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No eating out challenge, weekend plans, grocery spending, etc.

September 8th, 2012 at 11:49 pm

Sept. 7 no eating out: Success.

Tonight and tomorrow will be challenges, but I think I can make it. Tonight we're going to a party that we thought might have free drinks, but turns out it's got a cash bar. I'm going to have a drink or two before I leave home (don't worry, I'm not driving) and try not to buy any while I'm there. I'll eat something before I go; there's supposed to be food, but now I'm not sure if you have to pay for it or not.

Tomorrow we're going to a block party, so I'm sure I'll be tempted by delicious-smelling food trucks. After we're getting some photos done by our photographer friend, and he said we should "grab dinner" after that. I made sure to specify that I'd rather make food than eat out or get takeout, and he was agreeable to that. So we're bringing the fixin's for vegan sloppy joes and salad. It'll be really effortless so even if we're tired after the block party and photo shoot, it'll be nothing to fix dinner. Smile

I'm glad North Georgia Gal suggested this challenge, because these are things I might have used my spending money for, but instead, if I succeed, I'll have money to put in my as-yet empty clothing envelope that I started 2 weeks ago. Smile

I did 20 minutes of cycling to get the groceries, and then NT asked if I wanted to take a longer bike ride. We ran a few errands, and I think the total biking that second time was an hour. So I worked out 80 minutes today!

Today's goal was to get groceries in under $143. We saved over $40 shopping sales and using coupons, but we had to buy a big bottle of olive oil ($14) and a new door handle ($23) for our balcony door (the old one snapped off in my hand a few days ago). So we were $6.26 over and still had a few things to buy at the Asian store and Lunds (which had some amazing coupons we HAD to use). Then NT remembered that he'd taken $10 out of the budget already to buy things at the Asian market. We crossed a few things off that list, and got total spending between Lunds and Hai Nguyen down to $5, so we can deposit the other $5 back into groceries.

That means we're only $1.26 over budget. We do still need to get wipes ($3.50) and we MIGHT need to get formula ($20+, but we're going to wait and see if our current box lasts us until Friday). So, considering the balcony door handle mishap, we did pretty well. And I didn't try as hard to stick to just the bare minimum; we stocked up on pasta and cereal, for example. Next week we can buckle down and only get what we need, and we should be able to spend MUCH less on food than this week. We'll need diapers for both girls next week, as well as formula, and AA could use a couple new pairs of shoes (we don't have a clothing budget for the girls since usually we get everything we need through hand-me-downs and gifts, so we take it out of grocery/household if it's a necessity).

Anyway, this Lunds deal. We got a new Lunds in downtown, very handy to both work and home, but we hardly ever go there because it's such a high-end grocery store. Last week we noticed some really great coupons in the mail; one was for 99-cent orange juice, the other for a free baguette! We didn't get around to going, but this week we got another circular from them with a coupon for 99-cent pound of organic strawberries and 99-cent carton of 12 organic free-range eggs! Those are things we use every week, so we made sure we made a special trip. We'll be perusing their flyers VERY carefully from now on to see if more amazing deals come our way. When we redeemed those two today, our total went from about $8.50 to $1.98!

5 Responses to “No eating out challenge, weekend plans, grocery spending, etc.”

  1. North Georgia Gal Says:
    1347149103

    Way to go on the Lunds deal and not eating out!

  2. snafu Says:
    1347154629

    The Emergency Fund owes you/food category $23. for a new door handle. No way inedibles come out of grocery budget.

  3. ceejay74 Says:
    1347154897

    snafu, we call it "Grocery/Household." We buy lots of inedibles with the money; otherwise, the category amount could be less.

  4. My English Castle Says:
    1347160004

    Yummy--Lunds has lovely lovely memories for me. I used to live on Holmes across from the Hennepin/Lake one and I can envision it all now. I'd like some of the cherry chicken salad and a pecan tart from there right now!

  5. Homebody Says:
    1347221012

    I'm glad that North Georgia Gal suggested it too. I was more than ready!

    I have noticed that Snafu tends to like to tell everyone what they are doing wrong. It doesn't appear to be in a "could I suggest" type of way either or is it just me?

    Hey maybe it's the migraine or my cranky menopausal self.

    I do a household account too because I did not follow through on categorizing everything, so household spending is just Household:store name in quicken.

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