Ramblings of a Mom Surviving Her Crazy Life

New York Chica



Do You Always Shop Within Your Budget? 13

Posted on March 28, 2010 by Lisa

I often wonder if I’m the only person that always, without fail, go over my budget when it comes to food shopping. I don’t know what it is.

I think I’m doing it right.  Before I leave my house, I always start off with a list. I go in the pantry and see what’s missing and I do the same in the refrigerator.  I leave with cash in my purse (it saves me more money, in my opinion), my coupons and my list.

Once I’m at the store, I try to stay on track with what’s on my list.

That doesn’t always happens though.  What ends up happening is that I find myself looking around too much.  It’s not my fault. I can’t help it.  Especially when I see extra virgin olive oil on sale and NOT on my list, I HAVE to get it. Who can pass up a great sale on extra virgin oilve oil? That stuff is like liquid gold if you ask me.

But seriously, sometimes I even have to put stuff back (that’s so embarrassing) because I didn’t listen to my husband when he said to make sure I have back up money and take my debit card. I always say, no, that’s ok, this time I know I’ll stay within my budget and when I get home, he always tells me I told you so but you never want to listen.

Yea, he’s right but I won’t tell him. ;)

Well, today I went over-budget. I was at my local Bj’s Wholesale Club store and I had a budget of $100.  In my opinion, you can EASILY spend at least $200 in that store but I only went in to get a few things for the week – Such as cold cuts, bread, chips, milk, bread and eggs.

When I got there, I remembered I had to buy some car oil for my husband’s truck and decaf coffee for my keurig brewer (gotta have my decaf b/c of my damn thyroid!).  Those two items alone costs about $55. That is more then half of my budget right there.  I carefully chose the items that I needed and the total came up to $127.83.  Ok, it wasn’t that bad but it still went over.

Thank goodness I brought about $140 so I wasn’t embarrassed because I had to leave some items in the store.

I know there must be a better solution to this madness.  Maybe I should take a second look at my pantry and dig a bit deeper and find out what’s really missing.  I should also check out the circulars before I go so that I can make sure it doesn’t happen again.

What do you think?

Do you go through this madness too? (Please tell me yes!)

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