My Costco Trip
I was warned. I read countless blogs about having a list when going to Costco, but I couldn’t help myself. I got several things that weren’t on my list, BUT it’s all stuff that I’m going to use / consume.
Things on my original list:
Fabric Softener
Diet Dr. Pepper
Sugar-Free Red Bull
Wheat bread
Paper Towels
Ramen
Peanut Butter
Popcorn
Triple Box of Chex Cereal (for Party Mix eventually)
Milk
Trash bags
Things I got that WEREN’T on the list:
Bud Light
Ponds Face Cleansing Cloths (I’m tired of my make up staining my face towels)
Coffee (needed it, but wasn’t on the list)
Tortillas
Bagel Bites (did not need this)
Chicken Patties
Chicken strips
Liquid Plumber (for my shower drain…needed this)
Clorox Toilet tabs (was going to get those at the grocery store anyway…saved me a trip…for the next year or two)
So, yeah. Impulse shopping. I’m hosting Wednesday night dinner this week, though, so now I have chicken for it! Ooh…unless I do tacos…I have ground venison and a couple taco mix boxes (from my parents). I’d just need cheese and lettuce. Hmm. Either way, I’m going to eat everything that I got, and it will cut down on my grocery shopping for the next couple of months…maybe longer. That Red Bull? With 24 cans, I’ll probably still have some left in January…maybe February.
The best part of getting so much in bulk for low prices is that I’m not going to be crazy about what people eat when they’re at my place. I won’t be thinking in terms of how much their meals cost and I can just relax and enjoy their company…assuming they’re enjoyable…I don’t assume that about the people that I hang out with anymore most of the time. I’m just hoping that R’s friend A has moved up north already like she was planning. Nice girl, but she brings up people / stories in really weird ways…people that no one else has ever heard of. Last week she (out of nowhere) says that “John had a shoplifting problem.” Everyone stared at her because none of us had heard of him, and we were watching something that did not pertain to stealing, people named John, or anything else. Just. Weird. My friend, H, is also moving at the end of the month, about an hour away from us. I don’t really care. I know that I’ll still see her a lot, so I don’t mind if she moves. The more I hang out with her the more she annoys me (not just me, though!) because she seems to think that others should be impressed by her, whether it’s for her clothes, hair, running, foods that she likes, etc. So curtailing hanging out from once a week to once a month is fine. I’m sure that I’ll even be excited to see her when I haven’t for a while because she really is a great person (despite what I whined about above).
So there you go. My Costco trip. It cost me an arm and a leg ($242. 29) but I’m stocked up like crazy, so I’m pretty happy with it.
My Expenses, 16 October 2008
Up-to-date expenses:
Gas x 4: $196.00
Car Tax and Decal fee: $89.38
Bank fee: $25.00
Maryland Renaissance Festival: $48
Parking: $1.50
EZPass x 2: $70
Car Loan: $88.71
Student Loan: $174.01
Church/Charity: $130.00
Groceries: $15.42
Income: $1541.80
Expenses: $838.02
Net Effect: $703.78
Groceries bought:
1 gallon 2% milk: $3.99
8-pack of eggs: $1.29
Whole Wheat flour: $2.19
1 quart buttermilk: $1.59
Chocolate syrup (24 oz.): $2.19
Whipped cream (tall can): $3.79
I want to start to do a little more cooking / baking at home and I started with the biscuits last night. For that recipe I needed buttermilk and whole wheat flour which I don’t normally buy (never actually bought either before) so I didn’t have any on hand. With the rest of the buttermilk, I can make 2 1/2 batches of the same biscuits again (22-23 biscuits), or find another recipe.
The chocolate syrup and whipped cream? Well, sometimes I’ll buy ice cream and these are good to have on hand, but the real reason is coffee. I don’t like coffee. But I DO like blending coffee, milk, ice, and chocolate syrup to make something like a Mocha Freeze (something that I used to get at Borders ALL the time when I was a senior in high school, working at an Old Navy next door). Then I put whipped cream on top. I like it and it’s a good way to use up all the coffee after B makes a pot while visiting and doesn’t drink it all.
I had a bunch of leftovers from last night because one fewer person came than originally expected, so I’ll have that for lunch today and tomorrow. I might be able to have some left after that, too! Also, I have a ton of biscuits left because I made a double batch, intending to have extras.
