September shopping recap.

I started this blog yesterday because I had just finished my two big monthly shopping days:

-          Safeway discount day (10% off everything)

-          Nutter’s Power Wednesday (20% off everything)

I actually did pretty well. At Safeway I spent only $374.55. I swapped out a few brands in favour of less expensive ones on things that I buy out of habit. I also made sure that if it wasn’t on sale, and wasn’t ‘urgent’ that I didn’t buy it. I also explored the world of ‘rain checks’. I’ve never gotten one of those before and it’s cool that now I will be able to pick up the sale item they were out of sometime in the next 90 days. The plan is to pick it up next month so I can double the discount. 

At Nutter’s today I didn’t do as well. Nutter’s is where I purchase my gluten free items and our supplements. I spent $180.12.

I bought a round of sausage from a local Hutterite lady for $20. AMAZING sausage. It will last us 3 or 4 meals.

On groceries so far this month I have already spent $574.67. I still want to hit the fruit truck (BC Peaches!) and I’ll need to use my rain check for Miracle Whip before discount day as we are pretty much out.

Since Mr. Amazing and I had decided to start this project during our budget meeting last week, I’ve only got $600 for the grocery category. Meaning I’ve got only $25.33 left for the remainder of the month.

So two tasks for the next three weeks:

1.       What can I do to make that $25.33 last to October?

2.       What can I do differently next month so I have more money left to make it through the rest of the month?

Since Nutter’s was the place I wasn’t able to cut back, lets’ start there.

I bought:

Fusilli corn pasta - $3.99

Rizopia Fusilli - $3.29

Rizopia Elbows - $3.29 x 2

Udi’s white sandwich bread - $7.99 x 3

Double chocolate muffins pack of 4 - $9.99

Ceasar’s G/F microwave pasta dishes - $9.99 x 3

Borage oil - $38.99

Estro sense - $64.99

Vitex - $14.99 x 2

We are feeding the whole family the GF (gluten free) pasta instead of making two different kinds all the time.  It’s more expensive but there is less waste and it’s more efficient.

The sandwich bread has been advertised as available at Safeway, but I haven’t seen it yet. I’ll have to watch for that.

The two biggies I can eliminate are the chocolate muffins and the microwave pasta meals. They are amazingly tasty. But I can bake GF muffins at home from a mix for less. Four muffins for $10 is an extravagance. The mix is $4.99 and I’m sure I’ll get more then 4 muffins out of it. So I need to experiment with that a little. That’s an easy fix.

The pasta ? Well . . . on Thursdays I work from 9:30 am to 9pm. I eat both lunch and supper at the store. My habit so far has been that if the store is having a great week I let the store buy me takeout. A hugely bad habit as there isn’t much in takeout that’s GF. So I either break my diet or spent $15 - $20 on takeout that is GF (the Korean place does Bento boxes I love and the Vietnamese restaurant down the street has a wonderful hot and sour soup).  The other thing I’ve been eating are these GF pasta dishes I get from Nutter’s. But at $9.99 each that’s not much cheaper.  So realistically, the only solution is to cook extra of whatever we are eating on Wednesday and bring it for supper on Thursday.  We’ll have to invest in some more microwaveable Tupperware containers but that will be worth it I think.

The third option is to research if there are other places in Swift Current I can get my supplements and what the prices are. At $133.96/m plus tax that’s a big expense to just make each month.

Any other suggestions?