Saturday, March 06, 2010

March grocery challenge - update 1

This month, I'm trying to beat our average monthly grocery bill of $850 through "strategic shopping." I said I would keep you posted, so here's the first report.

This week we spent $213.66 on groceries and household items; according to our receipts, we saved $16.12 using coupons. (That savings doesn't include what we saved buying stuff on sale.)

At first I was pretty disappointed with that result, since obviously it's on track to hit our average monthly grocery bill. But then Starling pointed out that we do have a lot more food in the house -- probably a good two weeks' worth, as opposed to just a week. So we will see whether things even out down the road.

I know that we've been getting some good deals on stuff we use regularly:
  • 24 cents for a 4 oz tube of Colgate toothpaste (reg. 2.99)
  • $3.49 for a bottle of olive oil (reg $5.99)
  • chicken quarters (leg and thigh) for 49 cents a pound; bone-in chicken breasts for 99 cents a pound
  • peanut butter for $1.29 (stocked up - regularly at least $2.09)
  • $1.50 on a couple boxes of Post cereal
  • 8 lbs of oranges for 50 cents a pound
  • 10 lbs of potatoes at 20 cents a pound

And I've continued to record all our prices in our price book. Seeing the wide variation in prices on so many items has been eye-opening -- a 50 percent variation is not unusual. We'll check in again next week.

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