Category: Goals

Grocery Shopping Trips: 05.06.19

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Hello again!  I can’t believe that we are into May already.  I have no idea how we got here or what happened last week.  Do you feel the need to write down every single thing that happens each day, so that you can refer back to it?  Is it just me?

In Tracie’s weather updates:  The weather is glorious here in Virginia at the moment.  Soft evenings, with brisk mornings that you need a light jacket for, that segue into hot afternoons – that I avoid by not going outside – it’s lovely.  I want it to last….. but Liva and I bought cucumber, zucchini, and yellow pear tomato seeds yesterday and I am itching to get them into the ground.

I have been ordering more things than I normally do from Amazon to keep myself out of the grocery stores.  You’ll see below that I have a problem sticking to my list.  So when I discover that I need something, I check the price against what I’d pay for it at Wal-Mart and if it’s relatively close in price, I order it from Amazon.  Because A:  it gets brought to my front door and B:  I don’t end up spending $130 at Wal-Mart because I went in for $5.49 dishwasher cleaner.

This is a thing, BTW.  Dishwasher cleaner.  I’ve always used vinegar.  I can hear you rolling your eyes…. My three year old dishwasher has started leaving grit on anything that I put in the top rack.  We have done EVERYTHING to get it to stop.  We have taken the stupid thing apart – and by we I mean Denton – he cleaned out all of the filters, I have cleaned everything on it inside and out, including the arms which are all clean, I have run multiple empty cycles with bowls of straight vinegar, and it’s somewhat better, but not great.

After visiting with Mr. Google and the plethora of morons on the internet, I finally stumbled upon someone who said that that grit is there because dishwashing detergent doesn’t contain phosphate anymore and that I needed to run several cycles with a dishwasher cleaner.  Huh.  We’ll see if this helps.  And seriously.  You would not believe how many people have asked about this problem online and had some wiseguy respond back and say “You should use a rinse aid to get rid of those water spots”.  Really?  We aren’t trying to get rid of water spots, but if we were I’m sure that would be super helpful.  Thanks buddy.

All of that to say, here is what we spent on groceries last week:

Wal-Mart $7.85 on 05.01.19 | Food Lion $34.65 on 05.02.19 | Wal-Mart $85.93 on 05.06.19

Total spent for this week $128.43

January $740.71

February $631.00

March $689.00

April $405.44

May $128.43

And that’s it in the grocery haul department for our house.  Are you keeping up with your grocery spending this year?  Are you staying on track or do you just go with the flow?

Here are some ways I recoup part of my grocery budget each week:

ibotta | Checkout 51 | Receipt Hog | Walmart Savings Catcher | Fetch (referral code – QF4TJ)

Note: This post may contain affiliate links. Check out what that means to you here. 

 

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Grocery Shopping Trips: 04.29.19

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Hello again!  The world feels like it is spinning at an alarming rate right now.  The week’s feel like they are coming faster and faster and I just need to sloooow down for a minute.  All of the end of school year things are happening, all for the last time for us and it’s bittersweet.  I am so happy to have my kids out of the public school system, and at the same time I just want to sit down and cry my eyes out.

The cap and gown are ready, I have no idea what I’m going to feed all of my people when they get here for graduation, and the only toilet in my house that I KNOW is clean is mine – because I cleaned it last night.  I need more hours in my day.  Or I just need to prioritize my time better.  Less reading on the couch and YouTube at night and more DOING ALL THE THINGS.

How is your spring progressing?

I went into Wal-Mart twice in the past week and without looking at my lists I would have NO idea what I bought either time.  Here’s a horrifying fact for you:  I spent over $130 on one of those trips and I didn’t buy any meat.  Or coke.  Two of my biggest expenses.  So what in the world cost so dang much?!?

Three of the items on my list that weren’t food cost quite a bit.  Cat litter, creatine for Denton (don’t ask me, I have no idea what it does) and windshield washer fluid.  Yes, I think $1.78 for fancy water for the car is highway robbery.  This summer I think I’ll cut it with water from the garden hose and see how the Pilot fairs.  I suspect just fine.  If I forget that I did it when winter arrives will be what causes me problems….