It was funny when R and A came in last night because I had my hands in the biscuit dough, flour everywhere, pasta cooking, and cut up chicken breast waiting to be cooked. R said that I looked like something out of a movie or TV show. I’m terrible at keeping things clean while I cook…especially if I’m doing multiple things at once. Next time I try making biscuits it’ll have to be when I’m not cooking, or cooking something simple like spaghetti.
Anyway, I have my updated totals above. I got gas for $40 yesterday! It was a full tank minus a couple gallons, maybe, so it was definitely below $50! I hope that I can wait until Monday afternoon to get more gas, but it’ll depend on B and what we do throughout the weekend.
My Cookbook Review
I feel like I should preface this post by saying that it is NOT sponsored. As of now I’ve never done a sponsored post and have no plans to do so in the future…but…you know…maybe I will one day. I have no real problem against it.
Anyway, I checked out The Everything Meals on a Budget Cookbook by Linda Larsen and I really dig it. Firstly, I checked out the book because I’m trying hard to find cheap meals that I can make without eating Ramen all the time (though we established in my last post that I love Ramen). This is also beneficial to me because every two or three Wednesdays, I cook for myself and 2-3 friends and I don’t want to break my bank just because I’m serving more people than usual.
Larsen’s book is great. It’s broken up into categories like breakfast, breads, appetizers, soups, salads, and entrees by type of meat, to name a few. Then each recipe puts an approximate cost per serving on the title line. Tonight I’m going to make the flaky biscuits which are estimated to be 16 cents a biscuit/serving, but there are recipes for as little as 3 cents a serving (pita chips) up to $2.39/serving (Shrimp and Grits).
Most of it is good for families and not a single gal like me. I rarely cook for myself though I’d like to get into the habit of doing it, so I don’t keep a lot of staples on hand knowing that I’ll probably use them on a given day or week. This makes buying in bulk a little hard for me unless it’s for something that won’t go bad for a long time, or something that I can freeze. Presently I’m starting a list of items that I go through constantly (food or no) so that I can make my first Costco trip (using my card…I’ve been there with my parents before).
The book also has a guide at the beginning on ways to cut corners and ways to save more money on things. There is a handy dandy “Actual Yield” chart that tells how many ounces of meet you’re getting once it’s been cooked, and comparing that to it’s original price. I was surprised that because of the actual yield, boneless chicken and pork chops could wind up being cheaper than the bone-in variety. It’s important to note that she used average prices, so recipes will be cheaper/more expensive depending on where you live.
I’m definitely going to keep some of these recipes on hand before I have to return the book…and I might ask for a copy for Christmas, too. It’s right up my money-saving alley.
My Expenses, 15 October 2008
Up-to-date expenses:
Gas x 3: $156.00
Car Tax and Decal fee: $89.38
Bank fee: $25.00
Maryland Renaissance Festival: $48
Parking: $1.50
EZPass x 2: $70
Car Loan: $88.71
Student Loan: $174.01
Church/Charity: $130.00
Income: $1541.80
Expenses: $782.60
Net Effect: $759.20
Today after work I’m going to have to get gas (boo!), but the gas station has it for $3.12/gallon (yay!). I might be able to get a tank for less than $50 which would be super. I’m also going to have to bite the bullet and go grocery shopping…for things like milk, eggs, and random other ingredients to make biscuits to go with tonight’s Wednesday Night Dinner. I borrowed a GREAT cookbook from the library that I’ll post about later and it’s estimated in the book that the biscuits will cost about 16 cents apiece to make…we’ll see. The other part of my meal is just chicken fettucine and I’ll need stuff like milk and oil to get that going. Luckily the chicken and the fettucine was provided for by my parents the last time I was at their house, so it’ll be cheap for me.
I’ve also got to do something about lunch. I’ll bet that I’ll have enough leftovers for tomorrow’s lunch (maybe Friday’s?), but after that I’m really going to have to start getting PB&J ingredients. Also, I’ve been eating leftovers at home for dinner each night recently, so the only time that the Ramen was broken into was over the weekend when I really wanted some…I know…you don’t often hear of someone craving Ramen, but I totally was. Mmm.
