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!
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