Grocery Spending - Update #5

It really isn't that bad. Honest. The only groceries I bought this week were for this month's family meal - I needed bread, milk and cream, and most expensively, maple syrup. Okay, I'll use the milk and cream for other things. And we only ate one loaf of the bread. And about half of the maple syrup. And... okay, okay. But still, really, if it wasn't for that meal, I wouldn't have had to do any shopping this week!

As for the stash, I've finally tallied up my seed purchases for this year.

Sigh.

How is it possible to spend this much money on seeds, year after year? I really have to get better at saving seed. This is ridiculous, and I still have to buy seed potatoes! Mind you, that tally includes some planting supplies, and shipping, and tax. Still - ouch!

Spending Feb. 4 - 10:

Non-stash:
Milk: $4.23
Cream: $3.03
Bread: $3.94
Maple syrup: $11.49

Stash:
Seeds & supplies: $225.98

Balance to date: -$42.37 for non-stash, -$455.93 for stash.

The balance keeps going in the wrong direction...

Grocery Spending - Update #4

I didn't want to do two updates back-to-back, but this puts me back on weekly schedule - well, some sort of schedule, anyhow!

This week's purchases included items for the family supper, but it's not too bad, even though I made chicken alfredo with garlic bread. I had all the ingredients for the sauce on hand, including the chicken, so all I had to buy was the pasta (on sale), bread and croutons for the salad.

The brand of coffee I drink was on sale last week, for just under $12/pound, down from the regular $16. I started keeping track at the beginning of the year, and realized I go through about 3 pounds a month (!!), and I'm down to only 3 pounds in the stash, so I stocked up. I'm good until the end of May now, and hopefully, it will go on sale again sometime before then. Or, I'll stop drinking coffee. Bwahahahahahahahhaa!!!


Spending Jan. 28 - Feb. 3:

Non-stash:
Pasta: $1.88
Croutons: $1.94
Bread: $3.94
Tea: $3.02
Coconut: $0.86 (I wanted unsweetened to try in a recipe)
Chips: $1.83 (I am bad - bulk food store fail)

Stash:
Coffee: $107.91

Balance to date: -$29.68 for non-stash, -$289.63 for stash.

Sigh.

Grocery Spending - Update #3

And herein starts the justifications - and the revisions.

My main goal for tracking (and blogging about) my grocery spending was to make myself start eating the food in the house, not just add more to the stash.

And so I set a dollar amount, that I thought was reasonable.

But then I ran out of things. Like brown sugar. And cocoa. And spices. And salt. And so I spent more than I had budgeted for.

It's not all bad, though. Even though I've gone over my arbitrary dollar amount (by a lot), I've been really good about actually eating from my stash.

So it's not a complete loss.

Of course, I want to keep this going, and I still want to track my spending (accountability, it's a good thing), but I don't want to post here week after week about how much further in the hole I'm getting. And really, the dollar amount is somewhat arbitrary...

On to the numbers:

Spending Jan. 21-27:

Non-stash:
Yeast: $3.79
Cocoa: $5.29
Coconut: $0.99 (For a recipe. Not a need, but hey - it was 99 cents!)
Brown Sugar: $2.17
Lemons: $3.00
Milk: $4.23
Sour Cream: $1.97
Cocoa: $6.99 (Mom knew I was out, saw a good price when she was out, and so, not knowing I had bought some, picked some up. It's all good - you can't have too much cocoa!)

Stash:
Beef: $240

Balance to date: -$46.21 for non-stash, -$262.04 for stash.

Now for the revisions:

I've looked again at how much I spend on "stash" foods, like locally-raised meat and eggs, fair-trade coffee and garden seeds, and realized the total is close to $1500 a year. So, I'm increasing my stash budget from $10 to $30/week. And on the same vein, to account for items like flour and sugar and spices, as well as milk and bread, I'm doubling my non-stash budget to $10/week.

And yes, I'm doing so retroactively. My challenge, my rules ;)

New balances: -$26.21 for non-stash, -$182.04 for stash. Still in the red, so I do need to work on that, but not as bad as before!

And really, $40 a week for a diet that includes non-CAFO meat? Not bad, not bad at all. Now, let's see if I can do better here on out...

Grocery Spending Update #2

I suck at this.

Really.

I cannot stick to a budget.

Sigh.

The stash isn't too bad - I knew I'd be buying pork this month to make sausage and put some away for pulled pork, so just over $40 for 30+ pounds of pork and associated fixings isn't bad at all.

But my non-stash spending...

Sigh.

Bread and potatoes - no problem. Salt and spice from the bulk food store - no problem. My "treat" of ravioli and tortellini (it was on sale!!), and two cans of hot chocolate - bad, bad, bad. And completely unnecessary. And yes, I'm back to buying hot chocolate mix - Dad likes a cup when he's over here working, and he doesn't like my homemade stuff :(

Spending Jan. 14-20:

Non-stash:
Pasta: $7.52
Bread: $1.97
Potatoes: $0.95
Hot Chocolate: $5.98
Salt: $1.83
Allspice: $0.40

Stash:
Pork: $38.19
Sausage Casings: $4.00

Balance to date: -$22.78 for non-stash, -$32.04 for stash.

I really suck at this. And the stash spending is going to take a HUGE hit this week...

Grocery Spending Update

Once the kitchen cabinets were installed, and I stared putting things away, I realized just how much food I had in the house. So I decided to do a small challenge: eat the food instead of buying more ;)

I decided to try to limit my spending to $5 a week, which would be enough for perishables like milk and bread. And so far, so...


Not so good. As of today, I'm $9 in the hole, not counting the 10 pounds of ground beef I bought.

Yes, I know, I know. I'm not supposed to be adding to my stash. But I did need ground beef - honest!

Thus, a small rule change. $5 a week for non-stash items, and $10 a week goes to the stash. This limit doesn't include my egg CSA, which was pre-paid, and also doesn't include non-food items (like bleach or vinegar used for cleaning).

I'm tempted to include my garden seed purchases this year under the stash column - after all, it is food spending!

One thing I have done is to look hard at what I am spending money on. The biggest single item was 4L vegetable oil ($5), but that should last for a while. The next biggest?

Pizza dough. Yeah, I know. Completely non-necessary! But I'm trying to limit my takeout meals and my biggest weakness is pizza. So I figured that if I made it a habit to make my own pizza once a week, I'd be saving all that money wasted on takeout 'za. Dough is only $1.49, after all... which doesn't sound bad at all, until you realize it's 30% of my weekly budget!

Which leads me to my next largest purchase: yeast. :)

Spending to date:

Non-stash:
Oil $4.97

Pizza dough $4.47 (1.49 x 3)
Pizza Sauce $1.18
Yeast $3.99
Mushrooms $1.76
Onions $1.88
Grape tomatoes (couldn't resist) $0.88

Stash:
Ground Beef $19.85

So, balance to date: $-9.13 for non-stash, $0.15 for stash.

Must. Do. Better!