Baby steps, people. Baby steps. That’s what I’m going to tell myself as I reveal the naked ugly truth about my grocery budget mini-fails.
Back 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 out of my reach (unlike this lovely tub of Kawartha Dairy Moose Tracks ice cream – well, helloooooo there!) But, as I pursue my Moose Tracks-induced high, so I pursue my elusive and lofty shopping goals with a similar (yet different) dedication and tenacity.
Now, before I actually stop writing and do the math, I’m going to predict that I shopped four days too many and spent $50 or more over budget. Still, over is over and four days of extra shopping trips does not make my goal happy.
- What can I say? My kids are budget conscious creatures too, I guess.
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 were 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)
and finally, here are March’s stats:
Coupon savings – $281.17 (not a bad month on the coupon front)
Shopping the Sale Price Savings – $284.41 (s’okay)
Over Budget – $242.70 (um, WTF?!? I’d better check my math, I must have double counted a shopping trip or three)
Number of Shopping Days – 12 (goal was 6, so totally not good with 12)
I suck. *THUD* Argh. Now my head hurts. I think I need to burn my flyers, put on my blinders and start walking, no running past all of these ‘deals’ that are putting me over budget. I’m pretty sure that I now have enough of just about everything that I can take a “break” and only buy the staples – which will still add up fairly quickly but I think, no, I know that by paying attention and really deciding to avoid the ‘deals’ that I can do it. Of course, this upcoming month bites, because we’re packing, moving, renovating and still living and maintaining our lives, but I’ll just have to put in a lot more planning to make sure that we’re using what we have and not resorting to over-spending or eating total take-out crap.
For April, my goals include: $500 grocery budget and spend only part of 6 days of the month spending it. I ran to Food Basics on the 1st so I only have five shopping days left for April. Please God, keep me away from the stores this month. I have packing to do and unless we’re out of milk or eggs (or fruit, because my kids are total addicts), we’ll probably survive just fine without anything new at all this month. Besides, doing a lot of baking at home, really does help the budget’s bottom line (when I’m not being a deal-chasing spaz, that is).
Are you tracking your spending/savings? How are you doing? What do you track and how strict are you with yourself?