So how’s the new budget working? Not all that bad, I suppose. But not great. On Friday we’ll be two weeks into the thing. I’ve managed to stay out of Costco for that entire time, but will make a small Costco run the day after tomorrow to pick up dog meat, dog veggies, and a couple of small things for myself.
The big problem: groceries. I budgeted $300 for the month, but as of today am already up to $267. But that includes a bottle of Maker’s Mark: stupidly, I bought a small bottle for $30 rather than spending $40 at Total Wine or Costco for one that holds three times as much sauce. For $10 more, I could have bought enough whiskey to last three or four months instead of one or two.
Penny-wise and pound foolish… 🙄
And it also includes two big rolls — $26 worth — of expensive dog food. The last of these will run out on the 15th, which is the occasion for the planned Costco run.
But…$26 + $30 is only $56. If I hadn’t bought those, I still would have spent $211 of the budgeted $300, with two full weeks left to go. It’s unlikely I could stay under $300 this month, at that rate.
That is after having bought 60 pounds of produce for $10.
HowEVER…I have spent exactly NONE of the $150 budgeted for Costco this month. I’ll need a package of chicken thighs, a package of bulk pork, a package of “Tuscan” style frozen vegetables (no corn, no onions: big!), and I’d like to get a container of those wonderful Campari tomatoes and a container of six glorious golden Mexican mangoes.
Offhand I don’t recall how much the frozen veggies are — about $15, I’d guess. The giant packages of chicken and of pork? About $30 apiece…so we’re at $75…then the tomatoes and the mangoes, let’s say about ten bucks apiece for those, though I think they’re cheaper: $95 for the projected Costco run.
If I don’t set foot in a Costco between Friday and August 1, that leaves $55 to spend on food for the rest of the month. In theory.
And, in theory, the only food I should have to buy for the rest of the month is the occasional fresh produce.
When the weather cools down, I’ve GOTTA build a raised garden out in back and plant some food in it. Just some lettuce and some spinach would go a long way toward keeping me out of grocery stores.
At any rate, there are several other categories where I’ve spent nothing: incidental medical bills, Amazon, clothing. That creates $75 of slack that could (theoretically) be spent on groceries. EXCEPT…that “incidental medical bills” is an average that includes the semiannual dentist visit, among other things. Next week I have to go in to get my teeth cleaned: that’ll be a hundred bucks. So…in reality there’s $200 p.a./12 – $17 less available (since $16.666 a month is a permanent drain on the annual amount available for living expenses): $75 – $17 + ($300-$267) = $91 left to buy groceries this month.
BUT utility bills came to $418, exceeding the budgeted $400 for summer bills by $18. So in reality I have $73 to cover food for the rest of the month.
This, apparently, is not gonna work.
$10 for 6 mangoes? I bought 6 at my local grocery store last month at $0.25 a piece. That was a stellar deal – but they’ve been $3/1.00 for the last month at the local Grocery Outlet and Lucky Supermarkets.
I am currently refusing to pay $1.98/lb for nectarines and peaches – which normally are under a buck a pound. Instead I’ve been buying cherries – which at $1.98/lb are a far cry from the standard $4-5 bucks a pound that is normally charged.
3 for a $1.00 – my $ was on the wrong side there.
Hm. There’s hope. Maybe my crazy guesses will be on the low side.
That’s just a wild guess. Costco doesn’t seem to be posting the prices of fresh produce and meat, and usually when I’m in there I buy what I want or need without paying nuch attention to the price. Numbers don’t mean a lot to me, so it would be hard for me to know how $xxx for a lifetime supply would compare to another market’s price for a more normal size purchase.
Have you seen the $2.00 avocados!!? Was in one store where they’d put up a sign, 2 for $4 — boyoboy, such a deal! Then went on down the road to another store and darned it they didn’t have their avocados priced (less disingenuously, anyway) at 2 bucks apiece.
Wonder if avocados will grow in lovely uptown Arizona?
