Several girls in our lifegroup attended a session at our church last week about how to save money on groceries and household items. The woman who "taught" the class buys all her household products (diapers, cleaning supplies, toilet paper, toiletries, paper towels, etc) and groceries to feed her family of four nutritious meals throughout the week for $250 a MONTH. The best part? She does it all by shopping at PUBLIX and drug stores.
Through a somewhat complicated, yet well organized system of blog reading, coupon clipping, and sale shopping she condensed her money saving methods into an understandable, albeit overwhelming, "How to seminar." One of the most compelling aspects of the session was her focus our stewardship responsibility and that regardless of our "ability" to pay full price, why not make the effort to save money and give away the money we save to those in greater need? Or, why not use the coupons we clip to get "free or nearly free" items and donate those? While I can't get the visual on whether Jesus would be a coupon clipper, I was certainly convinced and ready to give it a try.
To be clear, there are two "games." The grocery store game (www.thegrocerygame.com) and drug store deals. I decided to try my hand at Publix and CVS this week. So, here is what I bought for the week:
All of these are items our family uses and should feed us for the week (along with things I already had at home). We don't need the household items immediately, but they are not perishable so I guess I started my "stockpile!"
Now, here is what I spent:
CVS Retail Price: $93.96
I Spent: $39.43
Savings: $54.53
Publix Retail Price: $114.87
I spent: $64.45
Savings: $50.42
Total Expense to us this week: $103.88
Total Savings: $104.95
I am a little disappointed with the CVS performance, but I learned a few valuable lessons this week which I hope help in the future! Thanks for indulging me in this post as I learn! I am blogging about it more for accountability than anything else because I really want to try to keep this up. It is effort, but totally worth it!
In other "good deals" news I was in the Galleria today (primarily visiting one elephant on the carousel with my toddler), but I also picked up a price list for the "Aveda Institute" Salon (I think this is their "beauty school where students perform services). I thought some of the prices were great! (Although, I'm not sure I would trust a hair cut or color to them). Some of the prices are:
Haircut and style: $15
Foils and Highlights for medium (above shoulder) hair: $40
30 minute Manicure: $12
30 minute Pedicure: $14
30 minute facial: $20
60 minute facial: $40
Brow Waxing: $8
If anyone has been here leave a comment and let me know what you thought!
3 comments:
Hey! I know some girls who've been out there for mani/pedis and enjoyed them . . . but I'm pretty sure I'm not brave enough to let them touch my hair!
Completely agreed--Not that I have great hair or anything, but I need all the "experienced" help I can get!
Hey Abs --
I know nothing about the Aveda school here, but the one in DC was great. Many of my friends got their hair cut there and it always looked great.
Also -- Oprah had a show on last week about saving money and this "coupon mom" from ATL was on there and she totally inspired me to get on the bandwagon. Let's talk soon to swap secrets.
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