Well, my shopping trip yesterday was a total fiasco! Apparently, No Frills had some download problem and none of the produce that was featured in their flyer was adjusted in their system...so everyone was charged the wrong price all morning.
It was a small shop for me...produce, cheese strings for the kids, conditioner and bar soap and then a couple of odds and ends (parchment paper, choc milk). I try really hard to watch as my stuff scans but at No Frills it's a bit tough to do. I had a really hard time doing it yesterday since I only had a few things (so she scanned them very quickly) and the guy in front of me took his sweet time tucking his change back into his wallet and moving out of the way.
I bagged up my stuff in a hurry (there was someone with a large purchase behind me) and moved out of the way to visually scan my receipt. I soon realized I was waaaaay overcharged for the grapes I bought. In Canada we are metric (kgs as opposed to lbs) so it is weighed and priced that way at checkout but the signage and the flyers are all Imperial prices and then has the Metric price in fine print. (So the grapes said $1.47 a pound and then written tiny was $3.28 a kg). I don't know why this is...it makes it really tough to catch mistakes as the checkout or be sure of them once you're looking at your receipt but anyway...
I went right to the service desk and got that adjusted. She just gave me cash back...they'd been open a little over an hour and I guess had been alerted to the fact that there was a scanning problem. So, I got the grapes for free. She was flustered, which made me flustered...not sure why and I forgot to double check the other produce items. So...it wasn't until I got home that I found that the bananas were wrong and the cucumbers were too!
DH was surprised (and a wee bit impatient) to find out I was going back to the store over the mistakes. He said it was a waste of time for thirty cents. I told him some of it should be free, so it would definitely be more than $0.30 (that was only the overcharge on the bananas anyway!)
I went back after my workout so it was around 11 am by this point. They had just fixed the problem but I went right up to the desk and explained and a different lady was there to assist me. She did a fancy refund on my card (and I had already made the payment before I found the mistake
so that's going to be fun!) and I got the bananas and one of the three cucumbers I bought for free. My refund was $3.99 and the refund for the grapes was $7.50 (although the actual sale price should have been around $4) in cash, so it was a big fat mess for me.
I think I got it all squared away...although I'm still going to have overpaid my cc by $3.99...but WHAT a crazy morning!
On a happier note...we booked our Paris trip this week!
It was a few hundred more than I had managed to save up though, so to make up the difference I stole $400 from my savings account. I have to pay that back STAT, so I've cut my May grocery budget down to $200 and then I have $60 in rewards dollars.
It will cover the next 5 Fridays (Apr 29, May 6, 13, 20, 27) so it is going to be tight! But, my freezer is full...the pantry is well stocked and I took a few precautions this week in order to ensure we'd only need to buy milk, yogurt, eggs and produce (stuff I can't really stock up on...I call them-the basics) for those 5 weeks.
Precautions:
1. Life cereal was on sale at FreshCo last week for $1.97 a box...I've got 14 of them on my basement pantry shelves. I also used up the lone $5 in
Walmart rewards dollars that I had on that credit card (I hardly shop there anymore, so I thought I'd use it up) to get two boxes of other flavours of cereal. So that should take us through at least three weeks and I'll watch for more sales to cover the rest of the month.
2. I had $85 in rewards at Shoppers Drug Mart. I used them up on Monday because there were some good things on sale last week. I got 3 gallons of milk, 2 dozen eggs, 3 large cans pea soup, butter, 2 frozen pizzas, 2 packages tortillas, honey, 2 frozen lasagnas and 2 boxes of wings. It practically killed me to do it...
$85 elsewhere would have gotten me so much more...but it is what it is. Anyway, that strategic shop helped to top up the freezer and will be helpful for dinners during May.
3. I also bought a 22 pound bag of flour so I can do some baking at home. I can make my own bread, buns, pancakes, waffles, pizza dough and pastries should the need arise. The honey from Shoppers was necessary for making homemade granola bars that the kids take to school in their lunches. I made two dozen of them yesterday so they are set for a couple of weeks...when they get low, I'll make more. I also stocked up yesterday on enough cheese strings to get them through the entire month.
4. DH's soda will be on sale Monday only for a good price, so I'll stock up for the month then.
5. I bought a bottle of syrup and one of ketchup so we should be good for a while.
6. I've got $100 in MISC money that can be accessed if absolutely necessary.
Basically, the only base not covered is butter. I have half a pound of butter in the fridge and that's it! I'm waiting for it to go on sale for $2.88 a pound (the lowest I can get around here) and then I'll stock up. I have access to other money, not included in the $200 should the sale happen during the next 5 weeks. In the meantime we are rationing, but if we need to buy a pound at a higher price...we will do it!
I generally spend about $35 weekly on the basics so I figure a budget of $40 a week will cover those things as well as a few extra bucks for anything we may run out of over the course of the month. My plan is to spend the $60 in rewards in $20 increments, so three weeks will see me buying stuff with $20 in rewards and the other $20 charged to my card. The other two weeks will see me straight up using the card. DH's soda will also be charged to the card. If I can keep to this plan, the $60 in rewards will be used up between Apr 29, May 6 and May 13, and about $80 of the cash should be gone by then too. If I only use $40 on my card for each of the final two weeks, I'll come in under budget...but I'll have $40 worth of wiggle room should I need to get something that would put me over the $40 a week budget (I have a suspicion that my dishwasher tabs will run out in two or three weeks and maybe our TP too).
Well, that was brutally long...but that's where I currently stand! I am still working on eating down the upstairs freezer. The bananas were all used but one (although I added two yesterday) and quite a bit has been cleared out over the last couple of weeks. I found a banana muffin recipe that called for oil instead of butter so I made 4 dozen of them and they worked great! I had a crazy busy week this week, so I let it slip a little bit but I'll get back to it on Monday and finish the job!!
Have a great weekend everyone!
