Well, it's happened. My husband has been laid off from work. He does have a union to fall back on, and we are practicing patience, perseverance, and thrift now. We have been very fortunate to have had the luxury of his being with the same company for over a decade. In his line of work, this is almost unheard of, and we have been hearing the rumblings of layoffs for a while. We were somewhat prepared, but it's still not a good feeling.
With that out of the way, I've come to a shocking conclusion. Grocery shopping? I've been doing it ALL WRONG. No kidding. I'm not an extreme couponer. In fact, the whole thought of having a binder and keeping it current and constantly clipping, and just being on top of it all just plain exhausts me. We have a young family and we like to eat well - lots of fresh fruit and veg, meat, plenty of everything, and we avoid grains and breads so we fill up on the expensive stuff.
Our process is [was] this: Every weekend we get into the car as a happy lil family (hah!) with our lil grocery bags and (mostly fight) wend our way through the grocery store with a list that we made using the dry-erase board on the fridge. The list is just the list of stuff that we like/used/ran out of, and we (mostly) stick with it. At the end of the shop, we get a little something as a treat for the kids (candy, toy, a sweet drink as we don't buy soda). Our shop, which I always thought of, and budgeted for, as about normal for our area was $250.00 per week or less (included whatever vitamins, hygiene, and cleaning products == they add up!). Recently, however, our preferred store has been popping out a bill of around $300.00 a week. By recently, I mean for the last four to six months. This brings us from $1000.00 to around $1200.00 per month in groceries alone. My excuse (inside my head, of course) is, "The kids are growing, we eat well, it's the inflation, this is the new normal..." No. Just, no.
My husband takes his lay off and this grocery bill and I are now at WAR. When the babes were very small, I used to shop online and go pick up at the store. I decided to do it again a couple of weeks ago, just to see what the grocery bill would be before I got to the preferred store. Then, I decided I would try the same products (or as close as I could get them) at Walmart.
At this point, I'd like to take a healthy pause to blow off some steam and curse. I've been cursing for a few weeks [years] now.
Wouldn't you know that my new grocery bill at Walmart was about $120.00 and included everything we needed.
Here is a tidbit I left out. Prior to shopping online, we'd done a few shops at Walmart, just to see if we could lower the $300.00 to something a little more affordable. It worked to an extent. We were still hovering around $200.00-$250.00.
So WTF?! $120.00 for our Whole. Entire. Shop? What the heck were we even buying?! == I HAVE NO IDEA!!! And that is what the problem is. I have no idea what we were spending all that extra money on!
The first time I shopped online like this recently, I thought it might be a fluke and that I was forgetting massive amounts of stuff. But no. I did it again the following week. The difference was, I figured out, I was wandering around the house, checking inventory while I listed. That stuff that we had put on our dry erase board? Some of it, we did not even need!
Ok, there is a flip side to this - not all of it can be self-blame (which I do a lot). Stores like to keep you confused and wandering around, saying to yourself, Ooo! Shiny object that I need and must put into my humongous, empty (hah), cart! I am done with the chaos of The Store, and with feeling frazzled and over-stimulated and broke at the end of it all!
I still feel rotten about one aspect of all of this. The fact that I get to The Store and someone brings all of my stuff to me. I do not feel like I should be exempt from the absolute circus that is the madhouse that is the HELL of wandering around trying to find crap you really need for the week while trying to keep the kids in check.
Actually. I'm ok with it. One-hundred and twenty effing dollars. SMDH.
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