I don’t buy avocados – but the other day at the veggie stand the little ones were 6/$1.
Part of how I try to keep my food costs down is being aware of what the normal price is for thing and what is a good price – and being flexible on what I’ll buy to take advantage of what’s on sale. I also don’t shop at Costco other than for prescriptions – the prices are generally higher than the grocery stores I shop at and I’d rather be able to buy smaller quantities and more variety for the same amount of money.
Yeah..it would help if I could remember numbers. As some people are dyslexic, I’m dysnumeric, if there is such a thing. I’ve never been able to do numbers, even when I was a little kid: they just…will…NOT…stick in my brain. Same with names: I cannot remember names to save my life.
Best I can do with numbers is to write them down. I suppose if I had a notebook where I could write down the current typical prices of everything so I could look it up when needed…there must be an app for that! 😀
I stumbled across your blog and got super excited because I have a corgi too! Good luck with your new budget. I look forward to reading through your blog.
Hmmmm…. I find this challenging and a bit scary. $300 a month would/should come out to $10 a day for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner with a snack or two….for one person…At first glance one would think this is totally doable especially considering our “folks at the fed” say inflation is tame or non-existent. But the reality is prices have went up steadily and food is no exception. But Aldi has provided some relief for us …sorry you don’t have one in your area. IMHO I think Costco is the “wolf in sheeps’ clothing” that can cause a lot of problems with budgets, The crazy thing is not so long ago I followed a couple of blogs that followed the authors as they fed themselves on $1 a day OR stuck to the “SNAP diet” for 30 or 60 days…very interesting reads. As for the Makers Mark….pretty sure it is in the wrong category…This clearly should come out of “medical expenses” / “therapeutic supplies”……
Heh heh…I wonder if MM is deductible as a medical expense? Maybe Young Dr. Kildare would write out a prescription for it????
On the Costco issue: absolutely. They’re not always a bargain — you really need to know the going price in the local market to know whether you’re saving any money there.
Sometimes, though, saving money isn’t the point. Except for Whole Foods and AJ’s, supermarkets here don’t sell the greatest of all possible meat. Costco’s beef and lamb are FAR higher quality at the same price as you would pay for lesser meat in a local grocery store. And as far as I’m concerned, I’m willing to pay a few pennies more for the lifetime supplies of paper towels and TP — I SO hate having to race off to the grocery store for that stuff every time I turn around.
Clothing? Really, there just aren’t that many places where you can find a pair of blue jeans that actually FIT a middle-aged+ woman for under 20 bucks. That is the biggest bargain on the planet, far as I’m concerned. Every now and again, too, they’ll offer some exceptionally cute casual shirt — not the usual fare — that’s also under $20 — you couldn’t touch anything that looks like it for that price at Nordstrom’s Rack or any of the full-price department stores.
…aaaand a garden may just be the way to go. I’ve planted a small plot again this year and I’m hopeful. Anything will be helpful as DW pays $1 per tomato at the “farmers stand”. Shop around for your seeds….I got mine from the DollarTree….10 cents per pack. I had four oblong planters left behind by a tenant, put some dirt in them put my lettuce seeds in, watered aaaand it will be on our sandwiches tomorrow …. 18 days after planting. Because they are in planters I can move them around and keep them out of the heat so they won’t “bolt”. Planted squash….and every seed BUT one came up. Squash in this neck of the woods is $1.99/lb or about $1 each! Best Wishes!
But… by the time you’ve built the raised bed or bought pots, purchased soil to fill them, purchased fertilizer to sprinkle on them, and watered them for weeks, the price can’t be a hell of a lot less than buying the produce at the store.
I like to grow chard, though. It grows well in pots all fall and winter and resists bolting to seed for a LONG time. Lettuce will grow handsomely here in the winter, but the instant it starts to warm up at all, the plants are done for. In this yard, I’ve had no luck at all with tomatoes — something about the light or the soil or both. Same with carrots and beets: pathetic!