Here is what we spent last week:

Wal-Mart $41.31 on 04.23.19 | Wal-Mart $130.26 on 04.27.19

Total spent for this week $171.57

January $740.71

February $631.00

March $689.00

April $405.44

And that’s it in the grocery haul department for our house.  Are you keeping up with your grocery spending this year?  Are you staying on track or do you just go with the flow?

Here are some ways I recoup part of my grocery budget each week:

ibotta | Checkout 51 | Receipt Hog | Walmart Savings Catcher | Fetch (referral code – QF4TJ)

Note: This post may contain affiliate links. Check out what that means to you here. 

 

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Grocery Shopping Trips: 04.22.19

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Hello again!  It’s not Monday, but for the purposes of my mind, we are going to pretend it is.  Okay?  Because to my mind, I need to update this on Monday’s so that I can keep track of what’s going on in my life.  On this particular Monday we were traveling home from my family because of Easter.   Does any of that make sense to anyone but me?  Let’s just pretend it’s still Monday in the grocery shopping world, shall we?

Since it was a short week in my world last week because we were traveling, we didn’t spend as much as we normally would have.  Hopefully that won’t show up next week to bite me in the arse.

I always, ALWAYS, quickly scan the clearance section of the meat department when I’m in my grocery stores.  Last week I ended up buying a giant boston butt that I’m going to have Denton smoke at some point.  I also grabbed some split chicken breasts that I’ll turn into chicken and dumplings or I’ll let Denton have those for his smoker too.  We shall see.

The loveliness about buying ahead is, that I saved almost $9.00 by taking these sale items home and shoving them into my giant cold friend in the garage.  Now they will wait for me to use them in a delicious recipe when I am ready and that almost $9.00 can go towards ice cream cones at the beach in a few weeks.  Yay!

BTW:  I did spend money at the grocery store while we were with my family this week.  I never count that in with my grocery budget for the same reason I never count vacation food in our grocery budget when we are on vacation.  That food isn’t going into my pantry.  Does that make sense?  Good.

Here is what we spent last week:

Wal-Mart $20.96 | Food Lion $29.10 | Food Lion $27.79

Total spent for this week $77.85

January $740.71

February $397.21

March $  ?

April $233.87 so far…..

And that’s it in the grocery haul department for our house.  Are you keeping up with your grocery spending this year?  Are you staying on track or do you just go with the flow?

Here are some ways I recoup part of my grocery budget each week:

ibotta | Checkout 51 | Receipt Hog | Walmart Savings Catcher | Fetch (referral code – QF4TJ)

Note: This post may contain affiliate links. Check out what that means to you here. 

 

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Grocery Shopping Trips: 04.15.19

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Hello again!  How long has it been since I updated my grocery hauls?  I have no idea.  If I don’t stick to a routine, you can forget it these days.

I have decided that I am just going to start where I am and go with it.  I always update my meal plan’s on Mondays, so this seems like an obvious – to my brain – time to update my grocery shopping trips too.  So no matter which days I end up shopping on during the week, I plan to do an update on Mondays.  We’ll see how this progresses!

Hayden and I spent Friday in the city, so of course I quickly ran through Aldi.  And then on Saturday Liv and I took off the recycle and ran into our Walmart to get some of the things that I couldn’t bring home from Aldi.  It’s a three hour round trip to our closest Aldi.  I’m not trusting my cooler to keep the milk cold that long.  So Walmart it is.

Here is what we spent last week:

Wal-Mart $64.29  I adjusted the amount to reflect FOOD.  Yay!
Aldi $91.73

Total spent for this week $156.02

January $740.71

February $397.21

March $  ?

April $156.02

  • Got back:                                                    Got back for the year:
  • ibotta  $0.10                                               $5.75
  • Checkout 51 $                                             $
  • Receipt Hog           Coins                           Coins
  • Walmart Savings Catcher $0.00         $0.00
  • Fetch             points                                   points
  • (referral code – QF4TJ)

Are you keeping up with your grocery spending this year?

Note: This post may contain affiliate links. Check out what that means to you here. 

