This post is dedicated to the family side of life. I don't often get into the depths of the every day life, more rather how I try and balance the multisport lifestyle with life in general.
If you have read the blog for a while, you might gather that our family is pretty much textbook middle class. We don't struggle, but if one of us is out of work, we would be in serious trouble. We had some serious times with our second child being in the hospital and needing surgeries 5 times in 4 months. We have also had hard times with Em having chronic foot problems and having 3 surgeries in 2011 alone. I say that to relate how we came upon ways to save money at the store. We are as smart with our money as possible but sometimes being smart just isn't enough. Em has taken to a few ways to find deals on mostly food and every day house items.
Normally I wouldn't think anyone would want to hear about how we saved a sizable portion of money at the store last Friday night until I posted the picture on twitter of our carts and asked people to guess how much we were looking at spending. I got more twitter traffic than in the previous year of being on twitter. I guess money sparks peoples' interests!
To be honest I thought we would end up leaving a lot at the register as the "deals" my wife would try to use wouldn't work. Well, we started shopping at 7pm and by the time we got home, unloaded (just put the fridge items up and left everything else in the bags in the floor) is was 12:30am. We spent 5 and 1/2 hours shopping.
3 hours loading the carts.
2.5 hours checking out.
As the headline states, we got $1,852 of goods for $276 before taxes. We saved $1,576. Plain and simple.
We spent $300 including taxes for the entirety of two FULL carts. No one guessed $300 on twitter but someone guessed $275. Good work.
Just a sample of what we got:
- 50 bags of candy, each more than 10 ounces. Not just the cheapo stuff, we're talking snickers, reeces peanut butter cups, skittles... the good stuff!
- 42 cans of Chunky soups
- 60 various brands of toothpaste
- 20 boxes of name brand cereals
- Aside from the samples above, we filled two carts over the top and the under cart rack as well.
- It covered my truck bed and filled the extended cab portion.
No, we are not hoarding. We realize some of this stuff we will NEVER use all of and some would expire before we could realistically eat it (unless we are looking at clocking in at more than 300 pounds each). We contribute a lot to Operation Breakthrough here in Kansas City. http://www.operationbreakthrough.org/
They have a closet for toys for birthdays. It was empty and kids cried when they had nothing until we stocked it with 20 plus board games we got a deal on. Band aids, toothpaste, hamburger helper. They said the kids were upset all they had was cereal every day for breakfast. We found a deal and will be donating 15 to 20 boxes of Pillsbury toaster strudel.
It's a pretty cool feeling to contribute besides just forking over money (which we are limited on). Through the deals my wife finds and spends a large amount of time on, we help our family and others.
Thanks for reading and just wanted to share how we make it work.
2 comments:
I saw those pics on twitter, and can't believe it was only $300! I will have to find the coupons for the toaster strudels, my guilty pleasure. I could easily knock a box in a sitting.
Jr - the trick is to donate it fast enough so we don't eat it all!
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