A marriage magazine that Phil and I subscribed to last year had an article about once a year shopping. Truly. One time a year? After picking my jaw up off the ground, I continued reading that this couple had started out simply doing once a month shopping. Then, they figured they could shop every three months. This was the way they made the progression to once a year shopping. Though I had originally been quite excited about this prospect, the reality of life and my dislike of planning kept me from it.
And then, my friends, gas prices hit $3.30 per gallon. And I started actually tracking my expenses and grocery costs.
My goal is to spend around $50 per week on groceries. This includes things like foil or dish soap, toilet paper, etc. But the past few weeks I have not been meeting that goal by far.
Grocery stores believe that the more times you go into the store, the more impulse buys you will make. AND IT"S TRUE! For example, with my lack of planning, we will end up hungry on a Friday night. I will suggest running to the grocery store, picking up a pizza or something. And while there, I will get a pop...and maybe something fun to snack on for a game...and what about that extra bottle of creamer because we are running low? Oooh, a good price on carrots/flour/raisins/M&M's!
And there goes any harebrained idea I had of budgeting.
Some people are really good at cash-envelopes. Dave Ramsey calls for them and I think they are fantastic. But I like food so much, that I will steal from other envelopes because I am out of creamer.
The biggest problem I have is that I just don't plan. When I have my meals planned out, and the ingredients I need to make them, we are happy, well-fed campers. When I don't? The house is seemingly empty. And we are ravenous. A quick run to the store for us is a 30 minute trip (and that's to the highly-priced store, it's an hour round trip to the reasonably priced one.)
Add to this the need to cart kids back and forth to the car, the multiple stops we make each trip to make the drive worth it and voila, you have a great reason to dread the shopping trip.
So, here's my plan. I am going to try this once a month shopping thing.
For those of you who would like to follow along, let me tell you how the first part has gone.
We went into town on Saturday (the 29th). We bought all the animal feed we would need for the next four weeks (ouch! Cows and sheep and chickens and dog oh my!) But, you know what? It was so painful to buy all that food we didn't walk out with the extra bucket or a few small tools. We just ran.
Then we hit two really well-priced stores in our area: Aldi's and Fareway. You west-coasters don't have either of these stores, and I am so sorry for you. However, you do have Costco...it's all about options and prices!
We spent $60 at Aldi's and $160 at Fareway, putting our total groceries so far at $220. We only ended up with one gallon of milk because of expiration dates, so we will need to see if we can con some close friends to add a gallon or two to one of their shopping trips. BUT do you know how many things don't expire for over a month when properly stored? I know we could have been purists and frozen our milk or maybe bought powdered milk...but we thought...no.
In planning for the trip, I made a month's worth of dinner plans. I decided what we would eat for breakfast (a combination of oatmeal, homemade granola, and breakfast casseroles) and thought through some lunches for Phil (like making a roast a week so I could put sandwiches together). I even planned out treats (like week 1, I will make an apple pie, week 2, bread pudding, etc.) It wasn't as daunting as I thought it was going to be. And, looking at meat prices at the store, I changed some of my plans to save money (like buying a "family pack" of pork chops instead of chicken breasts, getting a well-priced turkey over a roast).
I stocked up on diapers (sorry, price not included in the above costs- add $20) and took inventory of my laundry supplies, toiletries and cleaners. Planning so well for a shopping trip for some of you might seem natural, but was kind of new to me. Surveying the landscape, if you will, puts my mind at rest that I won't run out of vanilla right when it's time to make my three year old his birthday cake! Not that I would ever do that...
So, here we are on day three of my little experiment. My cupboards are stocked, I have a plan for dinner and I'm a bit giddy to not have to enter the grocery store for a month. But? Already I can tell I am going to be low on creamer. There may be all-out wars by week two here if we use up our planned "month's supply".
