So I rush right out in my quest to save as much money on the food budget as possible and buy the Sunday paper with all the coupons. Immediately I find that this is not only going to be a lot of work but no fun at all. Who can keep track of all those expiration dates? Plus the paper cost me $2.00 and about 30 minutes of review time. Only saw a couple of things that I would use (hopefully by June 24th) and I certainly don't want TWO of them which is what I would need to buy to use the coupon. Another offered free milk if I spent $15. Plus the reality of it is I'll have to go through this process each week and find some sort of system to store what I would normally recycle. I've decided that I really need to choose my battles here and clipping coupons is out.
Email coupons are a totally different story. To give you an example, I received an email from CVS offering $3 off my next purchase. Just so happend I wanted a Red Bull and there was a CVS right there! Opened email on my phone, they were able to scan the coupon from my phone screen and Voila! a three dollar savings on the spot. I was also able to do this at Barnes & Noble with a buy one get one free smoothie. Not sure if I mentioned earlier but my Wonderful son David got me a Nook color for my birthday. I received a buy one get one coupon for the cafe and was able to enjoy both the time with my son, the discount on our drinks AND read the books for free! Need to mention here that my ADP Payroll rep Alix gave me a Starbucks gift card today for a referral. This really will make the start of my journey just that much easier. Thanks Alix! :)
So back to the food budget. I've decided that Publix is making this very easy for me to save money. They have awesome buy one get one free items each week that I was able to stock up on. I can review the flyer online, add items to my grocery list, print the list and hit the store running. I am really good at sticking to a list while in the store IF I'm not hungery, sometimes I cave but for the most part, I shop from the list and come home with lots of food. And I can attest that the Publix brand is just fine and their fruits and vegetables are outstanding. It's a great way to eat quality food and within budget. THANK YOU PUBLIX!!
Of course, there's no beating Walmart for soaps, detergent, paper items and milk. Problem is Walmart is SO BIG that it really is hard to get out of there with just the items on the list and you know they are counting on that. So lesson learned: go in prepared with a list and stick to it. Which comes to my shopping list. Outside of the buy one get one free which I never know what that will be I need to stick with the same items for the most part and decide on my meals from there. As far as giving items up that will be pretty tough and I haven't made a final decision on a couple of items:
distilled water - I use it for everything because of the way it makes things taste. You won't believe what it does for your coffee and at .68c per gallon at Walmart, I usually go through 7 gallons a week. That's a pretty big chunk of my food budget when you consider it's just Mary and me eating. Plus I always feel like crap when I have to put the darn jugs in the recycling bin. Why can't they make a distilled water tank so I can reuse the jugs?
butcher shop meat - I became hooked on the meat from New York Butcher Shop on Coleman Blvd after I stopped in, bought some hamburger to try and then had one from the grocery store and one from the butcher. No contest there, butcher won hands down. The upside is they have a weekly mailing with their specials. This past week I went a bit nuts there and spent $112 on just meat but a lot of meat - about three weeks worth. It's hard because I could go cheap (and I mean real cheap and buy it from Walmart) but I always end up throwing it away because I can't stand the taste so maybe the wise choice would be to stick with what I know I will eat.
snacks - not much of a snack eater and don't normally keep them in the house but there is the occaisional bowl of cereal (Publix had Life and Captn Crunch Berries buy one get one this week) that I will indulge in. It really is a bad habit and milk being more expensive than gas (I buy organic milk for Mary) this may end up being dropped from the list. I know at one point David said my cupboard looked like the cereal isle at the grocery store.
I've been spending about $150 per week on groceries - I will begin this week with my new plan and post the results.
So to sum it up, make a list (trying to keep it as simple as possible) buy only what I need for 9 days and drop the cereal. We'll see...
Signing off. Going to run with Mary and call the cable company.
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