Thursday Notes

Good Morning.  

Keeping track of what you are spending on food is an important step in controlling your food budget.  A spread sheet is a good tool.  

column

Month              store  store  store  store  store  total average  
week 1
week 2
week 3
week 4
week 5

average is the total spent so far divided by the weeks recorded.   ie:  55+50 is 105/2.0  or 52.50 average.  (/ is the code for divide. ) ( * is the code for times )

or you can do it by hand making columns with a ruler.

We are sitting at .42 a week under budget for the year.   However, we still have a week to go.   I can justify that because I have purchased bulk hamburger, chicken and sausage.   Because we don't have to buy protein except for eggs, our remaining budget for a while should be a lot lower.   When you buy your groceries in bulk to replentish stock.  It all averages out and you will spend less in the long run.  

If you are going to only one store and buying just a weeks worth of groceries, you are not going to save as much as if you buy things at the lowest possible price at a variety of stores.   If you have a good idea of what is on sale that you need and what you need in the dairy and produce department, you can get in and out of two stores as fast as going to one and wandering around isles making decisions.  Decisions on the fly are almost always bad decisions.   Going to the store without a plan almost always results in buying a bunch of junk food.   Junk food is expensive and not the best nutrition usually.

We can get in and out of two stores with travel time in a little over an hour.   We usually hit the Dollar Tree and Grocery Outlet once a month or so.   The DT is a good resource for facial tissue ( 200 ct ) and other incidentals.  With few exceptions, you can find pocket tissues, stick pens, etc cheaper than anywhere else.   There doesn't make much sense to pay big money for something that you throw away.

We all want quality food.   On four dollars a day, we still eat low fat cuts of meat and real food.   Fake is never better.   Avoiding processed foods by efficiently cooking from scratch is a better alternative than fake food.   You control what goes in it.  

Avoid, too much salt, sugar, trans fats, HFCS, GMO, and hydrogenated oil.   Hydrogenated oil , so the experts say, thickens your blood.   That can't be a good thing.  


note: this was written on our big computer.  My tablet has a virus and we are still working on getting it back to normal.  All I can say is to watch carefully where the things on Facebook are coming from. I'm here to tell you this is a pain in the rear when I already have things to cope with.   LOL   I still say that I am going to write a book entitled:  COPE is a four letter word spelled H E L L.