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Grocery Shopping Trip: 02.17.19

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Hello again!  Liv and I went out on Sunday afternoon and did this week’s grocery haul.  We waited until late afternoon which helped tremendously with time and people rage.  Is that a thing for you too?  I hate being out with all of the crazies, trying to get what we need for the week and people are standing about having family reunions and get together’s in the aisles.  It makes me want to hurt people.  GO HOME.  Sit on your porch and gab.  Or your living room.  Anywhere that’s not a grocery store aisle.  Please.

When we got home, I completely forgot my promise that I would take photos of all the food for you.  One time does not make a habit, does it?  Hopefully I’ll remember next week.

We ended up having to make two grocery store stops.  Another thing that seriously gets me bent from shopping on a Sunday, is the supply available.  Wal-Mart is especially bad in our town.  There was not ONE single bag of Great Value plain potato chips in the entire store.  Not the red kind, or the yellow kind or the blue kind.

Since we needed to run into Food Lion anyway to keep up with Denton’s need for Coke Zero and they were on sale there, (I am completely content with Diet Dr. Pepper at the moment) I just switched chips to my Food Lion list.  Don’t you make separate, detailed list’s for each grocery store too?  I know, I’m a weirdo.

While I have you held captive with my ranting for the day, let’s talk about store stocker’s, shall we?  My brother worked for a grocery chain for years in his previous work life and he started out as a night stocker in high school.  A NIGHT stocker.  When did stores stop doing this?  I know, I know, I just got through whining about my Wal-Mart not having chips out on the shelf for me to purchase, but for all that’s good and holy this is only adding to the chaos.  You can walk into any grocery store in my surrounding area at any time of day and there are workers with giant pallets on those pull along things blocking aisles all throughout the stores.  Why aren’t they doing this at night, when most people are home asleep, instead of the prime shopping time for little old ladies who are trying to navigate this mine field?

Here’s a list of all the things Tracie has complained about today:

  1. People
  2. Store supplies
  3. Store stockers
  4. I’m sure I’m missing something……

Okay, I’ll hush now.  Onto what we spent this week, so far……

Wal-Mart:

One of the perils of Liv shopping with me is additional items in the basket that are not food related.  I’ll gladly buy them though, just to be able to spend a couple of hours, uninterrupted with her.

Food Lion:

What did you buy at the grocery store this week?  Did they have everything you needed?  Inquiring minds need to know!

Wal-Mart $72.55

Kroger $0.00

Aldi $0.00

Food Lion  $42.23

Dollar Tree $0.00

Total spent for this week $114.78

January $740.71

February $397.21

Total spent for the Year so far:  $1,137.92

  • Got back this summer:                            Got back for the year:
  • ibotta  $0.10                                               $5.75
  • Checkout 51 $                                             $
  • Receipt Hog           Coins                           Coins
  • Walmart Savings Catcher $0.00         $0.00
  • Fetch             points                                   points
  • (referral code – QF4TJ)

Are you keeping up with your grocery spending this year?

Note: This post may contain affiliate links. Check out what that means to you here. 

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Grocery Shopping Trip: 02.15.19

Published on by Tracie1 Comment

Hello again!  Do you have a Kroger?  We have one in the town next to ours.  Last week was a GIANT fail with their digital coupon sales.  I went on the third day of their four day sale and they didn’t have any of the items that they had listed, so this week I went first thing in the morning on the first day of the sales.  People, if your store runs out of things quickly and you want Oreo’s you better hit your Kroger today.  Mine didn’t have very many and I was there at 9:00 AM.

The Oreo’s are $1.49 and you can buy five, so I need to hide these so that Liv and I won’t eat them all this weekend.  The Jimmy Dean sausage is $1.99 and you can also buy five of those, but I knew we didn’t need them.

We also bought Cheetos for $1.77 and Kroger cheese crackers $1.69, mushrooms for $1.49 each, salad mix for $1.29, and a roast for the freezer for $11.89 – which I thought was still too high – but it had been $25.78!

Potatoes for $4.49 because we always need potatoes and Sara Lee whole wheat bread because Denton ate this kind at my brother’s house this weekend and declared that this is all he will eat now.

How do you like that price on those roses?  $4.99 for the day after Valentine’s Day.  Yesterday, they were $29.99.  Happy Fake Holiday!

I’m glad to have that over with.  They are calling for snow in the morning here in Virginia.  Is it Spring where you are yet?  I’m ready to plant something!

