Food & Toiletries Spending.....November Totals Update

Not that having to write THIS POST did anything to lower my blood pressure after yesterday's rant but some days it's the best one can do. ;-)
Onward to November's food spending report.......

Here are my FOOD BUDGET spending totals for NOVEMBER 2013.

I have posted November's totals on the Total Grocery Savings for 2013 Page located HERE and have updated the Yearly Totals there.
I am listing subtotals for each store I purchased from in November.  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(3 at home this month)& 2 dogs. No kids under 17.
******************

BIG LOTS
OOP  $25.50
Value  $53.50
Savings  52.33%

BREAD OUTLET
OOP  $20.89
Value  $77.53
Savings  73.06%

OLLIE'S
OOP  $82.73
Value  $158.58
Savings  47.83%

REDNER'S
OOP  $18.91
Qs/Ads  $9.54
Value  28.45
Savings  33.53%

RITE-AID
OOP  $14.74
Qs/Ads/+Ups  $382.77
Value  $397.51
Savings  96.30%
 

SHURSAVE STORES(small local independent affiliated stores)
OOP  $227.91

Qs/Ads  $

Value  $386.19

Savings  40.98%

WEIS MARKETS

OOP  $192.10

Qs/Ads  $

Value  $384.27

Savings  50%

I am no longer adding my rebates received into my food budget directly. I will use them on food on occasion and will note that when used.  I will keep track of rebates/gift cards/certs received here as before however.

REBATE CHECKS RECEIVED IN October.....$0.00

GIFT CARDS and CERTIFICATES....$0

TOTAL Value of Cash/Store Checks/Gift Card Rebates Received...$0.00

COUPONS and FREEBIES

Zero

*********************
My best 3 Store Savings Totals were Rite-Aid at 96.30%, The Bread Outlet at 73.06% and Big Lots at 52.33%.  I shopped at 7 different stores this past month.

TOTAL Out of Pocket........$582.78

TOTAL Coupons & Store Sales Savings...$903.25

TOTAL Value of Items Purchased............$1,486.03

TOTAL Savings of...................................60.78%

This closes out the November food/toiletries spending.

THOUGHTS & COMMENTS for this month.....

I went into November with my usual $400 budgeted for food/toiletries purchases.
I went over by $182.78. 
Yikes!
Now this will only be ok if I can lower my food spending in December accordingly by about $180ish.
Spend more in November?.....spend that much less in December.

As you can see my Savings Rate skyrocketed in November for the 40's to the 60's, because of my Rite-Aid shopping.
Without the Rite-Aid totals added in, my November Savings Rate is 48% which is more in line with my track record this year.  Add in Rite-Aid totals and my overall Savings Rate is 60.78%.

You will notice though, Rite-Aid shopping aside, that my savings rates in November were REALLY good!  My lowest rate was 33.53%.  Some months 33% is my best savings rate! lol  I got some really really great deals on prices in November so I am NOT going to whine about overspending too much. 8-)
 

Looking ahead to December---We are not holding a big Christmas gathering here so we won't be having much extra food spending.  And if I can keep from buying a Prime Rib Roast like I did last year, the Christmas food spending shouldn't get out of hand.  We will be doing our traditional Christmas Even dinner out but that cost comes out of the Christmas budget. 
To get to the spending threshold to earn the Thanksgiving Gift Certificate in November I have stocked up on quite a few items I won't have to spend on in December.  I am going to try to eat from the stockpile this month and keep Food Spending in December to between $250-$300. 

 

And here is the run down of my Food & Toiletries Spending for 2013 so far this year--
 

2013 Total Saved $3,426.65

2013 Yearly Total Value of Items  $7,702.36

2013 Yearly Total Spent $4,275.71

2013 Yearly Savings Total of  44.49%

 

In November, total savings percentage for the year has gone UP 3.89% over October's year-to-date total of 40.60%, to 44.49%. 
Holding steady in the mid 40%s with one more month of food spending to go.  I would be very happy to end the year with a savings rate in the 40's.

The average monthly food/toiletries spending so far this year stands at $388.70.
Let's see if I can keep the average monthly spending below $400 for the year after December is done.

 

How much did you spend on food in November?
 

Sluggy

I Just Give Up Already!

*****WARNING-Bad Word Rant!  DO NOT open this Post around your children!!*****

After sitting here for 2 hours I am throwing in the towel!
I dug out some Christmasy mailing address labels to print up from the boxes of Christmas stuff #2 Son brought down for me from the laundry room storage and decided to print up the 4 sheets into pretty labels for my Christmas cards.
Well.....or so I thought!

