May Budget Results......Food and Toiletries Spending

Here are my FOOD BUDGET spending totals for MAY 2011.

I have posted May's totals on the right side bar under Total Grocery Savings for 2011 and updated the Yearly Totals.
I am listing subtotals for each store I purchased from in May.  If you aren't interested in that much detail, just skip to the bottom for the Totals Summary.

My spending includes Food, Toiletries/HBA, Pet Supplies, Cleaning Products, Paper Goods & tax where applicable.We are a family of 5(4 at home this month)& 2 dogs. No kids under 15.
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CARONE'S(small local independent store)
OOP  $102.08

Qs/Ads  $89.40
Value  $191.48
Savings  46.69%

CVS
OOP  $.99
Qs/Ads $3.49
Value  $4.48
Savings  78%

DOLLAR TREE
OOP  $2.00
Value  $3.98
Savings  49.75%

GERRITY'S
OOP  $32.30
Qs/Ads $44.22
Value  $76.52
Savings  57.80%

KEYCO(restaurant supply store)
OOP  $37.80

Value  $70.36
Savings  46.28%

REDNER'S
OOP  $34.39
Qs/Ads $18.53
Value  $52.92
Savings  35%

RITE AID
OOP  $10.77 (whole amount put on free Rite-Aid Gift Cards)=$.00 actual OOP
Qs/Ads/+Ups  $729.89
Value  $740.66
Savings  98.55% before gift cards/ 100% savings after free gift cards

WEIS (local chain Grocery store that doesn't take IP Qs in my town/doubles up to $1 total)
OOP  $230.70
Qs/Ads  $274.24
Value  $504.94
Savings   54.31% & ended the month with $12 in Catalina Qs

I don't track Rite-Aid's +Ups here, nor CVS's ECBs & Walgreen's RRs. They will be included when used on purchases under "Coupons".   I'll keep track of what rebates are received monthly.  Rebate money/gift cards will be considered 'income' & will go into the Food/Toiletries budget, offsetting the Out of Pocket. Cash will go immediately into the Budget kitty, while Gift Cards will be calculated in when spent.

REBATE CHECKS RECEIVED IN MAY

Phillips Toothbrush....$10.00
Pinecone Research....$6.00
Rite-Aid SCR...$59.96
Subtotal........$75.96

GIFT CARDS and CERTIFICATES

Walmart Gift Card(from Giveaway)....$15.00

Subtotal....$15.00

TOTAL Value of Cash/Store Checks/Gift Card Rebates Received...$90.96

COUPONS and FREEBIES

Cottonelle....Free Item Q
Hard Rock Hotel...Water Bottle(from giveaway)
Suave....Free Item Q
Vocal Point....Cereal sample and Qs

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My best 3 Store Savings Totals were from Rite-Aid at 100%,  CVS at 78% and Gerrity's at 57.80%.  I shopped at 8 stores in May.


TOTAL Out of Pocket...............................$440.26
TOTAL Coupons & Store Sales Savings...$1,205.08
TOTAL Value of Items Purchased............$1,645.34 with Rite-Aid figured in
TOTAL Savings of...................................73.25%

TOTAL of CASH Rebates........................$75.96

TOTAL Out of Pocket After Rebates........$364.30
TOTAL Savings including Rebates...........$1,281.04
TOTAL Value of Items Purchased............$1,645.34
TOTAL Savings After Rebates...................77.86%

Since my Rite-Aid shopping(which contains No OOP)always skews my savings percentages, I like to figure my Totals without the Rite-Aid numbers also.
TOTAL OOP after Rebates.....$364.30
TOTAL Value of Items Purchases(w/out Rite-Aid items)....$904.68
TOTAL Savings After Rebates(w/out Rite-Aid items).....59.74%
My food savings percentage seems to run about 50%-60% for the strictly food items only.
Those Rite-Aid purchases always boost up my savings total about 20% points.

This closes out the May spending.

