Groceries Over Budget

by Mary Ann Romans | More from this Blogger

Last week, we skipped a regular shopping trip and just did the essentials, so we didn't spend much at all. This week, we made up for it by going a bit over budget.

Our shopping bill for this week came out to $105. Now if you average this with last week's trip and divide it in half, we are still good. In fact, we are under the weekly budget. But still, I did not like seeing that $105 on the bill.

What happened? Well, we did wind up finally using the rain check. We were supposed to get 10 pounds of chicken for $10, but wound up getting charged $12 instead, so I will have to get that corrected the next time I am at the store.

The biggest factor in the increase was $25 in extra groceries for a pot luck party I attended. I had a specific recipe in mind, rather than shopping from what was on sale, and this cost me, literally. The worse part is that there was so much food at the party, that my contribution was hardly touched. So, in the future, I will have to do a little more planning ahead of time in order to still stay on budget and contribute a wonderful dish to a potluck. Lesson learned.

Even with all of that, I am still over a little bit. I think I went overboard on the dairy. My family consumes a lot of yogurt, milk and cheese, which is good for us, but can be expensive. Still, I would find it hard to cut it out completely, and I did use coupons for everything, so I'm not sure what to do here.

One thing I do want to do is to figure out how to shop more than one store and fit it in to a weekly plan that doesn't use up too much extra time or gas. CVS is pretty close, so I may start thee, although Target would give me the better bargains.

Does anyone shop more than one store, and is it worth it?

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Learn more about Mary Ann Romans

Mary Ann Romans is a freelance writer, online content manager, wife and mother of three children. She lives in Pennsylvania in the middle of the woods but close enough to Target and Home Depot.

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