Shopping Day, 30 March

I went over-budget a little bit this week, but I bought a lot of groceries.

IGA: $19.83
Aldi (1): $111.51
Woolworths: $86.21
Coles: $71.31
Reject Shop: $12.00
Aldi (2): $11.85

Total:  $312.71

Some of the bargains I bought:

• 2 kg of chicken breasts (spent $16, saved $4.20)
• 2 jars of kalamata olives (spent $10, saved $3.60)
• 19 cans of beans (spent $15, saved $8.90)
• 4 x 2L bottles of Coke (spent $10, saved $6)
• 2 jars of jam (spent $6, saved $3.15)
• 2 boxes of Kleenex (spent $5, saved $1)
• 10 x 500ml boxes of chicken, beef, and veggie stock (spent $10, saved $11)
• 7 x  family-size packet pasta (spent $7, saved $7)

All up I bought $389.88 worth of groceries for $312.71, for a savings of $77.16. Four hours of shopping works out to $19.29 an hour. 

Now the pantry's full, the extra shelves out in the garage are full, and I've got food groceries in the laundry cupboard, too. Now I need to work on a menu plan for next week that mostly uses what we've already got. Lots of beans. I think I'll make a big pot of chili. 

Shopping Day, 23 March

Bargains were to be found, and everything went much more smoothly this time. Instead of 5 hours, I hit three stores (Aldi, Woolworths, and Coles) in half that time. And that includes coming home after each store (we're only 5 minutes from town), unloading and putting everything away, then taking off again.

The grand total was $244. 48, well below the usual $300-400, and about $55 cheaper than if I'd just ordered everything to be delivered from Coles. So one way to look at it is that I paid myself $22 an hour to do the grocery shopping.

Some of the savings came from just buying at the store that was a little bit cheaper, but most of it came from a few good deals. The big 5 kg (11 lb) box of laundry detergent saved about $6, Karen's tea and Coke were both on sale for $7 instead of $10 each, and the big bottle of Italian Herbs from Costco saved me around $8.

The other thing that helped keep the overall cost down was that I didn't have to buy much meat, because I planned the meals this week to use of what I've already got in the freezer. Next week, I'll have to buy more meat, but hopefully I can still keep the total down by choosing meals that use things from the increasingly-well-stocked pantry.

Sale Items Go Quick!

I learned a lesson today about really good deals on sale items. They don't last long. When the catalog comes out on Tuesday showing the things that go on sale Wednesday, you apparently have to be there when the store opens that morning if you want to get the big sale items. Wednesday night after work (11pm) doesn't get the job done. You snooze, you lose. Or something like that. The idea of being there when they open the doors at 7 am doesn't seem too damned appealing. I'm not that much of a morning person. But I have to admit, I'm tempted to do it just to see who's in there grabbing all the stuff on sale.

I tried again this morning at another store, just to see if they might've restocked overnight, but apparently they didn't. But since I was out and about anyway, I went out to Costco to check out the prices there, to compare with the ones already in my price book. There are definitely some good deals there, but it's easy to get suckered, too. I took lots of pictures of prices, entered them in when I got home, let the spreadsheet work out the unit pricing, and I suspect I'll be going out there once a month or so for bulk purchases of laundry powder, canned goods, tissues, etc. Today all I bought was a large bottle of Italian herbs and a big bag of grated Mexican cheese. Grand total - $16.08.

My Price Book

I've read for years that one of the tricks to buying things on sale is to know if it's actually a good deal or not, and that one way to do that is to maintain a price book. A price book is just a list of the things you buy, the prices you paid, when and where. The first ones I read about involved using a notebook, one item per page, and keeping a sort of shopping diary. These days, it seems people are using spreadsheets. So that's what I've done, using a Google Docs spreadsheet.  Wil's Price Book

Using my receipts from last week's shopping, plus a few others I found laying around (mostly in the bottoms of shopping bags), I've got a list of prices for 140 different items. No real surprises at this point, except that eggs went up at Aldi and I didn't notice. But it's already been useful to be able to check prices to see if this weeks "sales" are really bargains or not.

At this point, I think I'll stick to using a Google Doc spreadsheet, which I can access on my iPod. There's also an iOS app called Best Price Book that might be worth a try, but I'm not sure it's worth it (both in terms of the price, and the time and effort it would take to fill in the data). I've installed the trial version, but I might wait a while before I make a decision about upgrading to the full version.

Grocery Points Reward Programs

The weather was awesome this weekend, so I didn't spend a lot of time sitting here at the computer. But I still managed to get a few things done to help with the new plan.

I joined the customer loyalty programs at Woolworths and Supabarn, so I'll start earning points when I shop there, just like I do with FlyBuys at Coles.

I earn 2 FlyBuys Points per $5 spent at Coles, plus 1 FlyBuys Point per $5 when I pay with my NAB credit card. It takes 2500 FlyBuys Points to get a $20 gift card.

I earn 1 SupaBarn Point for every $1 I spend on grocery, frozen food, dairy, and variety items. I earn 2 SupaBarn Points for every $1 I spend on meat, produce, deli, seafood, or store bakery items. It takes 2000 points to get a $20 gift card. (Plus I'll earn 1 FlyBuys Point for every $5 when I pay with my NAB credit card.)

