Grocery Challenge: Week 3

Cumulative Weekly Total: $69.91
Trip 1: $25.49
Trip 2: $27.56
Total Amount Spent: $53.05
Leftover: $16.87

Last week was hard. We ran out of veggies on Monday!!!! Yikes! We had to wait until Thursday (supposed to be Friday, but I didn't have time to shop on Friday so it was bumped up a day) for our next weeks money, so it was really tough. But we did manage to eat fairly well using leftovers AND we manage to feed our friends!!

I did two separate trips this past week. For trip one, I went to Ralph's farm market in Langley. My goal was to always shop at Pricesmart, but I knew that my entire budget would be eaten up with produce if I did that. I mean, we had not a veggie in this house....not even carrots! So while in Langley, I stocked up on the necessities! Ralph's is CHEAP!! I got ten green peppers (on the discount rack) for under $2. The carrots were on cheap. A five pound bag for $2 (and yes I got two!) Joel eats them like candy. Same with the apples. Finding apples for under a dollar a pound is difficult, but I managed to get them for 59 cents a pound!!!! YIPPEE!!! That was basically my saving grace this week.

My second trip was to Pricesmart for the necessities like baking powder and eggs. The cake was a gift for Dan for Valentines Day. Okay, it was "Happy Thursday" gift to him in lieu of V-Day.

We have quite a bit of money leftover this week. But I must admit that I was waiting until Thursdays flyers to decide how to spend the leftover and next week's money (aka. choosing to spend based on sales). We are out of quite a few things and my grocery list is growing. This is the last week of our challenge and I have already realized that $60 a week is NOT sustainable. Its sometimes those little things that add up quickly. You know: BBQ sauce, peanut butter, oil, raisins. Those things have been dropped this month in favour of other things like milk, cheese, meat, eggs and produce. We have enjoyed this challenge and are hoping that it will help us stay on budget in the future. There is already talks about bumping it up to $100 a week for March and seeing where that takes us. But there still needs to be discussion about what to do about our growing shopping list. I don't know how much longer Joel can last without his peanut butter fix!