Frugal Framnett

When grocery shopping, that is.

I’ve always heard the theory that shopping the perimeter of the grocery store - buying the fresh foods and not the processed ones - is less expensive overall. Now that my spouse is following a specific meal plan, I’m buying almost exclusively fresh food, when I used to buy a mix of fresh, canned, frozen, and some processed food. And lo and behold, my first week shopping, I spent almost twice my normal grocery budget. Now, some of that was “start up” expenses, foods that I can buy in bulk and use over time, but a lot of it was things I will have to buy on a weekly basis (produce doesn’t last forever, after all). I expected this to be the case, but it begs the question - contrary to popular wisdom, is shopping the perimeter really more expensive?

Source: Why My Perimeter is More Expensive Than My Aisles – I’ve Paid For This Twice Already… (From financial imprisonment to financial independence, a penny at a time. This is one family’s story.)

In the comments section I already explained that she is inviting a question not begging it, but of course there is a larger thought here…

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Getting close to the end of IV I noticed the following. I did not close out week III properly, I left out one record of the totals. Of course this means we spent more than I had originally thought. DOH!

This week, we seem to be ahead of the spending game by quite a bit. However, Sunday is our main grocery day so we can catch up, but we do not have a large shopping list this week. There is only one item Lorie and I can think of we need to purchase and there is no immediate need so if there is no coupon, perhaps we can skip the Sunday trip to the grocery store. However, we are starting to get low on tangerines and almonds, but I think we will be able to defer that to next week.

To date our grocery spending is amounting $76.37/week but like I said I will wait until we close this week to count on that number holding. I am hoping we can pull it down.

Good! We are getting a good idea on what we are spending on groceries and it is more than what I had thought, but it does not seem to be out of line with norms and a fair amount of food is going into storage.
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