Recent Shopping Trip

Stevie and I did a fortnightly grocery run the other day.  On a $75 a week grocery budget that meant an upper limit of $150.  We were shopping locally (New World) so not necessarily the cheapest supermarket in the world, however they did have the coupon special on… not that we had any coupons as I reckon through temptation they actually cost more than you save.

Our list is never particularly exciting these days and doesn’t vary much.  So we zoomed around the tinned fruit, creamed corn ,tuna, cheap-as bread, seasonal veges etc, etc until we got to the dairy cabinet.  I needed butter and cheese, the two items I have vowed not to buy if they exceed a certain price. The cheapest butter was $5!!!…  so that was out of reach (my limit is $3-99) and actually drove me to making some butter when I got home, which was surprisingly successful.  There was cheese on special, $8-99 if you had the coupon, a whopping $14-99 without.  I put 3 in my trolley as that is a good special and right on my cheese price limit, an opportunity to stock up before diary prices get out of hand again which I think is currently on the cards.

We have (in our own minds) got so good at cheap shopping that we don’t  normally need a running tally to come in under budget, but I had bought some meat and chocolate, so was concerned reaching check-out that we may have over spent. I asked Stevie what she thought and she reckoned we might be just over.  Sure enough the total came to over $160. Luckily the courteous check-out operator scanned her key coupon card for us and took the total down to around $145. We were really happy as we had got all that cheese, a few treats and still came in under budget.  The trick now is to make all those groceries last a fortnight.