THOUGHTS & COMMENTS for this month-
Obviously I went way over my $250 budgeted amount for food spending in May, even with the rebate checks added to my budget. I did the Weis Catalina deals as planned and stocked up at the restaurant supply store.  Plus some buying ahead for the graduation party in June(hamburger patties, chips, soda).

What's ahead for June.....
The relatives begin showing up on Sunday for the graduation.  I'll have more party buying to do and I'll be using lots from the freezer otherwise to feed them all.  The back end of the month will only have Hubs and I here to prepare meals for, so low spending those weeks will help balance the food budget out this month and I should be able to stay within or close to my self-imposed $250 limit.


How did you do in May with your Food Budget?
What are your challenges for June?  Any family coming to stay....or are you trying to figure out a food budget for a vacation?
Please leave a comment or link to your post and let us hear about your progress!  By sharing our struggles and efforts we can help each other stick to our budgets and learn to be better guardians of our resources.


Sluggy

I am So Embarrassed!.....I Have IAAA Syndrome

First some pretty flowers from the yard......

I have to confess that I am so embarrassed this morning!

Last night was the National Honor Society shindig at the high school.
You know, the night all the Type A, Overachiever Kids get together in the school auditorium and parade around for their Overcompensating Parents while the Windbag School Administrators talk on and on, having fun listening to themselves give speeches.

Can you tell I am not a fan of these type events? ;-)  Especially after going through this 2 years previous for this particular child.....

Anyway, Hubs, being out of town, meant I got to sit through this by myself, surrounded by other adults, most of whom didn't want to be there either, after they got the keepsake photos snapped of their particular offspring.
I would share photos of this oh so proud moment of mine but as I've said many times before, the lighting on the stage of the school's auditorium SUCKS donkey butt!
They can spend 1 Million Dollars of my tax dollars on a Football Field but they can't screw in a couple more light bulbs over the stage.
But enough of that now, where was I....where was I?
Oh yes........

For all the Senior Inductees, they put a slide up on the wall which has their name, the college they are going to be attending including what major they have chosen and a few of their accomplishments, any awards and scholarships won.  The slide information is read aloud while the coresponding student walks across the stage to receive their NHS medal.

I noticed that every single student was going to college.  I guess that is to be expected from this bunch, huh?lol
A few other factoids....
Only 4 of the 52 Seniors are going out of state.  There where many future Penn State and Pitt students among the number, but the vast majority of them were slated to go to schools in our community.....the "baby" Penns, the private schools of Wilkes U. & Kings College, Misericordia and Marywood, along with a slew of matriculates for the local Community College.  There were only 4 or 5 other grads besides my daughter going to attend one of the 14 affiliated state schools and no one else in this group will be attending her particular school of those 14 universities.
For some reason, this makes Daughter very happy.....
She does well in school but she is not a big fan of educational organizations either.   Sounds just like me, doesn't it?lol

Now for the embarrassing part--
As I was sitting outside waiting for Daughter to come pick me up with the car, a fellow parent couple started chit chatting with me.  He is a local businessman......he might be our insurance agent, I won't say.
We are making small talk like middle-class folks are want to do, and the subject gets to a certain part of the state, where #1 son attends college and this couple also use to live, regarding the brutal snowy winters in that area. 
And I am trying to bring up a story in my memory bank that someone told me about how the area next to that Great Lake, where this couple lived, gets less snow than the area further from the lake where #1 son lives away at school.  I am trying to remember who to attribute this story to and mistakenly say #1 son knows someone out there who told it to him originally.
Afterwords, after I've gotten into the car and we have driven a piece down the road, my brain kicks in and I realize that the person who had told me that story was the guy I was telling it to!
ACK. 
Most. Embarrassed. Ever.

Ok, so I blame the painkillers I took beforehand so my knees could get me to the event....
and the totally unseasonal, blisteringly, muggy heat of the last week that has short circuited my brain......
and my usual menopausal, muddled thought process and lack of short term memory.

I. Am. An. Ass.

An ass with a bright daughter, but an ass all the same.....

