Here are my FOOD BUDGET spending totals for JULY 2009.
I am listing subtotals for each store I purchased from in July.
These Totals include Food, Toiletries/HBA, Pet Supplies, Cleaning Products & tax where applicable.We are a family of 5. No kids under 13.
CARONE'S
OOP $24.23
Qs/Ads $7.19
Value $31.42
Savings 23%
CVS
OOP $.86
Qs/Ads $54.89
Value $55.75
Savings 98.5%
FARM FRESH
OOP $26.48 **Just had to pick up some Smithfield Ham while in Virginia!
Qs/Ads $12.52
Value $39.00
Savings 32%
KMART
OOP $54.52
Qs/Ads $869.30
Value $923.82
Savings 94%
OLLIE'S
OOP $5.55
Ads $4.30
Value $9.85
Savings 44%
PRICE CHOPPER
OOP $57.11
Qs/Ads $139.67
Value $196.78
Savings 71%
I am listing subtotals for each store I purchased from in July.
These Totals include Food, Toiletries/HBA, Pet Supplies, Cleaning Products & tax where applicable.We are a family of 5. No kids under 13.
CARONE'S
OOP $24.23
Qs/Ads $7.19
Value $31.42
Savings 23%
CVS
OOP $.86
Qs/Ads $54.89
Value $55.75
Savings 98.5%
FARM FRESH
OOP $26.48 **Just had to pick up some Smithfield Ham while in Virginia!
Qs/Ads $12.52
Value $39.00
Savings 32%
KMART
OOP $54.52
Qs/Ads $869.30
Value $923.82
Savings 94%
OLLIE'S
OOP $5.55
Ads $4.30
Value $9.85
Savings 44%
PRICE CHOPPER
OOP $57.11
Qs/Ads $139.67
Value $196.78
Savings 71%
RITE AID
OOP $86.95
Qs/Ads $356.06
Value $443.01
Savings 80.37% **This is before Single Check Rebate & Gift Cards earned.**
SHOP-RITE
OOP $23.34
Qs/Ads $131.45
Value $154.79
Savings 85%
TARGET
OOP $62.06
Qs/Ads $130.40
Value $192.46
Savings 68%
WALGREEN'S
OOP $24.01
Qs/Ads $126.56
Value $150.57
Savings 84%
WALMART
OOP $25.17
Qs/Ads $14.06
Value $39.23
Savings 36%
WEIS
OOP $130.41
Qs/Ads $530.45
Value $660.86
Savings 80%
TOTAL Out of Pocket.............................$520.69
TOTAL Coupons & Store Sales Savings....$2376.85
TOTAL Value of Items Purchased.............$2897.54
TOTAL Savings % for JUNE......................82%
I've decided NOT to track CVS's ECBs & Walgreen's RRs. They will be included when used on purchases under "Coupons". Rebates will also show up in the Monthly Totals when spent, but I'll keep track of what rebates are received monthly.
REBATES RECV'D. IN JULY
Rite-Aid SCR........$54.18
Reynolds Foil........$2.99
Cheerios Check....$5.00
Dove Hair Repair Challenge...$4.69
Lysol......$3.00
Physician's Formula....$7.13
Subtotal........$76.99
FREE ITEMS
Kashi Bar Coupon
Starbucks Ice Cream Coupon
Soft Soap Body Wash Coupon
Candy Bar Coupon
Purex 3-In-1 Coupon
NO Gift Cards
TOTAL Value of Cash Rebates..$76.99
My best 3 Store Savings Totals were from Walgreens at 84%, KMart at 94% & CVS at 98.5%. If you figure the Rebate I am due back from Rite-Aid($85), then my Savings % there is 99.5%.
(I spent $86.95 OOP and will receive back an $85 Check and $50 in Gift Cards.)
This closes out the July spending.
THOUGHTS & COMMENTS for this month-
Well, I set out to keep the Grocery/HBA spending under $500 for July...something I haven't been able to do yet. I didn't quite make $500 but at only $20 over, this is my least food/toiletries spending for 2009!
And this amount was with very little fresh produce included from my garden! I figured keeping it to $500 for July but that amount was counting heavily on not having to buy much in the way of fresh produce. We just harvested the first of the squash and cukes a couple of days ago, so in July we only had fresh salad greens supplementing the menu. This makes that $520 spent an even better showing.
I know that some of you out there may spend way less than $500 a month on your Food/Toiletries Budget. I don't know how you do it(unless you are eating rice and beans all the time!lol). But for us, $500 is really low. ESPECIALLY if you consider that a year ago I use to grocery shop.....sit down for this revelation.....WITHOUT COUPONS!