Wal-Mart $0.00

Kroger $58.11

Aldi $0.00

Food Lion  $0.00

Dollar Tree $0.00

Total spent for this week $148.58

January $740.71

February $282.43

Total spent for the Year so far:  $1,023.14

  • Got back this summer:                            Got back for the year:
  • ibotta  $                                                       $
  • Checkout 51 $                                            $
  • Receipt Hog           Coins                          Coins
  • Walmart Savings Catcher $0.00         $0.00
  • Fetch             points                                    points
  • (referral code – QF4TJ)

Are you keeping up with your grocery spending this year?

Note: This post may contain affiliate links. Check out what that means to you here. 

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Grocery Shopping Trip: 02.11.19

Published on by TracieLeave a comment

Hello!  As you will see, I abandoned all hope last year after the summer and keeping up with the grocery budget.  Which also carried over into the new year.  And halfway through February, apparently.

On Monday when I got home from grocery shopping, I decided, what the heck.  Instead of just flinging things into the kitchen as usual, I dropped it all onto the dining room table and quickly took pictures of everything I bought.  So, we shall see if this trend will continue.  I hope I don’t crash and burn with this system of keeping myself accountable like all of the others I’ve tried, but we shall see.

Because here’s the thing.  If I don’t tell you guys about my grocery budget, I just go blithely about my day, week, month, and year without looking at the big picture.  Which is BAD.  As you will see in January’s total below.  Yes, I see the receipts each time I shop, but that’s just a weekly number that quickly adds up at the end of the month into a monster.  Sooooo.

Without further ado, here’s what we bought this week – so far…..

We are trying valiantly, to find food that Oreo will actually eat.  This one is a big fat failure too.  I’ll write up an entire post about Oreo for you so you won’t be lost….

We are deep into winter and the tomatoes make me want to cry.  But, BUT!  I had the most amazing Tommy toes, or cherry tomatoes to everyone who didn’t grow up in my family, a few days ago and when I asked, they told me they bought them at our local Food Lion.  So when I was shopping Monday, I literally sniffed every package of  Tommy toes they had until I found one that SMELLED like a tomato.  And they are divine.  I can’t wait to get my tomato plants into the ground!

I always buy at least two or three pounds of Honey Crisp apples every week for Hayden alone.  This time they also had an Ambrosia apple for $0.99 a pound.  Have you ever tried these?  I bought one to see if it goes over well at our house.  For some reason, he has a reaction to Gala apples every single time he tries to eat one.  But, we all love Honey Crisp apples.

Do you have a favorite place to buy your hamburger meat?  We have tried everywhere, including the local butcher and Food Lion has the best ground beef – hands down.  Don’t ask me how, but it tastes so much better.

“Cookies” for the 15 year old puppy.  These, he absolutely loves.

I have bought two bottles of Lysol and can NOT find either of them.  Do you know how much Lysol costs?!?  $5.77!!  They didn’t have any of the great value brand.  Sometimes you need this stuff.  Maybe like when someone cuts up the pineapple that’s been in the fridge for two weeks and leaves the peels in the garbage can overnight.  Even if you scrub, and scrub, that smell will not go away.  Hence the Lysol.

Anywho, the totals are below.  This week turned out better than I expected.  Some weeks are like this, and then other weeks my budget goes out the window.  You know, because I’m not paying attention to those pesky numbers….

Wal-Mart $53.54

Aldi $0.00

Food Lion  $36.93

Dollar Tree $0.00

Total spent for this week $90.47

January $740.71

February $224.32

Total spent for the Year so far:  $965.03

  • Got back this summer:                            Got back for the year:
  • ibotta  $                                                       $
  • Checkout 51 $                                            $
  • Receipt Hog           Coins                          Coins
  • Walmart Savings Catcher $0.00         $0.00
  • Fetch             points                                    points
  • (referral code – QF4TJ)

Are you keeping up with your grocery spending this year?

Note: This post may contain affiliate links. Check out what that means to you here. 

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2 Questions for Decluttering

Published on by Tracie2 Comments

I have been on my decluttering pilgrimage for over six years now.  You can read the first post I wrote about it here.  Part of my process is to limit what I actually bring into our home.  If I am careful about what comes in, I don’t have to ask myself hard questions later about whether or not I need to keep it.