Sluggy

Get Up and Dance!

Here's something to get you over Hump Day.
This is one of my favorite renditions of this song.
Love this song.....

Sluggy

What Passes for My Life Lately......Pretty Boring Stuff Ahead

I use to have a travel mug back when I was a student doing summer stock theater jobs.
The mug had a little man standing in a vise with the caption, "Oy! The pressure."
I wish I could find a photo of it online to share with you all.

That mug was sooo apropos during that time of my life.
And I sure wish I had that mug for THIS part of my life too!

Firstly, I am slowly feeling better.  Besides leaving me with very colorful bruises, that accident knocked alot more out of me than I had thought previously.....or it could just be that I didn't take the time to slow down long enough to recover fully.  Yah, it's probably the latter.
Here are some awesome photos of parts of me I took late last week......if you are squeamish, scroll past them.
First my shoulder....how many colors can you see?lol

Then my leg.....

The bruise started on the left side and capillaries under the skin burst and spread that lovely rosy hue all the way across my leg.

And lets not leave out my knee, the left one.....

I didn't even see it for a week since it was on the side.  I wondered why my knee hurt....duh!lol

Everything is fading away as of this morning and I should not look like a domestic violence victim much longer. 8-)

Here is a photo from the French Honor Society ceremony.  The lighting is atrocious in our auditorium on the stage area but passable on the apron(or front of the stage area).
Daughter is the VP of the French Club so she and her buddy who is the Prez of the FC had to read stuff en francais during the ceremony.
Daughter is the dark blurry one on the right in the photo....

Here is the whole group of inductees on the stage apron.......

Daughter is 2nd from right end in the front.
#2 son who was inducted into the Society for the first time is on the far left in the white shirt.

Félicitations!

Tomorrow is the National Honor Society ceremony so I'll hobble back to the school to see Daughter go through that ceremony for the third time.

On Friday I got to drive across PA to take #1 son to the camp where he works for the summer.
His girlfriend met us part way so I didn't have to drive the full 5+ hours there and back again.
I also got to finally meet her.  We had a nice lunch and then I got back on the road for the trip home.
I did snap this shot of them both before I took off....

Saturday and Sunday were spent cleaning out.  It was beastly hot here(even hotter today!)so Hubs put the A/C units in.  Since the weather and my body(the day after the accident)didn't cooperate last week, the garage sale didn't happen.  I had #1 son put all the spare toiletries put in the living room to sort and price for the garage sale.  Since the sale didn't happen yet, we moved all the toiletry boxes into the now cleaned out garage because family will be showing up beginning this Sunday for the Graduation festivities and we need the living room cleared out for sleeping accommodations. So we moved all those boxes into the garage....

And I've begun organizing and putting things up on the shelves already.  I counted 20 boxes of spare toiletries......good gosh!
Still no idea when this garage sale will happen but it HAS TO so I can reclaim my garage!!lol

We cleared out a flower bed on Sunday....

Here's Daughter hacking off branches on a tree we were removing.  There were 3 trees that took root in there the past few years and started growing.  Those 2 rhododendron bushes were half the size when we moved here.  Not only have they taken over the flower bed, there is a little fir tree to the left and back of the bush on the left that has been overtaken.  We took down the 3 trees, trimmed back the rhodo. on the left and took out the rhodo. bush on the right. 
We still have more work to do in there(like digging out the stumps and moving the little fir tree to a different spot)but that will wait until school lets out and #2 son can do the grunt work.

Monday we did what most red-blooded Americans do on national holidays.....we went shopping. ;-)
Daughter needed some more new clothes and Hubs needed to replace some dress pants for work so we hit a few sales.  Then we got Chinese for lunch and headed home.  It was a good day to be in a/c'ed stores since it hit a muggy 87 yesterday. 

So that pretty much catches you up on the Life 'o Sluggy.

What was your weekend like?  Any exciting goings on?

