Okay. So. Ya, well, um, ya. I think I’m a dismal failure (again) this month *thud*
Back on February 1st, I posted my shopping goals for the upcoming month. They were good goals. They were noble goals. They were goals, that appear to have been WAY out of my reach.
But it’s not entirely my fault (ya right, chica, ain’t nobody believing that story again). No, but really! Who could have predicted a product pairing that gave you TWO full-sized products which would normally cost anywhere from $2.49 to $3.49 EACH would go on sale for $2.49 for BOTH and that you (or, I, in this case) could match it with a $.75 coupon and end up paying $1.74 – or, half the price of ONE of the items? I mean, come on now! And yes, these were both products that my family goes through A LOT of – because my family is awesome and there’s just no helping that.
But, all besides the point. The point is that I completely blew the budget and the number of shopping days/trips challenge, LARGE.
My grocery budget goal to feed and keep clean my family of feral (but totally awesome) monkeys (and man) was (and is) $500.00 a month.
To recap, here were January’s stats:
Coupon savings – $337.33
Shopping the Sale Price savings – $321.59
Over Budget – $265.33 (Ouch!)
Number of Shopping Days – 7 (Opps!)
and here are February’s stats:
Coupon savings – $208.98
Shopping the Sale Price Savings – $469.99
Over Budget – $128.90
Number of Shopping Days – 15 (or, embarrassingly enough, more than TWICE January’s number)
Ok, now I know what you’re thinking – you’re thinking that I actually did better  this month than I did last month. And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong, I’ll give you that. But I shopped on 15 out of 29 days of the month – that’s over HALF. That’s too much. My challenge isn’t just to save money, but it’s to save resources and time and these stats show that I spent way too many of both this month.
A new month is starting tomorrow. I better get my ducks in a row, because there are 31 days and I definitely don’t want to spend half of them shopping. 😉
For March, my goals include: $500 grocery budget and spend only part of 6 days of the month spending it 🙂
Are you tracking your spending/savings?  How are you doing? What do you track and how strict are you with yourself?
[…] on February 29th, I posted my January results and February shopping goals. They were good goals. They were noble goals. They were goals, that appear to have been WAY […]