I have found that I need firm boundaries when it comes to questioning myself about the things in our home.  There are so many questions that I could ask myself to determine if something needs to stay or go.  All you have to do is type declutter into a search engine and you’ll find a plethora of questions and answers to choose from.  Over 41,000,000 as of this morning when I checked.  That creates overwhelm for me.  I need focus.  Only then can I actually make a decision so that I won’t just stuff this thing back into a drawer to deal with later.

So now, when I declutter our house I literally only have two questions that I ask myself.

1.  Do I truly love this item?

I really make myself stop and honestly contemplate whatever the item is.  I want to make my house into a sanctuary,  a place where we are happy and comfortable.  If I am surrounding all of us with things that are just things  that isn’t going to happen.

Rule number 1:  if it’s going to stay, I have to love it.

2.  Do I love this item enough to clean it?

This is a big one you guys.  I don’t love to clean.  I know people who truly do, but I’m not one of them.  I am however, slowly changing my mindset so that I can enjoy the process of cleaning my home and the results; but it’s a sloooww process.  Side note:  I have found that if I use cleaning products that I actually enjoy smelling, I am MUCH more likely to clean.  But, that’s another story entirely.

Looking through my house, I noticed that I have more knick knacks now than I’ve ever had before and they are giving me serious anxiety.  No one is going to clean those things but me.  They are mine.  But, the mental cost of having all of those things is greater than my enjoyment of them.  Does that make sense to anyone but me?

I am slowly going through them all, deciding if they truly do bring about happiness, and does that happiness make me want to clean them every week.  I have to say, most of the time the answer is no.  I’ve culled my book collection way down and people, you know my love of books.  I bring a lot of them home each month, but those are what I like to call “readers”.  They are going to be read and passed on to someone else who can enjoy them.  There are very few that I add to my bookshelves to keep.

The next collection at my house that I’m going to go through is my collection of milk glass.  I have a deep passion for milk glass, but the more I seriously ask myself do I love every piece that I have, I already know the answer is going to be no.  There are some pieces that I know I’ll probably never part with – such as my vintage milk glass dental tray.  That thing makes me happy every time I look at it.  I have no idea why, but that doesn’t matter.  Psst:  I bought it at a yard sale for $10.00.  The woman said it was her Grandmother’s and it was in its original box!   Apparently she didn’t share her Grandmother’s and my passion for milk glass.

So.  What are your parameters?  How do you decide what stays and what has to go?

Note:  This post may contain affiliate links.  Check out what that means to you here.

Clean and Organize the….. Unknown Kitchen Drawer

Published on by TracieLeave a comment

I call this the Unknown Kitchen Drawer for a reason.  It’s invisible.  No one knows it’s there.  No one uses it.  This is valuable real estate in my kitchen and it is completely going to waste.  I whine to myself all the time that I need more storage space in my kitchen, when the truth is, I have at least one space that is being completely squandered at the moment.

This is another perfect example of my blindness when it comes to my kitchen drawers.  Remember my spice drawer?  I LOVE my spice drawer now and I use it every day.  It’s the perfect setup and a wonderful use of space in my kitchen.

However, this is not a wonderful use of prime square footage in my kitchen.  I suppose you could call this a junk drawer, because it IS filled with junk.  Or rather, things that are never used.

The first thing I did was to empty everything out and clean, clean, clean.  It was absolutely filthy.  That, I have discovered, is what happens when you never clean something.  Even if you don’t use it.  Imagine that.

I bought this lovely liner paper at Wal-Mart, because my Dollar Tree doesn’t carry the stuff anymore.  WHY, Dollar Tree, Why?  It’s padded and non-slip, so whatever I place in here should stay put.  Anywho, this one is a lovely pattern, if I do say so myself.

Gorgeous.  Not perfect, but I never actually expect things to be perfect in my house.

The first thing I loaded up were the homeless k-cups that have been living on my dining room table for the past, oh, three months.  Also, the ground coffee from Aldi.  Have you tried it?  We like it.

Next, I put in the vitamins that various people in my house take.  I love having it all in one central location.  Make a coffee, take your vitamins.  By the way, if you have a vegetarian in your house, make sure they are getting enough Vitamin B.  Last year when we had our yearly physical’s, we discovered that Liv was dangerously low on Vitamin B and Vitamin D.  I suppose we shouldn’t live like vampires and avoid the sun completely, huh?

