that had at least two items on the pricey side.  Stephen reminded me that we could always eat simpler meals such as eggs and light salads.  I knew this but I was caught up in those oh-so-yummy-looking recipes I let my guard down!  I love that Steve guy and I’m glad he’s working with me on this.

3.   Sam’s still has better unit prices when it came to meat per pound.  It’s just that you have to buy 100 lbs of each item there (ok, 100 lbs is an exaggeration but I do mean a lot).  We were completely out of meat so I stocked up on chicken and pork.  Again, Steve said that I should probably plan my meat on a monthly basis and figure the cost into the weekly budget.

The good thing is we’re still within budget for the month, just not for the week.  It will be tough not to have to run to the store for something in the next few weeks but I will try my best to stick with what we have.

I don’t have a photo this week.  My plan is to monitor closely the items I use and total up the cost for posting at the end of each week.  Thankfully, we’re still eating leftovers from the meals I prepared last week.

There you have it folks!  Thanks for stopping by!