Food and Gas

I've decided that I'm going to shop a different way.

I'm going to shop a'la Tightwad Gazette. Remember that book? It's one of my favorites. I have the big compilation book and look at it often. In it, the author talks about how her husband shops (shopped?) for them and their six kids by the stock-up method. They only buy what they need to refill their stock and they buy according to loss leaders at the stores.

Here's my take on it:

I'm going to look at the flyer each week and only buy the things that are on a good discount. And then look at things in the clearance areas of our local store. Every morning the butcher marks meat that needs to be sold that day down to half and there is usually some produce marked down that much on a rack in the produce section. There's also a bakery discount rack and a giant box (think of those huge-mungus boxes that watermelons and pumpkins are sold out of) of marked down grocery items.

I went to the market today armed with my list from the flyer. Here's what I got:

8 1-pound things of ground turkey
10 pounds of fresh broccoli
10 pounds of apples
6 pounds of oranges
1 pound of cherries (because I love them, and they were on sale!)
4 cantaloupes
2 big bags of frozen raspberries
1 package hot dogs and 1 of buns from the bakery discount (the dogs were on sale, too)
about $5 worth of stuff from a grocery cart full of seeds and seed starting stuff marked for clearance
5 bags of honey mustard pretzels from the big box of marked down stuff
A half-gallon of orange juice (on sale)
A gallon of skim milk (regular price, but what are you going to do?)
and a raincheck for 4 whole chickens that were sold out

I spent $70, not including the chickens. Shocking, but if I'd paid full price for everything it would have been $110.

I'm going to freeze the broccoli today. I might have to go back and buy more of that, it was a really good sale.

I am constantly shocked at how much we spend on food. It's outrageous really. Six years ago, when I was a single mom with two school-aged kids, I fed all three of us on about $300 a month. I would say we're easily spending $200 a WEEK on food right now. Unreasonable. But, damn. Food is so crazy expensive. And there are five of us, two adults, two teenagers and a toddler. But milk used to be like $1.80 a gallon. Now it's almost $4. Eggs were about a dollar a dozen, now they're $2.50.

Gas is $4.21 a gallon this week. I'm so glad that school is out next week. That will free up a whooping $100 a month just because I don't have to drive Adrienne to school everyday. If we let our vehicle run to empty, it would cost about $110 to fill it up.

Scary shit.

And Bush is talking about how this is a 'slow down' and not a recession. I guess it's easy to say when you're a millionaire who doesn't have to worry about how he's going to feed his children or get them to school.

So we're spending quite a lot more on food and gasoline, but our family income has remained largely the same for the last five years.