Before you go to the store...

I'm still cutting out coupons as I begin to write this, so I don't yet know how it will all turn out. Follow me along on today's adventure.
It's 11:30 am and we are done with math, science and history. I was up at 5:30 to keep up with my course work. Then, I began to work on one of my many Mom duties: grocery shopping.
This is not my favorite task, and I go out of my way to avoid it. In fact, my most creative meals are made when we have little to no food in the pantry and I have to improvise. It is in my nature to be lazy about the tasks that I don't enjoy, so if there is easy to make food in the house, then, that is what we eat. The really good recipes come out of necessity.

I do, however, find great pleasure in the challenge of meeting my family's needs without spending money. Our family of 8 has a grocery budget of $300 per month. It's my job to stay under it. Some of my tricks are explained in other posts, but today I am going to try out our local Sav-A-Lot. I am driving my daughter to the equestrian center this afternoon and there is a Sav-A-Lot store seven miles away from where she will be.

Remember: travel time and expense must be calculated when figuring your costs and savings.


I've not been there before because it is 28 miles from our house. So, I will be dropping her off and driving 14 miles total (7miles each way) to try out the Sav-A-Lot and see how much I can get in my budget. Now, I'm not an extreme couponer, I don't buy coupons - in fact, currently, we have a lady at church who gets her paper at 5am, reads it and then brings it to church for us, so I'm not even buying a Sunday paper at this time.

Now, my van averages 21 miles per gallon, so the 14 miles will cost me 2/3 of a gallon of gas. At $3.79 per gallon, that is about $2.53 that I am spending before I even get to the store. You could calculate wear and tear on the vehicle also, but I'm not quite that detailed... yet.

Remember: Nothing is really FREE, even when it says FREE.

I have shopped at Sav-A-Lot before, so I know that I will need to provide my own bags and boxes, so I am packing those. If I don't bring them, I end up at the checkout, tempted to buy the bags they sell for ten cents each, and I don't want to do that, so I'm putting them in the car now.

Previously, they did not accept coupons, but I checked their website today and now they do, so that is why I'm trying them out again. I want to see how their prices minus coupons compare to my other shopping options, so I will take with me: my COUPON BINDER (this link goes to Couponing 101 where she has a great video demonstration of a coupon binder) and my PRICE LIST (scroll to the end of this article for a copy of my price list) I am making sure that my coupons are organized, and that I have all of them in the binder so I don't miss anything.

I also know that I tend to spend more when I bring my children. They distract me, they ask nicely for things that I wouldn't normally buy, but don't mind them having, and generally, I just end up spending more when I'm not focused. So, I am taking one child to an activity, and asking my teenage daughter to watch my two preschoolers, and taking just one or two of the middle kids. This will help me to stay on task and spend less.


Check back later to see how it went.