I am going to try some mache, though. We’ll see what happens with that…it’s supposed to be a kind of weed, so it may make it in the Valley of the We-Do-Mean Sun.
Actually, for us anyway the numbers do work. The seeds were 10 cents, the planters free, the soil came from mulch I created with the chipper/shredder. The really great thing we have benefitted from is our “tumbling composter” which I got off CL for free. This thing along with recycling efforts has just about made us a “zero-waste” home. In addition the by-products from the composter makes an excellent soil amendment. I like to make a “compost tea” and apply it on the plants ….. BIG difference. Sooo in our case other than the seeds….there was no additional cash needed. Aaaand there is just something about growing your own food that is so rewarding. And it’s a very low cost hobby. This year’s tomato plants are almost like my children…I started these plants from seed in February….the seeds were saved on a napkin from a “heirloom tomato” DW purchased for “too much money”. I don’t have fruit yet but like gardeners every where….I’m hopeful…
Yeah, I’ve always thought the best gardens are grown by people who know how to recycle, build, and make use.
I’m getting too old for that much banging around, to tell the truth. At one time I had a great composter — but the guy who called himself a “beekeeper” but who was really an exterminator filled it full of this powder insecticide, rendering it useless for my purposes. I love to compost, though…and the plants sure love it. Maybe I can talk my son into ordering a new composter for me for Christmas. 😉
This was the one I had:https://www.amazon.com/Composter-Envirocycle-Composting-Tumbler-Compost/dp/B0121B5474/ref=sr_1_17?ie=UTF8&qid=1468595980&sr=8-17-spons&keywords=composter&psc=1 A friend had given it to me, and it was THE most wonderful thing!! But at that price, I couldn’t even think of replacing it.
Tried using a plastic trash barrel that I’d drilled holes in. Would have been fine if I’d been 15 or 20 years younger. But at this age, it was too heavy for me to flop over on its side and roll around to mix the composting stuff. And it wasn’t practical to try to mix it with a shovel. Not one of my brighter ideas…
I tried building an open composer but realized a) there are termites over on that side of the house and they’ll just LOVE that stuff and b) even if I built it as far from the house as I could, it would still be too, too close to risk tempting termites over to the foundation.
HowEVER… I still have a bunch of pots back behind the house, and I discovered that HD sells a large plastic fake terracotta pot fairly reasonably. And over there across the yard is a real terracotta large-sized pot whose supposedly summer-resistant plant is croaking. I’m sure I can scrounge enough pots to grow some chard, some spinach, and some mache.
I spend about $200/month on food for myself and an additional $120/month on dog food. I am able to hit my macros within that budget, but it takes some work. To make it work I do not eat at restaurants or shop in the center of the store (i.e all the packaged “food” products). I only buy produce that is in season and not outrageously expense. For example, I LOVE watermelons but I have yet to have any this summer because I expect them to be around $2-2.50 while the stores are pricing them around $5. For vegetables I consider the preparation they’ll be used in. If they’re going to be cooked, you can generally get frozen for less than fresh. For protein I very rarely eat beef because it is generally in the $12 – 15/lb range when chicken is in the $2/lb range and eggs are under $1/dozen.
I also gave up my Costco membership because once I added in the annual membership fee the prices were higher than what I could purchase products elsewhere. For products like TP, paper towels, electric toothbrush heads I’ve switched to Amazon’s subscribe and save service.
Hm. I’ll check in to the Amazon service. That would be good.
I’ve also found that frozen veggies are cost-effective not only because they may be cheaper than fresh (especially out of season) but because they last indefinitely. Any fresh produce you don’t eat is wasted money.
These days I eat less and less meat, and when I do, it’s usually mixed in with something — like the stuffed acorn squash I came up with this month and am still enjoying. http://www.plainandsimplepress.com/make-convenience-food/ Do-it-yourself TV dinners!