Wednesday, December 7, 2011

I've Been a Baaaaaaaaaaad Girl--X-Treme Food Stamp Challenge

So we just got back from running errands and grocery shopping a little bit ago.  We also did a fair amount of visiting with relatives, so the only food that has been consumed from our house today so far have been a couple of bananas that we just bought at the store, the cereal with milk the kids had for breakfast, and a can of Diet Coke.  Oh, and my husband killed off the bag of chocolate chips he's been pilfering for the past couple days (I might have had a couple, since it was open).  I still need to make my cookies for the 12 Weeks of Christmas Cookie entry for tomorrow, so I know we'll eat some of those, most likely with milk, but other than that, I think we are done eating for the day around here.

Here are the receipts from today's trip:
I want to point out again that things like facial tissues (aka Kleenex) aren't covered by food stamps, but bottle deposits are, so when I buy pop and bring the empty cans back to the store, it lets me buy things like that without spending actual money.

Here's where I was bad.  I bought a loooooooot of things that weren't on my list.  Some of this was because I brought my husband with me and he insisted we needed some cereal to get us by until our new WIC cycle starts next Thursday.  I saw a large 2 pound bag of fake Honey Nut Cheerios on clearance for $1.49, so I did okay that, but then he wanted a second kind!  They had the big Frosted Mini-Wheats on clearance for $1.75, so I okayed that purchase as well. 

The rest of the overbuying was my own fault/call/decision.  Refried beans, pasta,  and condensed milk weren't on my list, but they were all on really good sale, so I went ahead and got them for the pantry for future weeks.  I also got more cream cheese and tortilla chips than I would have gotten if they weren't on sale.  All in all, I spent an additional $12.43 because of buying extra staples on sale, but since I apparently (according to the top of my receipt) had non-coupon savings of $20.56 on a total of 28 items, I don't think we did too badly.  Of course, spending as much as I did only leaves us with $16.40 to last us until the 21st, but with WIC starting fresh next week, that should be fine. 

Which brings us to my WIC receipt:
Nothing exciting there, but in the interest of full disclosure, there it is.

3 comments:

  1. How wrong is it that the first thing to go through my mind when reading the title to your post was the lyrics to "Criminal" by Fiona Apple?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqWl56-k8tU

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  2. Vanilla beans are normally VERY pricy but I've bought them for, I don't know, 35-85c each as part of a soap makers buyers co-op that Kya lets me in. I can make my own vanilla extract cheaper than I can buy it PLUS I used the spent beans for making vanilla sugar.

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  3. That's a heck of a deal on the vanilla beans. I have a couple vanilla beans that I bought a while back, but just recently got some booze to make the extract with. I'm HOPING the vanilla I bought today will be enough to last me until I have some homemade.

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