2 Hours later after downloading this and downloading that......then not being able to open this or that, so downloading something to open that other something....then finding out WINDOWS 8 Can SUCK my DICK......then getting up from the machine to go cool off and actually make progress at SOMETHING today......then coming back supposedly refreshed to try, try again.......then back to downloading and deleting this and that......then running a security scan or five hundred........then off to another website......and then all the downloads turned into something else I can't open......then off to the Windows App Store to actually break down and BUY something that will help me....hahahaha.....then that won't download or was it that my payment didn't go through, who the HELL knows! anything except that WINDOWS 8 Can SUCK my DICK!......then imagining myself taking a sledgehammer to this blasted machine........then letting a few choice words fly that woke up the dog and hence, she began to beg for attention and food......so off I go again to cool off and throw stuff into a bin to haul off to Salvation Army until it's full and I've regained some composure......then taking a drink(non-adult beverage variety though I could REALLY use a stiff one about oh, an hour ago!)and resuming the attempt to make mailing labels on a machine running WINDOWS 8 which in my opinion can SUCK my DICK!......and more of the same as before, rinse and repeat.....until I could feel my blood pressure zooming into "infinity and beyond"......and then this old gal threw in the towel and put these blasted labels into the Salvation Army pile for someone else to get them and drive themselves stark raving MAD dealing with it.

And that my friends is how to waste 2 hours of your life because you've got a stoopid Windows laden computer with WINDOWS 8 which is only good for DICK SUCKING.
And that will be why, if you receive a Christmas card from me there will be NO pretty Christmasy return address labels slapped onto the envelope and I will be recovering from a bad case of writer's cramp for the next week or so.


Did I mention yet that WINDOWS 8 CAN SUCK my DICK!?!?!?

Sluggy

Things I Did Last Week That Were Frugal

Well let's see....

Usually I stick pretty close to a meal plan but last week(Thanksgiving Week)I didn't even DO a plan ahead so I can't even put that down. lol

1.  Our den sofa was a wreck.  Cracked, springs gone and fabric ripped all to heck. Plus the Chihuahua use to like to LICK it so you know it smelled really bad. ;-)
We have needed to replace it for ages.  The Sunday before Thanksgiving I got a special coupon from K-Mart online offering me some really good deals plus an additional discount on some items.  And one of those items was furniture.
Now I wouldn't normally even look at K-Mart to purchase furniture but I started playing around with the online shopping cart and coupons to see what price I could get something down to.
And here is what we set up in the den on Monday evening to replace our sad sofa........

Matching His & Her rocker recliners! lol
We had been discussing just getting a pair of recliners once we pitched the sofa.  After all, we hardly ever have enough people sitting in our house together to warrant buying another big bulky sofa.  This den is quite small so these fit much better and are more comfortable.

These are $279.99 recliners.
And I paid(after discounts, coupons & K-Mart "Shop your Way" points)$302.43 for Both.
So I got them for almost half price.

We went to K-Mart on Sunday to check them out in person(because I would never buy something like this online without testing it out),came home and bought them online with an in-store pick-up.

Before I get bashed for spending crazy amounts of cash(well, for me $300 IS crazy amounts of cash!lol), let me say this--I realize that just keeping what you already have and making do is preferable to spending money on new stuff, but at some point, you do have to breakdown and buy things....as long as you have the money saved up for the purchase.
We try to not-spend until things get to that point.  We also do a good amount of research and comparison shopping before pulling the trigger on a purchase.  Buying on impulse is deadly to your financial health, even if you do have gobs of spare money laying around.  Keep being impulsive and pretty soon those gobs of money are gone. 8-))

2.  Held off buying many toiletries/HBA this year until the Black Friday sales hit at Rite-Aid.  Looking at my spending log I did NO Rite-Aid shopping between March and September of this year.  We have been using up the stockpile of toiletries/many paper goods/HBA/etc. I had gotten at R-A in the last year or two.  There was a tiny bit of Rite-Aid shopping in Jan., Feb. and Oct. but I took full advantage of the sales this past week during Black Friday week to save the most on products I buy there.  In November I spent $14.74 at Rite-Aid and brought home items which would have cost me $397.51 if bought at regular retail.  I don't buy at regular retail but even with the everyday sale prices, I still saved a large sum over sales prices throughout the year versus deep discounts for Black Friday.  Plus shopping at Rite-Aid is NOTHING like braving the hoards at the mall and big dept. stores Black Friday weekend. 8-)

Now once I use up my +Up Rewards on things we need in the coming weeks, my Rite-Aid shopping will fade away into my usual infrequent trips.

3.  I converted spare cash sitting in an account earning basically nothing in interest into gift cards at places we need to spend--home improvement/hardware stores.  This is money that will need to be shelled out anyway over the course of next year for repair and maintenance of our home. (Last year's stack of gift cards went toward purchasing the bamboo flooring we had the handyman service put down in our living/dining room.)  By "spending" the cash now instead of next year, I got a benefit greater than the 5 pennies of interest earned from leaving the cash in a bank--I got +Up Rewards at Rite-Aid that are "money" toward toiletries/HBAs purchased in that store.