My Expenses, 13 October 2008
Up-to-date expenses:
Gas x 3: $156.00
Car Tax and Decal fee: $89.38
Bank fee: $25.00
Maryland Renaissance Festival: $48
Parking: $1.50
EZPass: $35
Car Loan: $88.71
Student Loan: $174.01
Church: $100.00
Income: $1541.80
Expenses: $717.60
Net Effect: $824.20
So B and I went to Mom and Dad’s last night and they gave me four bags of groceries! Some of it was random, like frozen pound cake, but there was a bunch of other stuff, too. Enough that I probably won’t have to buy anything before I cook for my friends on Wednesday night! Yay! Since one of my goals for this month was to eat on less than $2.50/day, I believe that I’m totally going to meet that (if you consider my food cost for the day to equal up to whatever I spend on food in October divided by 31…which I do). So I am sitting pretty right now! Yay!
My Expenses, 10 October 2008
Up-to-date expenses:
Gas x 2: $106.00
Car Tax and Decal fee: $89.38
Bank fee: $25.00
Maryland Renaissance Festival: $48
Parking: $1.50
EZPass: $35
Car Loan: $88.71
Student Loan: $174.01
Income: $1541.80
Expenses: $567.60
Net Effect: $974.20
Paycheck includes my bonus, minus the taxes taken from it. I did NOT have to buy groceries yesterday since I still had a frozen pot pie in the freezer. Since I’m getting my Costco card from my parents on Sunday, maybe I can hold off on groceries until Monday evening when I can buy from there.
I’m going to a housewarming party on Sunday night, so I’m going to bring a bottle of wine that I already have on hand so that I don’t have to pay extra for something. This month the only gift that I’ll have to buy is for my cousin’s baby’s baptism and I think that I can keep that cheap. Anyway, I’m liking the way my net effect is looking so far, but please keep in mind that I haven’t paid any utilites/rent yet, and those are much bigger.
Also, I just realized that I never put down my loan payments from October 1st! Whoops!
My Bonus
So I found out today that my bonus is $500! How cool is that?! They’re including it in with the paycheck, so I don’t know how that effects what taxes are taken out or whether they will take 3% for my 401K or not, but I’m still excited. One of my goals was to save as much as possible this month to start recreating my emergency fund and now I’ll actually have something in there!
It’s interesting: I’ve read a lot about people tithing and getting good things back to them, but I started getting a little discouraged, thinking that maybe I should cut back on what I donate because all I saw was money flying out of my checking account. (For those of you keeping close watch on my expenses, you may have noticed that I didn’t put down my tithe as an expense. That’s because I went to B’s church on Sunday and I prefer to give to my own church. I’ll double my tithe this weekend). I’m not trying to say that I got the bonus because I tithe, but I am saying that this came just when I needed it and I’m grateful to God for that. Apparently not everyone in the company got a bonus, so I’m just glad that I did.
In other news, I MIGHT have to go grocery shopping today for lunch stuff (bread, peanut butter, jelly) because SOMEONE (B) ate three of my yogurts without telling me. Big mistake. I wouldn’t have found out if he’d eated an even number and stuck to the same flavors. When I looked this morning, I had three yogurts of three different flavors, while I always eat two a day of the same flavor. Oh, am I ever going to pull some passive-aggressive crap on him about this later!
My Expenses, 6 October 2008
Up-to-date expenses:
Gas: $53.00
Car Tax and Decal fee: $89.38
Bank fee: $25.00
Maryland Renaissance Festival: $48 (1 adult ticket, 5 cups of mead, 2 turkey legs. I bought a turkey leg for L in lieu of gas money)
Income: $0
Expenses: $215.38
Net Effect: -$215.38
The festival was a bit expensive, especially for one day, but I have such a good time there and I plan for it to be my main fun thing of October…and perhaps November. Keep in mind that I’m not going to Busch Gardens with other friends next week (that weekend would have easily cost over $150 for me), so this works out much better. Also, I don’t have to buy groceries just yet! When I was at my parents’ house on Friday afternoon, they loaded a trashbag full of frozen food for me, including some ground venison (Dad killed / butchered it himself), hot dogs, and stromboli. Assuming that I didn’t feed B at all this month, I could probably go a few weeks without buying anythig. I haven’t even had to start on my October meal plan because I’m still eating leftovers. Woo!
