But I thought I'd share with you how my budget can come crashing down just as easily as anyone else's. While I do pride myself on running a tight ship as far as budgeting goes, we inevitably have a week here or there where our budget seems to be pointing at us and laughing. This week, the line item taunting us is our grocery budget. I'm really sad when we blow the grocery budget, because it's the one that is the most fun/challenging to me to try to beat, let alone simply stay within budget. So without further ado, my receipt from my weekly grocery store trip on Friday...
Yeah, um, we nearly doubled our weekly budget. And since we stopped by the farmer's market for a half peck of Fuji apples which cost $5, we actually more then doubled it. In my not-needed-since-it's-our-budget defense, I stocked up on a few things this week. We usually don't run out of everything at once, but we ran out of cheese, frozen veggies, chicken, and beef this week! While buying more than one pack of chicken and beef doesn't save us anything, I for some reason decided to buy two of each. I'm hoping this means we will come under budget in a few weeks when we'd normally need to buy meat and don't have to, but knowing me I'll find something to buy!
So I got two packs of beef (divided to make 5 meals), 2 packs of chicken (divided to make 5-6 meals), and peas, corn, and green beans since we had next to nothing in the freezer. I normally eat lots of veggies, but hardly ever have salad. This week though, I decided to get some romaine because I know my body loves salad- so that was a purchase I don't normally make (but for the quality, might do more often. I'm an iceberg girl and know that iceberg has next to no nutritional content so I made myself get the romaine... it's delicious and so fresh!). The enchilada sauce was a bit of a splurge, but I'm excited to use it because an employee saw it in my cart and got really flustered talking about how good it was! The milk chocolate pretzels were also a splurge, as I took them to my hang out with The Nerdy Wife (aka Kendra) and the Catholic Newlywed (aka Mandi) on Saturday. They were delicious, but won't be making a reappearance into my cart any time soon because I'm sure I could devour the bag by myself in two a sitting. The pizza dough was the real budget breaker... it went up an entire cent in the last week! I'm kidding.... sort of. If they raise it a penny every week, I won't have to wonder if it's cheaper to buy or make. I shouldn't be having pizza again so soon, but Steven was at work when I made it for my parents and was a wee bit pouty about missing out.
So you're thinking my confession is over, right? Nope, not even close. After I put my groceries in the car, I proceeded to walk over to Jersey Mike's for a $8 sub sandwich to take home. I felt guilty and ridiculous while I was doing it, but I had also planned to treat Steven to Chickfila that night, but he got over time at the last minute, so I figured I was still spending $4 less than I would have if we had both eaten at Chickfila. No, rationalizing it didn't make me feel any better about it but, man! is Jersey Mike's delicious!
Ok, surely I'm done now right? An entire evening of spending must have shamed me back to my frugal roots! Well, they sort of did. Until I realized yesterday that I didn't pick up any mozz for the pizza. So back into Trader Joe's I went. But um, I didn't come out with just cheese. See, I've been wanting to make this homemade granola bar recipe for the longest time and just haven't gotten around to it. My friend Jessica made it and posted a picture of it, which had me salivating. So as I went down the nut aisle to head over to dairy, I may or may not have picked up cashews, sunflower seeds, dried cranberries, and steel cut oats. Another $14.... FOR SHAME!!!!! So there you have it, this frugal lady does not have it together all the time.
I think this week I might challenge us to see if we can shop on half of our budget. Since we have all that meat and veggies, plus Steven's mom gave us a big jar of homemade spaghetti sauce and a box of whole wheat pasta, we might just rise up to that challenge!
:( I know the feeling. I look like we have it altogether but lately we do on groceries but some of our bills don't get paid. Or I'll go buy all our groceries and my mom and sister will run to the store and get other things. Sometimes its so hard to stick to a budget. You seem to do a lot better than I do though :)
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