Sluggy

End of the Week at Rite-Aid & Monthly Totals There for May

*I am done for May shopping at Rite-Aid, so skip down and check out my Totals for the month!*

So Hubs and I went up to Rite-Aid on Friday evening to burn some expiring +Ups....

I bought 3 12-packs of Coke, a 12 pack of Cottonelle TP and a single serve pack of PB crackers as a filler item(so I could use my +Ups and not spend more down on my gift card).

The total came to $16.37(I had NO Qs! the horror!!).
I used $16 in expiring +Ups and put the .37¢ on my Rite-Aid gift card.
I received $3 back in +Up Rewards($1 for the TP and $2 for the Cokes).

Then Saturday I had errands to run so Daughter and I stopped off at Rite-Aid to finish off the Allergy & Weekend Warrior +Ups Deals, since the Allergy one ended on Saturday 5/28.

I bought....
2 bags of Hall's drops w/my 20% discount they were $2.15 each, so $4.30*These got me the $5 Allergy +Up.
1 Lamasil gel on sale for $8.99.  It had a $2 Peelie Q on it and I had a $2 IPQ, so $4.99 after Qs.
1 Bengay w/my 20% discount was $7.19.  I had the $2 in-ad Q and a $3 IPQ, so $2.19after Qs.
I Bengay w/my 20% discount was $7.59.  I had another set of $5 in Qs, so $2.59.
2 20 oz. Cokes *not pictured* w/my 20% discount were $2.70 total.  I had a $1/2 coke IPQ, so $1.70 for both...we were thirsty. ;-)

Take another $5 off(a $3/$15 Survey Q and 2 Wellness $1 off any purchase AdPerk/VV Q) and my subtotal was $10.77.
I used $10 in +Ups and put the .77¢ on my Rite-Aid gift card.
I received back $6 in +Up Rewards($5 for Allergy Deal, $1 Lamasil).
I did NOT get the $10 Weekend Warrior +Ups because one of the Bengays did NOT qualify!
Ugh. ugh. ugh.
All was not lost however, because I qualified for the $5 SCR #19(Lamasil), so after SCRs and +Ups I got back $11 even without the WkndWarior +Up Reward.

So it was off to another Rite-Aid to find a tube of Bengay or something else to spend that last $2.02 I needed to make the $25 spent threshold for the $10 +Ups.

The green tube at the bottom of the photo is what we found and bought. 8-)
$4.39 with discount, take the In-ad $2 Q off and the total was $2.39.(I had no more $3 IPQ dangit!)
I used $2 +Ups to pay and put the .39¢ on the trusty ol' gift card.
And the $10 Wknd Warrior +Ups spit out of the register....yay!


THESE TRIPS
Number of Transactions.....3
Total Spent....$1.53 (put on free Rite-Aid gift card)
Value of Items....$74.87
SCR qualified for...$5.00
Other Rebates earned...$0.00
Gift Cards earned....$0.00
+Up Rewards earned...$19.00
+Up Rewards spent.....$28.00
+Up Rewards left to spend.....$51.00  And I have $44.71 left on my gift card.

So with the $5 SCR added on, I am 'down' $4 for these transactions.


***Rite-Aid GRAND TOTALS--MAY Rebate Period***

Number of Transactions......22
Total Spent....$11.25 put on free Gift Cards/Certificates so ZERO OOP
Value of Items purchased....$947.79
SCR qualified for....$21.00
Other Cash....$0.00
Additional Rebates....$0.00
Additional Non-Cash Rewards....$0.00

+UPS Totals for May SCR period
+Up Rewards carryover from 5/25.....$60.00
+Up Rewards spent....$131.52
+Up Rewards earned....$131.52
**I've earned the same amount as I've spent in +Ups at this point in May.lol
+Up Rewards left....$51.00  includes ALL +Ups not just ones from this SCR period





So I spent $11.25 in FREE gift card money and took home $947.79 worth of stuff in May at Rite-Aid.
Plus I'll be getting a rebate check for $21.00 later next month from them and I have $51.00 in +Ups to spend going forward.

What is NOT to like about this system?!?!



Sluggy