The Grocery Game Challenge Sept 3-9,2012 Back to School!
Well today is the day all the student’s head back to school in Ontario for another fun-filled year. I’m sure many of the kids have already started a 2013 Summer Break Countdown. Most of all, no more babysitting costs for those parents that work and have to pay someone to look after their kids during the summer holidays. They can save some money in the budget but if you know you will be paying for a babysitter each year you can start saving now as a projected expense for next year.
One of our readers sent her kids off with a smile this morning yet the kids frowned the loss of fun-filled days doing nothing but hanging out with their friends. Of course kids just don’t know how easy they have it, do they. How many times do we think to ourselves “why was I in such a rush to grow up”.
Last month with our young of town guests staying with us we saw a rise in our grocery budget. We can only imagine what other families go through having to buy or make snacks for the kiddies. This month Mrs.CBB and I aim to keep the budget under our $190.00 to try and balance out the overage from last month. Although that might take a few months of diligent shopping we will do our best to stick to the budget.
I’m always amazed at how well each of us shop and what we find for deals and specials in the grocery stores. I also must say I am proud of all of us who post our shops and take the time to invest in our own finances. By posting our shops we know exactly what we are spending our money on in the grocery store. If I wasn’t posting our shop I’m betting we would be very tempted to buy more than we needed. Just like all of you who think I am watching your shops, I know you are watching ours and will help us when needed. We all need a push once in a while.
I thought it would be a great time to show you our figures for the year as a mid-year follow-up although we are past the mid-year mark. Next year I will aim for June or July to do a Yearly Grocery Budget Update with total for the year and coupons used to date.
Here is where we are at so far as of August 2012
- Total Grocery Budget to Date Should Be : $190 x 8 (months) =$1520
- Total Groceries purchased to Date: $1966.73-1520.00=$446.73 over budget for the year.
If you have followed along you will notice that I didn’t start the challenge until February and in January we were over our $190 budget. I think that’s what sparked my interest in posting our shops. We needed to get that budget under control. Other than a big overspend in April we did well from that point forward. I think having more players join the game has helped motivate us to stick to our budget. One other error was when we forgot to add a receipt in so we overspent for the month. Well there you have it folks, now let’s see if we can stick to it until the end of 2012.
- Total Coupons Used to Date:$1932.76
Wow, we have saved almost 50% off our groceries for the year. A far stretch from last years almost $6k we used in coupons so that tells us we have our budget under control in comparison to last years figures. We were using coupons but buying too much using coupons and not using the products. There is only so much food 2 people can consume. We ended up donating plenty of food which is fine but overspending just because we had coupons and the product was $1.00 instead of $2.00 was not good. We needed to stop justifying and start meal planning and sticking to it.
Do you know your totals to date? Share them with us so we can all see how well we have done or where we need to improve. Coming soon will be our monthly expense spreadsheet so you can see how we document our coupons and expenses for the month.
Here are your weekly coupon match-ups August 31-September 6, 2012 from Save Big Live Better. Big Thanks to Julia for doing this each week!
This Weeks Grocery Expenses
We didn’t spend a lot this week to be honest as there really isn’t much we need to purchase. This week might as well our no-shop week or a half-no-shop-week, now I’m making things up, bad Mr.CBB.
Shoppers Drug Mart
- 2x Nielson Cream Sale $0.99
- 1x Milk 4L $4.29
- 1x Dempsters Bread Sale $1.99-$1.00 coupon
Total Coupons Used $1.00
Total Out of Pocket $7.26
Weekly Grocery Game Challenge Results for Mr. and Mrs. CBB
- Total Grocery Budget for the Month: $190.00
- Total Coupons Used this Week $1.00
- Total Spent This Week $7.26
- Total Spent So Far for September $7.26+
- Total Overspend for the month of September $0
Congratulations to our Random WINNER of August’s Grocery Game Challenge….Ballot#12 Joanna C!!!
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Here are The Grocery Game Challenge Rules– You can start any time of the month and post all month-long even if your weeks don’t coincide with mine. It’s all about tracking!
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Related articles
- Taking My Life Back While Getting Fit On A Budget! (canadianbudgetbinder.com)
- The Grocery Game Challenge Aug 20-Aug 26, 2012~Stick To The Grocery Budget! (canadianbudgetbinder.com)
- Reader Question: Meal Planning For The Budget (canadianbudgetbinder.com)
