The Bare Essentials Challenge: This Week's Shopping Trips

Yup, I'm posting this on Wednesday.  Thank goodness I started this challenge out by giving my self 50.00 a week one week AHEAD of schedule (like I gave myself 50.00 Friday before last for last week and so on), so that I would have a bit of leeway when I could get my shopping done.

Why am I done (with the exception of milk) shopping by Wednesday?  Well, this week has turned out to be somewhat of an organizational nightmare.

Yesterday I went into town armed with 20.00 in cash out of my "cash kiddie" (I keep like 60.00 around for a cash float), figuring I'd get Coke while it was still on sale at Carrs and get my daughter's prescription renewed while I was at it.  Well I had to wait two hours for the medication and I didn't really have two hours, so I figured I'd have to go back today (which I did), but got Coke and party bags of Cheetos while I was there (they were literally .01 cheaper there than at Fred Meyer, so they won *laugh*).  I'll be repaying the 20.00 to my cash come Friday's payday, but this helps to create a bit of a "checking account cushion" for paying bills with till Friday (since like 98% of our bills are due this week).

All totaled I spent 17.95 at Carrs.

While I was in town I ran to Fred Meyer to get a few things.  Mainly water softening salt, as our water is now turning pink in our toilets (we have HIGH iron content in our water) and that means that the salt reservoir is empty or darned near.  And I went for Valentine's for my daughter's party at school.  I got the note in the mail with how many kids were in her class and their names (26 other than her) and looking at the calendar realized that their party is next Friday, leading to a logistical nightmare.  We have to turn in the Valentine's Tuesday, so I really didn't want to get stuck doing grocery shopping on Tuesday (again) next week and Valentine's start to sell out of the decent, but cheap, ones a week before the holiday, so I figured it was now or never.

So, I went to Fred Meyer, got the water softening salt first and then went and perused the Valentine's.  I managed to find ONE package that came with 28 in it (thank goodness) so I didn't have to pick up two packages of Valentine's (at 2.50 or so a pop, I hate doing that).  I know some people are going to be like, "Why didn't you make them?"  Well, I have a February birthday to worry about (my daughter) and I'm making her some things, so having time to make paper Valentine's just isn't in the cards really.  That and I have a lack of paper and no printer ink, so that helps.

I also found Valentine's themed Ande's mints for 1.79 each.  It seems, after buying them for Christmas that my entire family (even my son, surprisingly) like the Ande's mints, so I figured this would be a great thing to get everyone for Valentine's Day.  This will also save me having to dig into my chocolate reserves to make chocolates for Valentine's Day, which is a good thing.  I'd prefer to save the chocolate chips for cookies and things.

I went and checked the price of baking soda (the 4 lb box) at Carrs beforehand and then checked it at Fred Meyer and found Fred Meyer to be significantly cheaper and I had a .50/1 coupon.  So, I got one bag of water softening salt (not shown in the picture above because I value my back and my kitchen table) and baking soda off of my list of shopping goals for the month.  Score!

All totaled I spent 20.97 at Fred Meyer

So, I ended up going back into town this morning to get my daughter's prescription and to get a few things.

Here's the situation with that.  My kids get a birthday dinner on their birthday.  It's one of the few traditions we have that we really try to stick to.  Usually with my daughter's birthday we go to Red Robin to get my daughter her favorite chicken strips and use a part of our tax return to pay for it.  Well, this year, obviously, that's out because we need all of our tax return for dental bills, so I had budgeted out 30.00 the last little bit and figured we'd go to McDonald's instead.

But, I was perusing the Fred Meyer ad for this week last night and came across a store coupon in the ad to make Tyson chicken strips 5.49 per bag with the coupon.  My mom sends me packets of coupons to help us out as much as she can and I dug through my envelope of "keepers" and found the Tyson coupon I knew I had for 2.50/2 Tyson Chicken Strips.  So, I talked to my daughter last night and asked her if she'd prefer we have the chicken strips and french fries (which I still have a ton of those in the freezer) for her birthday instead of going out to eat.  And surprisingly she got all excited and said yes!

So, I went and got the chicken strips and was feeling great that I was now 21.52 more in the black after that little bit of thinking (and I'm sure we'll have left over chicken strips as well).

Well *ahem* I then went to go down the coffee isle to get coffee filters, realizing this morning I had one left, and was horrified to see my beloved coffee filters on discount.  This is usually because the store is going to stop carrying that certain item and the ominous red shelf tags didn't bode well at all.  I love Fred Meyer for getting my coffee filters because the pack of 100 coffee filters cost the same as getting 50 and was still cheaper than buying the expensive non-bleached ones at Carrs and I would get double the amount of filters for less money.  It looks like the expensive ones are all that Fred Meyer is going to be carrying from now on too as everything but those was on discount in the #2 filters.  I wanted to cry.  The filters were 1.59 per box of 100.  Knowing that this would probably be my last chance to buy them there I got every box they had (sorry to everyone else.  I normally don't clear shelves, but this time I sure did).  So 15.90 out of my 21.52 in profit was shot.  But this should be enough filters to last me a year or so before I have to worry about paying nearly twice the old price I used to pay for filters.  I not only use these for coffee, but for loose leaf tea as well, so I will be glad to have them.

Luckily part of that 30.00 was to be a gift from my son for my daughter and I'd already gotten her a gift from him (more on that later) so at least everything on the birthday end worked out well.

I also bought Doritos (shown below in the Carrs picture for some odd reason) because it was the cheapest place to buy Doritos.  Those came off of my normal grocery budget so maybe that's why I did that the way I did when I took pictures, I'm not sure.  I confuse myself sometimes *laugh*.

So, all totaled at Fred Meyer I spent 3.50 on my normal grocery budget with 25.39 on the 30.00 I had set aside for my daughter's birthday (which part of the 4.00 and change will be being used to buy a disposable cake pan so I can send in cake for her class for her birthday at her request).  Total spent overall 28.79.

I then went to Carrs, got my daughter's script and ran and got an additional gallon of milk (2.99 with in-ad coupon this week).

Total spent at Carrs:  3.08.

Total spent this week (on the grocery budget end):  45.50

I am kind blown away that I spent 15.90 on coffee filters and somehow managed to come in on target for groceries (yay budgeting for birthdays!).  And I'll have nearly enough (I'll be at about 51.00 for next week) after I buy two additional gallons of milk.  But, overall, not too bad!