Yes folks, I never even peeked inside the Newspaper inserts on Sunday. Just threw the coupons out when we were done reading the paper.
It wasn't always like that. I used to coupon years ago, when I was a young married woman & hubby and I were living off of a much smaller salary. As he started earning more and I brought in some extra money on my side hustles, and then the babies started coming in quick succession, I had no time or energy for saving money with coupons. Then the babies started growing and eating ALOT MORE!lol Soon that small food bill was double and triple and taking too big a bite out of the income.
Last year, I would just go to the store once a week and do a $150 shop. But that big shop would be supplemented with 2-3 little mini-shops during the week to pick up things I forgot during the big shopping trip. $20 here, $15 there....add on another $40-$80 a week to that $150 total=$200+ a week!
And for that $200+ we barely had enough to eat through to the next week. We certainly didn't have shelves of extras for an emergency situation like we do now.
And that was a year ago.....since then, the price of everything has increased at least 6%. So I'd need $222.60 in today's dollars to buy last year's same $200 worth of food. Extrapolate out that weekly amount to a month and I was keeping a food/toiletries Budget equivalent to $964.60 a month in 2008.
So it blows my mind that I can spend LESS now on the Food budget and we have so much MORE foodstuffs than before!
Even with keeping the budget down to $520 in July, I was still able to take advantage of a couple of INCREDIBLE SHOPPORTUNITIES that came my way.
This $520 for July included 11 Trips to KMart during the Double Coupons Week in early July, a couple of trips to Target for cereal/cookies for the Kellogg's Rebate & a trip to Price Chopper to stock up on sale/clearanced staples(rice & spaghetti sauce mostly), as well as all the smaller food shopping trips & a splurge on that expen$ive Smithfield Ham we picked up at the Farm Fresh down in Virginia.
As for the total I am shooting for with my Food/Toiletries Budget for August....I am torn. The stockpile is looking quite healthy except for a few types of items, so I have a small percentage of things to stock-up on.
I have a Shopping Campaign all set to launch on Sunday for a really really good Cat deal at a grocery chain down the road from here. And then there is the return of KMart's Double Coupons Week later in August. There shouldn't be much I need by then, so I'll still check it out but I'll try to limit myself to things that will be free with the doubled coupons. I usually do free and items under $1 during these KMart Sales, so free only will be cutting back for me.
So I'm going to keep the Food Budget for August at $500 again. The kids will have returned from their summer jobs this month and the #1 son will be leaving for college too. I anticipate some irregularities with the menu(eating out and extra meals)this month, plus some farmer's market spending(to preserve for winter) so we'll leave some wiggle room in the budget for whatever pops up in August.
Sluggy
I think you did really good! We spend $480 a month and that is for four of us. I really don't know how people can feed their families for only a couple of dollars a day. I think that $500 is super low and that you are doing an amazing job. I've been thinking about trying to learn Walgreens and CVS. But it seems like a lot of work. So I have a question, if I was going to keep a tally would the register rewards count as $? Or would I count it as a coupon and then deduct it from the next shopping trip? I never have been able to figure out how people count these in their totals. Sorry, it is a bit confusing.
ReplyDeleteSonyaAnn,
ReplyDeleteWalgreens can be confusing. But if you remember that you must have at least an equal number of items to coupons used in a transaction. The harder part is remembering what company generated a particular RR, so you don't try to use it to pay for a different item in the following weeks from the same company. That's where people slip up(I've slipped up too)and lose out on getting the new RR for the new purchase. Most RRs have the company's name that generated it on it somewhere. If that name is unfamiliar to me, I'll mark lightly in pencil on the RR what I bought or the brand name of the product to remind me next week what I can't use it on. If you keep the transactions small and write down what you are planning on doing before you go in the store, even a newbie at it will do fine!
At Walgreens it's possible to do the same deals infinitely(in separate trasactions of course) because they don't track who is doing them. CVS OTOH, uses the loyalty card so you are VERY limited in the # of times you can do the same deal. But at CVS, it doesn't matter what company generated the Extra Care Bucks so that's why people say CVS is easier....less braincells involved.lol
In my shopping trip recounts, I count the RRs when I use them, like a coupon. I keep track of what is received in RRs there too but for total purposes they go under coupons for me. I know some people will have an out of pocket of say $8, but if they get RRs, they deduct what they got, say $6in RRs from that $8 & call it $2 OOP. I count them at the back end(when spent), not the front end(when received)in my totals. Everyone does it differently and you just have to do what you think works for you.
Hope this helps!