4.  I needed to refill 3 prescriptions so instead of having them filled where they were, I transferred them to the K-Mart pharmacy(since I was going there on Monday anyway to get the new chairs)and
received $75 in gift cards for my efforts.   These are meds that don't have any refills so I won't need to go back to K-Mart for further refills if I want to have the new prescriptions filled elsewhere.

5.  We downsized the number of dishes and amounts prepared for Thanksgiving.   Smaller turkey, less sides, that sort of thing.  It kept us from feeling like we HAD TO overeat to get through all that food and most of us only had 1 plate of food this time.  Less food made and bought, less money spent.

And you will be shocked, shocked I tell ya!, to know that the only Cyber Monday shopping I did yesterday was 4 items on Amazon--3 Christmas gifts and 1 book that #2 Son needed.  He told me he needed a certain music theory book so I went ahead and bought 3 gifts in that order to get the free shipping....3 gifts that would have been bought at some point in the coming week anyway.

And another 3 check marks go up on my gift completion list.
Yay!

I really need to sit down this week and make out that list on paper(it's been in my head so far and getting too large to keep there!lolol)and see where I am in regards to finishing all my gift shopping.

So what did you do that was frugal last week?


Sluggy





 

This Week on The Dining Table

The "Thanksgiving is over so who even wants to think about Food?!" Edition.......

 

   

Since I never even got around to posting the Weekly Menu last week or the "How we did sticking to the previous week's menu" discussion, let's just start fresh this week, ok?

 Here is what I remember from last week's menu/meals that we ate--
 

Sunday--Leftovers of some kind
Monday--Homemade Steak Chili, Baked Potatoes, Sugar Snap Peas
Tuesday--Corned Beef, Cabbage
Wednesday--Leftovers(Sloppy Joes, Corned Beef, Chili or "whatever you can find"
Thursday--Turkey, Stuffing, et al
Friday--Taco Bell
Saturday--Turkey Day Leftovers

As for food spending last week....
There were 2 trips to the store and I spent $24.35 on $87.81 worth of groceries at 2 different stores-the local grocer and a run for bread products for the month to the Bakery Outlet.  I did the numbers on Saturday and I have spent $182.78 OVER my $400 November food budget.  (Actually I spent MORE than that since I made two quick small grocery store runs Saturday evening before the stores closed as there were some good deals ending.  I've marked those trips down for Dec. spending as I had already closed out the Nov. spending in the book.)
Wow.....just wow......nothing else to say......

Leftovers going into this week--leftover rutabagas, glop, stuffing(no turkey tho!lol), roasted potatoes, corned beef, cabbage, chili.

Here's this week's meal plan---

Sunday--Stuffed Shells, Salad
Monday--Leftovers-Whatever you can find night and Roasted Asparagus
Tuesday--Leftover Stuffed Shells
Wednesday--Fried Chicken, Coleslaw, Green Beans, leftover stuffing
Thursday--Eating Out
Friday--Leftover Chili and Burritos
Saturday--no clue yet, maybe use a free Pizza coupon I have

Looks like this is the week Sluggy won't be cooking.....go me! lolz
I cooked a pot of sauce Sunday and made the stuffed shells so except for picking up fried chicken(not cooking it)and Burritos I have no cooking duties other than reheating leftovers.
Works for me to get a break in the kitchen. ;-)

What I need to purchase for this menu?......the Fried Chicken(it's a Wed. special at the grocery store, 8 pce. for $5)and Burritos on special this week.  I have a $10 Catalina to use at Weis this week so it will pay for the chicken on Wed. and part of the Burritos.

I got the asparagus already Sat. evening.(on one of those trips I am counting in Dec.'s spending)so very little should be spent this week on food/toiletries.  I am thinking $10-$20 and that much only if I find some instant meat markdowns on Wed. when I go to get the Chicken and Burritos I am buying.

After November's food overrun, I really want to keep December's food expenditures low.
I'll be posting my Nov. food spending totals in the next day or two.

What is getting fixed and served at your house this week?

Sluggy

"IT" Has Begun!

Was is "IT" you may ask?
It's the Christmas Season, of course!

On one of my four bazillion trips up to Rite-Aid this past weekend I noticed that by Saturday evening a large majority of homes I passed on the roads already had their Christmas lights hung and turned on.
WTF?

Is everyone an overachiever around here except me?!?

And speaking of overachievers......

As of Saturday's mail delivery we have received our 1st Christmas card of the season.

Who woulda thunk it, that Sonya Ann would be such an early mailer!?
Dare I call her a "premature mailer"?
bwwaaaahhhhh

I guess it would be REALLY bad form to mention that she spelled our name wrong, huh?  ;-)

So it's Dec. 2nd and I will now show y'all the entirety of my Christmas decorating efforts so far......Get ready for it.......

I put the Christmas vinyl tablecloth on the kitchen table.

Man!
Am I beat now....I might need to go lay down......

Sluggy