My Bright Side
Now that it’s October and a new, fresh month, I’m going to start looking on the bright side of things. So even though I was stuck in traffic yesterday and my car stalled again, absolutely freaking me out, I still said a prayer for the people whose accident caused the back up and got over it.
When I found out that when R suggested pizza for dinner, she meant to ORDER pizza instead of getting large frozen pizzas for last night’s dinner at her house, I started to freak a little. This wasn’t in my budget and I only had $3 in cash, but I’d already agreed to it. I went home and found my hidden coin stash (which took a good ten minutes of searching) and among the rolled up coins ($24 was rolled up) was about $3.00 in loose quarters! Score! I decided that I’d use that, but remembered to ask R how much money each person was supposed to have gotten back from our beach trip in August. It turned out that the amount was $7 per person per night and $7 was my share of the pizza we ordered, so I didn’t spend anything last night. Granted, this was money that was owed to me that now I wouldn’t get back, but that’s okay. The big deal was that I didn’t have to pay out of this month’s budget. Also, we split three medium pizzas and cinnastix between four of us and I pretty much got one whole pizza minus a couple pieces that C ate. The three leftover pieces are in my fridge now, so I got exactly what I paid for, for once.
I really think that I can meet my goal of $2.50/day for food since I have so much in the fridge / freezer and pantry that I can eat before I need to go grocery shopping. Also, this is the average that I want to meet…if I have a day where I have Ramen for dinner, that’s just 20 cents…actually, it’s free for the first twelve meals since B bought a 12-pack for me last weekend. So there might be quite a few days when it only costs me a dollar or so for food. I’m looking forward to it.
While searching for the hidden coins, I found a few books that I can list on half.com, too! Yay!
Something else I just noticed recently is that my ankles aren’t swelling up like crazy each month. I pinned it as bad circulation or something to do with my time of the month, but I noticed that they didn’t swell up in August right after the beach. Could it be the relaxation from said beach? I doubt it. The only thing that I’ve done differently is lose weight. So was it bad circulation because of being almost overweight? I don’t know, but I’m glad that I don’t have to sleep with my feet propped up on pillows for a week each month. Awesome! More things to be happy about!
My Grocery Extravaganza–Not a good thing
I can’t seem to help blowing all my money on groceries. Okay, not ALL my money. I’m spending WAY too much, though, as I’ve complained before.
What made me spend more than I should have this month?
1. Cooking for RC. Even though I got the fish for free, I had to buy a couple bell peppers, a carton of eight eggs, ground ginger, olive oil and honey for the meal. Not hugely expensive, but I wouldn’t have bought any of those otherwise (except maybe the eggs).
2. RC had a cookout on Saturday and I bought 3 big cans of baked beans. I heated up two cans and still brought a lot of it home, as people attending were more interested in drinking than eating. I’ll definitely eat it myself, though, so it won’t go to waste, but I wish that I hadn’t bought so much.
3. This was rather stupid of me. I got a craving for party mix; not Chex mix, but party mix. My aunt makes the best party mix in the world (though she’s never given me the recipe…I’ll have to get it from my cousin) and sometimes I try to kind of make it. Anyway, this “forced” me to buy four boxes of cereal, nuts, bagel chips, pretzels, and seasoned salt. Unfortunately, once I was making it from an inferior recipe that I found online, I started remembering other things that my aunt includes, like Kix cereal, and I was bummed that I didn’t have that. I made it anyway, but I didn’t stir it enough while it baked, so some of it burned…still edible, but not awesome. B ate it anyway, though, and so did I.
Anyway, I have tons of leftover party mix ingredients if I want to make it again (and I’m sure that I will), but I shouldn’t have spent the money on that. I did get generic cereal where I could…but I still feel foolish.
There will be no more of this crap starting Wednesday. As soon as October hits, I’m sticking to my menu of Ramen and things. B bought me a 12-pack of Ramen this weekend that we didn’t open…it was $2.50…then I saw it for $2.39 at another grocery store, so I’ll be going there in the future.
I have a list of everything that I’ll need to buy for October and I’m going to work hard at sticking to things. No more fulfilling cravings!
Be on the lookout for my list of October goals!
