i did it! my first cash-only grocery trip

I did it! I think I mentioned that above... I went grocery shopping with cash. This is probably the first time I’ve intentionally gone to the store with just cash since my credit cards days began at age 17.

I started by breaking out food budget down by day. We have a monthly amount of $240 for food. I considered just doing weeks, but then that leaves 3 days left out to dry at the end of the month. In a month of 31 days that comes to $7.74/day for a family of 5. Now to some people (like Tara) that might not seem steep but I just took it as a challenge (that I expected to fail).

I planned to shop for 9 days of the month with the 1^st already past. That left me with a budget of $69.68. I can do that.

I sat down with the sales papers and theobsessiveshopper.com. I wrote down all the great deals, where they were located and their price. Then I got out some cook books and made a plan of meals based off of the ingredients on sale this week. Plus Kraft Mac-n-Cheese, a special request from Katie. Done and ready to go to the store.

Then Aaron came home. The man was supposed to bring treats to class so he went and purchased a few things. There went $15 and bought me a yummy milk shake he’s wanted to get me for a while. There went $4. So I’m down to $51. ::grumble grumble::

Lesson number one: your family has 2 adults in it that can spend money.

Aaron was home today so he watched a sleeping Joel while the other ladies and I headed to Wally World. Over all, it was a nice experience. Clare slept basically the entire trip and Katie was quiet. Had either of them been a distraction, it would have been much less pleasant. At check out I totaled $42.02. I knew I needed to leave some left over in order to have some wiggle room in case something comes up before next Friday’s trip.

I won’t share my shopping list with you, but let’s focus in on a few things.

Salmon. One of our local stores was selling salmon for $2.99/lbs Best price I’ve seen in over a year. Walmart prices matches. So I pick up 2- 1 lbs bags. We’ll only use one tonight and I’ll add the second to our frozen food storage. This is the type of thing I would normally purchase several more of. So far, I’m not lamenting it because I knew I only had so much on me and a goal (and a blog to hold me accountable) but come the time after next when I want fish… you’ll hear it. I’ll wail that loud.

Leeks. Well, at 2.48/lbs, when I need 2? That’s not gonna happen. Potato and leek soup is off the menu.

I did get some tea for sore throats that was a splurge. Yet I still had money left over.

Now in the spirit of full disclosure during this experiment, we do use WIC. With WIC I can only get certain things so if we didn’t have WIC and I needed to come up with baby food, it wouldn’t cost as much as it did today… but WIC paid for it today and they only have certain items they cover. That being said, milk, tuna, lentils, baby food, and goat milk were covered by the Utah tax payers today (thank you, we really do appreciate it and you can send any hate mail to my email). So I did not count them in my budget or my total.

Lesson two: I only really plan for dinners. Breakfast and lunch are generally covered by WIC and leftovers.

Lesson three: making our own bread is making a financial difference. Since I refuse to do it in the summer, we all better pray Aaron has a job by then.

Lesson four: I haven't redone our food budget in forever. I don't know how much we actually consume. Sometimes I throw in toiletries and such which throw the whole month off. Today, I purchased soap and detergent separately (sorry check out guy).

Conclusion: I might be able to do this… if I can keep myself out of the store for the rest of the week.