M’hijito called yesterday afternoon and invited me to drive out to the new westside Lee Lee, a long way from the central city but probably not as far as the original location in Chandler. Lee Lee is a large, interesting Asian supermarket, where fish are sold fresh-caught from huge tanks, the produce department offers treats you’ll never see at Safeway, two long aisles are filled with exotic cooking gear, and ethnic foods are organized by country.
He wanted to buy a mah-jongg table. We found one, but, being a chip off the old block, he felt $60 was more than he wanted to pay. He’ll be back.
While we were there, we picked up a variety of wonders, such as chunky anemone-shaped Japanese mushrooms, Madras curry powder, coconut milk, Philippine mangoes, and a variety of Asian snacks and candies that made M’hijito nostalgic for his old neighborhood in San Francisco. From there, it was on to Costco.
Interestingly, at about the same moment, Carrie over at It’s Frugal Being Green was making the Costco rounds in her precincts. As part of her project to find the best meat at the best price, she had already pretty well decided that the venerable warehouse store does mighty well in this department. Lo! What should we each discover in our separate treks: Costco’s got prime beef! Holy mackerel!
Well, at the Phoenix store, the choice was limited to a few packages of prime New York steaks, and they were frozen solid. They did look pretty rich: so baroquely marbled they must have contained as much fat as protein. Though the price was not off the scale, we were a little put off by their being frozen (like we don’t freeze the stuff after we get it home?). However, when M’hijito and I compared them with the ribeye steaks, we concluded that the choice quality ribeyes showed about as much marbling as the prime cuts…and they were two bucks a pound cheaper.
So, we settled for the middle-brow stuff.
That notwithstanding, I spent about $105 at the two stores yesterday. Not good, since I had exactly $2.82 left in this week’s microbudget, to last until tomorrow. Strictly speaking.
Not so bad, though, if you look at it from the new angle I cooked up: by spreading extraordinary expenses over the entire month-long budget. From that point of view, I could have spent almost $125 and still be OK.
So…did I go over budget? Well, I think not: as a practical matter, there was plenty of money in the month’s budget to buy a few food items this week. And I didn’t buy anything I didn’t need: the main reason I went into Costco was to pick up some orange juice and frozen strawberries, staples of my breakfast fare. I’d run my supply of meat down to nothing, so it made sense to pick up a package of ribeyes. I needed fruit, so the mangoes from Lee Lee and the Costco peaches (split with M’hijito) also were reasonable purchases. The only thing I didn’t really need were Costco’s Gloria Vanderbilt jeans…but hey! Buttercup yellow! When would a person ever see buttercup jeans that fit, ever again?
I like the idea of spreading extraordinary costs over an entire month. Both unusual bills, $243.68 for the incredible bargain on 1,440 paving bricks and $188 for the speed trap ticket, came up in the first week. Dividing each figure by four and debiting each microbudget for the respective figures—$47 and $60.92—reduces the amount available for each week but leaves plenty of cash in each week for ordinary expenses. Trying to take those amounts out of the week in which they occurred runs the first microbudget deep into the red and, when the red ink is carried over into the second week, leaves too little in that week’s microbudget to live on comfortably.
All in all, a successful day: had a nice time with my son, got a few things I need, explored an interesting new store, and ended up with plenty in next week’s budget.
🙂