Weekly Shopping Trip

Tonight I decided to hit CVS, Walgreens, and Publix. I didn't purchase any food items at Walgreens so I am not going to really discuss my purchases, but I had a $5 off $20 coupon and decided to pick up a few of my free-bate items. I guess I am still stashing HBA (health and beauty aids), but only when they are free with money back!

At CVS, I decided to take advantage of their $20 Pepsi deal and get $10 in ECBs back. In the end, I had 6 12-packs of Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi for ~$4. As you'll see later, it put me over my $25/week rule (not by much though), but it gives us drinks for our lunches for about a month and a half if we don't drink it at home. I decided it was worth the overage because it became the cheapest option for lunch beverages that I can get.

Earlier in the day, I also made a stop at the bread store. This is a must if I want to save money on whole wheat bread. We don't eat white bread. I spent $5.02 there and got 2 loaves of whole wheat bread (not the enriched wheat flour kind either!) and 1 pack each of lite wheat hamburger and hot dog buns. If I had bought these at Publix I would have spent an extra $3-4 dollars total and not been able to buy ice cream for my sweetie this week.

And speaking of ice cream (which is dairy and within my guidelines), here's what I took home from Publix. Not too bad, though grapes are still expensive! I don't know how to get them any cheaper. My only consolation is that this bag has at least 8 servings of fruit for $4, which is $0.50/serving. This is still on the high side for fresh fruit, but cheaper than processed snacks.

All in all, I spent about $28.50 this week. I hope this isn't breaking my own rules, but I don't feel bad about it since I still haven't spent up all the underage from my first week. At this point though, I've just about eaten all of that up!