I earn 1 Everyday Rewards Point for every $1 over $30 I spend at Woolworths (plus I'll earn 1 FlyBuys Point for every $5 when I pay with my NAB credit card). It takes 750 Everyday Rewards Points to get a $5 gift card, or 3000 Points to get a $20 gift card.

So none of them are going to mean big savings, but it might mean a couple of gift cards throughout the year. I think I earned around 32 FlyBuys Points at Coles last week (plus 16 more for paying with my NAB card, for a total of 48 Points). I earned 47 SupaBarn Points (they print it on the receipt), and I would've earned 44 Everyday Rewards Points if I'd been a member.

If I spend roughly the same amount each week, at each shop, that works out (roughly) to a $20 SupaBarn gift card every 10 months, a $5 Woolworths gift card every 4 months, and a $20 Coles gift card once a year. In reality, we earn a lot more FlyBuys because we earn every time we use our credit card, plus when we shop at Coles, KMart, Target, 1st Choice Liquor, and at the Shell station. Over the years (online records go back to 2001, but we've been members since 1995), we've averaged a $100 gift card every year, and $300-350 the last couple of years.

Freezer Inventory -- Too Much Meat!

I took a quick inventory of our big freezer because I knew there was a lot of stuff in there that we need to eat. Here's what I found that I know I'm going to cook this week:

• 500g peas, corn, and carrots (2/3 cup on Thursday)
• 750g tater tots (Thursday) 
• 800g potato bake (Monday) 
• 100g sliced pepperoni (Monday) 
• 2 links of chorizo  (Tuesday, Wednesday)
• 500g thin sausages (Sunday) 
• 2 x 500g beef mince (Wednesday, Thursday) 
• 1 kg chuck steak (Tuesday) 

And here's all the rest:

• 3 x 500g sliced green beans
• 500g mixed vegetables
• 2 x 1.2kg french fries
• 1 x meat feast pizza
• 3 x beef and cheese pies
• 175g short cut bacon
• 2 x 375g short cut bacon
• 2 x small Spanish marinated minute steaks
• 1/2 Mexican marinated chicken
• 2 x 500g beef mince
• 8 x 200g chicken breasts
• 2 x pork scotch fillet steaks w/tarragon butter 
• 1kg Santa Maria marinated sirloin roast
• 3 x beef steaks (unknown cut)
• 1 pkg pork chops (3 or 4? unknown cut)
• 450g organic chicken drumsticks

Those chicken breasts are mostly from my big chicken purchase this week, and I will eat some of them for lunches this week, but the rest of it is just stuff I've bought and then forgotten about. Some of it's been in there for 3, 4 and maybe even 6 months, and it's time to get it out.

The bacon's not a problem because I eat bacon for breakfast almost every morning. This week I've got the chorizo, but next week I'll be back to bacon, so it'll go. 

I'll eat the minute steaks for lunch, and also the pork steaks (I've had 'em before, and they're very nice). I might try one of the other steaks, but I don't know what they are, and I think they've been in there for a pretty long time, so I'll probably just use them in a stew or something. Same with the pork chops. Maybe in the slow cooker. The sirloin roast can be a dinner one night next week, and I might have the 1/2 chicken for dinner on Monday. The frozen french fries, green beans, and mixed veggies will be eaten as side dishes over the next couple of weeks. 

So that just leaves the chicken legs and the meat pies. I'm not much of a leg man, but I'll come up with something. The meat pies might just have to go, though. The boys tried them, and really don't like the cheese in them, so maybe there's no hope for them. Unless I thaw them, scoop out the meat and cheese mixture, and then sneak it into something. I'll have to think about that one. 

But the one thing that's clear is that if I plan the menu right, I won't need to buy meat next week. I might buy some anyway, if there's a good sale on, but if not we should be fine with what we've already got. 

My New Money-Saving Shopping Strategy

I put a new grocery shopping plan into action today. I'm trying to get the cost down, because it was really starting to get out of control, to the tune of nearly $400 a week. Shopping online (with Coles) and getting the groceries delivered was easy, but expensive, and when we added in a few extra trips for things we'd forgotten, they didn't deliver, etc., it was really starting to add up.

So first I cut out the delivery and started doing my own shopping again. That doesn't just save the delivery charge, but the in-store prices are usually cheaper than the online prices. The next thing I did was start shopping at Aldi as well as Coles. Then I started doing some online price comparisons and then shopping at Coles, Aldi, and Woolworths. And today I added Supabarn into the mix, too. Four shops in five hours, and I spent $303. 

That's a little more than I've been spending lately, but it's because I bought a lot of things that were on sale, so hopefully it'll pay off in the future. I bought 3 12-packs of Fake Zero (that's what we can Aldi's zero-cal cola Coke Zero knock-off), 16 cans of diced tomatoes (80 cents a can at Woolies), 9 jars of pasta sauce (3 for $3 at Supabarn), and that sort of thing. All good bargains (except the Fake Zero, which was regular price, but they've been out for weeks so I thought I'd stock up). 

My plan is to keep an eye on the sales at Coles, Woolies, IGA, Supabarn, and Aldi, hit 'em and load up when I can, and build a stockpile. Then one week each month, do as small a shop as possible (I haven't run any numbers yet, but I'm hoping for $50-100) and get the rest from the stockpile. 

The other part of the plan involves getting to the point where we're spending around $200 a week, and putting the extra $100 away in savings to pay for a vacation next summer. If we can do it, in 8 months we'd save $3200.