Grocery Shopping, and feeding my family of Six is my biggest expense after my mortgage
Grocery shopping is one of those tasks that I am always tinkering with, my goal being to feed my kids the healthiest, cheapest, best tasting food available.
Last year, when I was living in my condo, and money was tight - grocery shopping was easy.
I did very little of it, and leeched off my parents. Neither kids nor parents minded as my parents love any excuse to hang out with my kids, and my kids love my parents' delicious cooking.
When I was filling my own pantry/fridge, I would buy lots of beans, tortillas, cheese, and stuff to make salsa.
Cheap cheap cheap.
But it was embarrassing for me to be at such a mature age and not be able to afford many of the basics.
And really, as much as I love bean tacos, and can eat them on a daily, there's something about being able to afford grapes, and strawberries.
When my fortune changed, I made lots of silly decisions
I spent money on stuff that is overpriced, and bad for you. Like sugary stuff and over-processed desserts.
I also started going to restaurants and ordering food in.
It felt a little like a cleanse to spend money without having to watch every penny, or worry about where I was going to get my pennies from the next month.
Its nice to HODL my HIVE Power without thinking about it at night, wondering if I should finally cash it in.
Now that I have had my little NO SPENDING cleanse
I am going back to budgeting.
One of the changes I am making is the grocery shopping. Since I recognize that I am very bad at not adding extra stuff to my grocery cart, I just avoid the store.
Since the threshold for delivery is $60 bucks, and the place I use delivers every Wednesday - unless I skip.
Now I "save" purchases for the next week.
Instead of taking a trip to the store to buy, coffee, and ending up with pie in my cart, I now buy coffee online and try to get the price as close to $60 as possible.
Before, if I was already at the store, I would pick up some extras to avoid another trip later.
This meant I was always buying stuff not on my list, so that I would skip trips later. But I never skipped trips. So it was a never ending cycle of buying stuff ahead of time, and ending up buying stuff I didn't need.
I would end up over buying, and then tossing the extras in the trash once they went bad.
So sad and wasteful.
Now I "save" purchases for the next week, so that I never have to pay for shipping.
It has been going great.
We always have enough food, we always have just a little extra.
But since we know more is coming, we don't stock pile.
Which means we don't have an out of control pantry, nothing goes bad, and nothing ends up in the trash.
Its finally there.