I made the first trip to the grocery store while in my new "eat better" mindset and not only did I buy some new things I've never bought before, but I saved money on them!
Strawberries and blueberries were both on sale, so I bought some of each and I'm looking forward to making some nice yogurt smoothies with them or eating them just as fresh fruit as desserts. The strawberries came in a 2lb container, so they will be very useful! On sale for $3.99 too! That might not be the best deal, but it's better than some I've seen :-) I also picked up a jar of sunflower seeds (which I absolutely love) and a container of mixed nuts (both unsalted/sweetened and on sale). I can't remember all the kinds in there at the moment, but I remember almonds, peanuts, cashews, and I think macadamia nuts also. Now I just have to make sure I eat them at a controlled pace! I also bought spinach, cucumbers, bananas, skim milk, and non-fat yogurt, but those are things we get every week at the store anyway (sometimes substituting green peppers or celery for cucumbers). There wasn't a lot for me to buy this week because I stocked up on meat, pasta, and cereal before the wedding when it was on sale and I've got like 15 meals worth of each chicken and beef in the freezer.
I've never bought nuts or blueberries before, so I'm branching out at least a little bit. Maybe next week I'll venture towards something more colorful in the veggie section...
I use Excel to track our grocery spending, dividing it in to savings by MVP card and savings by coupons, then looking at the total cost of the groceries and the percent savings each week. It's not a totally accurate reading because we occasionally buy food at Target, especially if it's on sale or in their summer section that always has larger boxes, like what you'd get in a Sam's Club or something. But these expenditures are less than $20. We also buy all of our health and beauty things at Target too, but only when I've also got coupons for them; sometimes we can luck out and buy things on clearance with coupons too, like Pantene shampoo and conditioner.
So far this year we've spent $1203.69 at Food Lion on groceries and saved $399.78 using our MVP card and coupons. This gives us a percent savings of 24.932%! This is pretty good I think, seeing as how we've saved almost half a month's rent on groceries so far this year. Looking back on the year I see my personal best shopping week was in April when I spent $32.53 and saved $33.89 for a percent savings of 51.02%! I'm assuming that's one of the weeks when chicken was on sale for like 50% off per pound and I was able to buy it and wrap it up to store in the freezer. Of course that might also have been when Diet Cokes were on sale or Lipton noodles or something else was 10/$10. It's too bad I don't have a pantry because I could do some serious stocking up if I did!
I'm sure that now that I'm going to be buying more fresh foods we will spend more on groceries, but that's something I'm willing to be flexible on. Plus we can always scout out the deals in the paper and buy the fresh items that are on sale :-) I read this book called America's Cheapest Family that my stepdad picked up at a garage sale, and this family was hardcore. They only went to the grocery store one time per month and I think they had something like 6 kids, so they talked about storing all the foods and which were the first to be eaten. They also had a lot of info about how they paid off their house in a ridiculously short period of time (9 years I think?) by living frugally and on one income of around $40,000. Their last name is Economides (it's Greek) and very fitting!
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