I guess so far that 's the one thing that has surprised me: how much you actually use of an item over a month. Like I have heard financial planners talk - if you just cut out your daily Starbucks...this is how much you would save!...I feel that way about coffee already. I never paid attention to how much we actually go through because of our multiple trips to the store.
So? There it is. Can we save money on gas and groceries by switching gears? Will I go stir crazy without the ability to be at the market each week? Will I stash the last bottle of Chocolate Raspberry creamer in my sock drawer and feign ignorance, forcing my husband to drink his black? Only time will tell...
6 comments:
You are my hero yet again! Once upon a time, early in marriage, I planned our weekly meals and went on once-a-week shopping trips. That did not last. Now, the grocery store is so conveniently on the way home from work, I am embarassed to admit I stop there almost every night, if not every-other. Yikes!
I would like to ease back into at least planning for a week at a time. It is true that I would spend so much less on the impulse buys, and maybe plan to use up those extra cans of cranberry sauce, capers, and evaporated milk.
Good luck! I look forward to your updates on how everything went. I think the people in the once-a-year shopping story were a little insane with their powdered milk. Yuck.
Tif- planning is weird like that isn't it? We love doing it in so many areas but food...that one day at a time thing just allows us so much freedom, yet brings us so much unwarranted stress! I don't know how many times I have gotten to 4pm thinking hmm...food for tonight...I knwo that's how we spent so much money at red robin! Those once a year shopping people did some cool things though to make it through. Like, they bought ALL their food except they gave themselves $10 per week for eggs, milk and fresh produce. THey kept it in cash to keep on track. That sounded like a really good idea to us,too, except for that one of our main reasons for doing this is the whole "livin in the boonies" thing. So, we adjust by having a garden and chickens.
My sister in law Tara has been doing this once a month shopping thing for awhile and actually has dairy products delivered to her door (gotta love the city!) So, I know it can be done without the powder! Ha!
Oh, think of the time you would save just with once a week trips! Good luck! =)
Oh Trace, you're inspring me to go back to my roots. I use to be sooo good at doing my grocery shopping every 2 weeks, being on the day that Ken got paid. On that 2nd week out Ken would need to make a run for milk for me, and possibly a dab of salad produce. That was when the kids were all home. In that process I would make out my 2 week menu and make the shopping list off of that. Those days have been replaced by WAY TOO MANY "on the run meals", of which Dad and I have been really trying to work on.
My big life saver, of which I have kept up, has been that I have pantry shelves in the garage and I have really worked hard at building my stash of "one extra" of everything that can be kept on a shelf and that I have in the house. That way when I do use the "garage item" it gets placed on my ongoing shopping list, which is posted on the frig. It has sooooo curbed the "emergency runs" to the store and of course the 1/2 gallon of ice cream that Dad insist that he must pick up whenever he goes out for me, ha. Way to go dear one, keep up the good work. Love you!
So inspiring! I need to start at least once every two weeks and get better at planning. I have been using up the meat in the freezer, the garden produce on the shelves and in the freezer, and just making meals that call for good ole staples! With an extremely tight budget, that gardening (and all the work that goes into it) suddenly becomes so wonderful! Maybe I will try once a month shopping (but not until after the baby comes as who knows what I might come home with - a month's supply of cheese and nothing else?)
Good luck and keep me posted!
I love the once a month shopping. But I do confess that it took me awhile to figure out how much we eat/use. And I do grab fresh fruit/vegis about once or every other week from the store.
For those out here in the PNW, there are a number of delivery companies. We have our dairy delivered from the Smith Brothers Farms. Their milk is more than the store, but their other dairy products are cheaper...so it kind of evens out. AmazonFresh, Safeway, and some local farms are also options, although I've not used them.
oh my dear you are really becoming a farm girl. pretty soon you will be using the words going to town to do the trading and pity sakes ooooh you are my HERO. the good old days are coming back with the girl from Wash. state that has learned the Iowa slang. LOVE ya & keep up the talk ps give those 3 boys a h & k from unc Jim
Post a Comment