The crazy thing about this entire process, is that this project took less than 20 minutes from start to finish.  I have been putting it off for a small eternity.  I always build things up in my mind to gargantuan proportions when I just need to buckle down and get it done.

I’m so pleased with how this turned out.  Are you procrastinating a small, doable task?  I know that I can name at least 14 more projects that need my attention right now……

You can find all of my other projects here, here, here and here.

Note: This post may contain affiliate links. Check out what that means to you here. 

 

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Grocery Shopping Trips: The Summer Edition

Published on by TracieLeave a comment

Summer.  Ah, summer.  You know that you are by far not my favorite season of the year.  And apparently, you are the doom of my grocery budget too.  I think I just lost my mind a wee bit, when summer came around.  I possibly just tossed any kind of structure, limits, caution, you name it, when it came to the grocery budget not just out the window but off the planet, which you are going to see below.

Hopefully FALL will be my redemption in this area of our finances.  You know my love of all things fall.  I can’t wait.  But, for now, I’ll bring out my shame with the hope that next summer I’ll look back on this recap and I will have reigned myself in!  Here we go.

Mint.com lumps everything together for me each month.  Example:  It knows to automatically put everything from Aldi, Kroger, Food Lion, etc. into the groceries category because that’s the way I set mine up.  But.  It does not take into account the fact that I buy – apparently – a LOT of stuff that we don’t eat.  IE:  toilet paper, cat food, dog food, Tide pods, Lord help us, sunscreen, eyeliner and Flonase.  The list goes on and on.

Knowing this, I wanted so, SO badly to go through and remove all of the non-edible items from this post.  But guess who can’t find all of her receipts?  This girl, that’s who.

I also did not remove the grocery store trips from our vacations this summer.  Vacation food is vacation food, not a grocery budget item.  In my world, that is.  But alas, it’s all in there.

I only made one trip to Aldi this summer.  Oh how I wish we had an Aldi in our tiny town, and I discovered that I spent WAYYYYY too much of my time this summer standing in lines at my Wal-Mart.  Oh, the joys of grocery shopping.

Anyway, here’s what we spent in the month’s of June, July and August at the grocery store!

Wal-Mart $664.34

Aldi $62.17

Food Lion  $20.52

Dollar Tree $16.80

Total spent for the month of June $801.29 

Wal-Mart $499.42

Kroger $175.85

Food Lion  $142.69

Dollar Tree $6.32

Total spent for July $824.28

Wal-Mart $649.10

Kroger $130.18

Food Lion  $186.82

Flowers Bakery $17.25

Dollar Tree $10.42

Total spent for August $993.77

Total spent for the summer $2,619.34

That number makes me want to pull out my hair.  Do you realize that that number equals a trip to New York City for my family for nine days with $1,000 left over to spend on food and souvenirs?  Or a two week stay in a Daytona Beach Shores, FL, ocean front condo with enough money left over for five people to have a really nice steak dinner?  How about a week’s stay at one of the resorts in Williamsburg, Virginia with tickets for seven days to Busch Gardens for four people, TWICE?  I can do this all day long.  These are actual adventures we’ve done in the past few years that came in under this budget.

This is why I am so adamant about watching my spending at the grocery store.  Because let’s be graphic for a moment.  All of that money was flushed down the toilet.  Literally.  And don’t get me wrong.  I sincerely love food.  But, I would rather spend our hard earned money on an experience that I’ll remember for the rest of my life.  Sigh.

Total spent for the Year so far:  $4,972.46

  • Got back this summer:                            Got back for the year:
  • ibotta  $14.45                                             $35.40
  • Checkout 51 $12.75                                   $14.15
  • Receipt Hog     39 Coins                          432 Coins
  • Walmart Savings Catcher $0.00         $0.00
  • Fetch  3,251 points                                   10,903 points
  • (referral code – QF4TJ)

Are you keeping up with your grocery spending this year?  Are you as appalled as I am at how much groceries are costing you?!?  Inquiring minds need to know!

Note: This post may contain affiliate links. Check out what that means to you here. 

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