Shopping in July

Okay, I've dug up all the receipts I can find, and I'm going to try to figure out what the hell happened.

Week 1

6 July Coles   $113.43
6 July Aldi      $66.65
9 July Coles    $42.65*
10 July Aldi    $19.30
11 July Coles $23.05*

Total :           $265.08


Week 2


13 July Aldi   $89.20
16 July Coles $24.58*
17 July Aldi   $34.51

Total:             $148.29

Week 3

20 July Woolworths   $96.01
20 July Coles             $60.94
20 July 1st Choice     $54.00
22 July 1st Choice     $55.00
22 July Aldi               $74.91
23 July Coles             $53.63*
23 July Aldi               $85.36
23 July Coles             $34.52*

Total:                        $514.37

Week 4

26 July Coles            $58.27
26 July Aldi              $137.31
26 July Woolworths   $49.47
27 July Coles            $18.37*

Total:                        $263.42

Monthly Total:          $1191.16

Weekly Avg:            $297.79


*Karen

These numbers make sense based on what happened over the course of the month. Week 1 was a fairly normal shop. The only thing unusual about it was that I didn't blog it. Then Week 2 was when the two older boys left. I was just cooking for Tom and myself, so I just bought some quick and easy stuff from Aldi. Sausages, sandwich stuff, frozen chicken strips, stir fry stuff, and a bottle of bourbon. Then I went back a few days later and bought frozen fish fillets, more sandwich stuff, and spaghetti fixins.

In Week 3 the boys were still away, but Karen needed stuff from Coles and Woolworths, so I did a proper sort of shop. But with only 3 people, it was cheap. Under $200. Plus $200 or so worth of liquor. Good times, good times! Apparently I made a second trip to Aldi that week, but I don't have a receipt for it and I'm not entirely sure what I might've bought. I'm guessing there was a fair amount of liquor and junk food involved.

Then in Week 4, the boys came home, I went back to work, and it was time to start behaving myself again. And I did.

I've checked the bank account, and if there was more shopping done, it was done with cash and there's no records. In the end, while we didn't stay under the $240 weekly limit I've set so that we can save for our holiday this summer, we did manage to stay under the old $300 a week limit. And only looking at my shopping, I kept it under $250 a week. Nearly on budget.

But I have to cop some of the blame for her crazy shopping trips, because we've learned that if I keep the pantry stocked with all the crap she likes, then she doesn't need to go to the grocery store, and she doesn't go in there and go nuts. As an example, that trip to Coles on the 27th was the Friday after I'd gone back to work, and her last day off. We'd gone to the movies, then to lunch, but she wanted to go buy herself a bag of chips, and I didn't want to go. So she dropped me off at home and then went by herself.

Keeping in mind that a bag of Kettle chips costs around $4 a bag, and that I had just done the grocery shopping the day before, she ended up spending nearly $20. On what? I have no freaking idea. I'd bought her everything she'd asked for on Thursday. The only reason I didn't buy her a bag of chips is because she told me not to, because she started a new healthy-eating kick that week. Apparently the healthy-eating kick was over by Friday, when she had popcorn and a Coke at the movies, then a burger, chips and a Pepsi at lunch, and then decided she needed a bag of chips and whatever-the-hell-else she bought that afternoon.

So a couple weeks of junk-food bingeing and drunken debauchery didn't break the bank, and while we could've saved that money for our summer vacation, we still managed to hit 80% of our holiday savings target for July, so that's cool.