Food Challenge - Final Week

Dumdadadumdumdumdumdumdumdum dumdadadumdum-dumdumdum (Hummed to the theme of the Lone Ranger)

And the numbers for the 4th and Final week of the Food Challenge are:

Groceries: 28.35
Lunch Out: 30.50
Total: 58.85
Amount Left: 6.14

Our month-long Food Challenge and I am thrilled to announce that we made it with a few dollars to spare! Nowhere near my grand plans of saving at least $50 to send to the food banks but at least we didn’t have any overage. This was definitely a lot harder than we expected and this past week I had to make a conscious effort to deter our eating out. If you’ll notice in our final week’s numbers though Lunching-Out number was definitely on the higher side due to an unexpected get together with the in-laws.

We usually meet them for lunch on most weekends we’re both in town and usually meet somewhere halfway between our two homes. We usually meet at a couple of restaurants our niece loves but this time since we were running errands all morning we met somewhere completely different. Talk about a disaster – food that I wouldn’t even call mediocre, and prices that were more than average did not make for a happy couple. This is one restaurant that we shall not be visiting again. We love eating out but are realizing more and more that unless we have heard really good things about a restaurant we’re unlikely to try something too far off the beaten path. In these days of flavor and value consciousness ~ mediocrity in restaurant food is no longer an acceptable compromise.

To get back on topic ~ with just $6 and change left at the end of the month our food bank donation needs to get rounded up. For this month’s donation we have chosen Feeding America as the recipient of our monies. They are a truly fantastic group and we know our donation will be put to full use.

Lessons Learnt:

1. We are going to work on coming up with a more realistic grocery budget. $300 just won’t cut it in the long term. Look for my next post for more on that topic.
2. We love the idea of donating our grocery savings to a food bank. While the Hubs and I need to discuss this further so far the plan is to alternate our donations between Feeding America and Midday Meal. I’ll set up a running total ticker on the side-bar to keep y’all posted on the number.

P.S. I do admit ~ when Sunday rolled around all I could think about was going to Starbucks for my favorite Chai Latte. It’s my own little luxury that I hadn’t indulged in in-a-while. Did I? You betcha ~ but with a $2 off coupon that cut the price in half. Hmmm maybe I have learnt something this past month after all!