Time spent saving money on groceries last week (Jan. 30-Feb. 5): 6 hours. That's six times the U.S. average of one hour. My figure includes time spent getting the kids ready to go shopping, travel time (we often walk) and store time, in addition to time getting my coupons together and looking for deals online.
How much I saved: $100 or more*, spending $92 at CVS, Jewel-Osco, Dominick's, Pan's Foods and Woodman's.
My hourly rate: Since I spent 5 additional hours saving money compared to the average mom, and spent $100, my hourly rate for working at saving money was $20.
Was it worth it? To me, yes -- any way I look at it.
My first criteria was whether I saved more per hour than I pay for housecleaning services, since I would probably spend more time on housework if I weren't couponing. I pay about $20/hour for housecleaning**, and I'd rather clip coupons and shop than clean the house.
Another way to look at it is whether I could earn more than I saved by working an additional 5 hours per week. I can earn about $20 per hour (without really trying) by blogging for various sites; I could earn more if I had more concetration to spare and worked harder to line up better work. HOWEVER, I probably would not have been able to get five hours worth of blogging done while caring for my three children, whereas I did most of my shopping and coupon gathering with at least some of the kids with me. Shopping is something we can do together; it involves interaction and is a lesson in behaving oneself in public. Mom writing at the keyboard is something that does not involve the kids at all.
The only drawback I see to this trade-off is that I could be developing my writing career and gaining more career satisfaction if I devoted an extra 5 hours per week to writing instead of shopping. To get that satisfaction, however, I'd really need to get a babysitter for that time, which would take $10-$12 from each hour of my earnings. So then the choice would be, work for $8 an hour or shop for $20.
Also keep in mind that if I'd earned an extra $100 this week, I'd have to pay taxes on it. Savings are tax free.
Here's a breakdown of the time I spent planning and shopping this week. All savings are what the store calculated I saved based on sales and coupons. So this doesn't count what I saved when I strategically visited a cheaper store like Pan's or Woodman's:
Wednesday: Spent 1.5 hours (about 1/2 planning and 1 hour shopping), all with kids. Saved $23.08 at Pan's Foods.
Thursday: 1 hour total. Spent 15 minutes clipping and gathering coupons for Jewel shop, with kids. Spent 45 minutes on Restaurant.com (unsuccessfully looking for certificates for Saturday breakfast) and Upromise (took a long time to log in cause coudln't find password, registered credit cards), without kids.
Friday: 3 hours total. Half hour comparing Walgreen's and Diapers.com deals, go thru Diapers.com deal unsuccessfuly, decide to do neither. 5 min. checking Avenu and entering grocery cards on Upromise. 90 minutes walking to and shopping at Jewel and CVS. One hour driving to Dominick's before picking up the husband, that counts getting 3 kids into warm clothes and car seats. All with kids. Saved $32.68 at Jewel and $23.08 at CVS. Saved $18 at Dominick's.
Saturday: 15 minutes total. 10 minutes at CVS looking for SoyJoy (while picking up cough drops and newspaper). 5 minutes printing coupons.
Sunday: 20 minutes total. 5 minutes printing coupons. 15 minutes stopping into Woodman's because my parents wanted fresh bread for dinner. Not sure how much I saved -- Woodman's prices are lower than elsewhere even though not everything I picked up was on sale.
Monday: 0 time, $0 savings.
Tuesday: 0 time, 0 savings.
* I say "or more" because I did not calculate the savings of clearance items, nor was I able to calculate how much I saved by stocking up on a few staples at Woodman's prices compared to regular store prices.
** Am I paying too much for housecleaning? The leftie in me says that it's quite just to pay my cleaner as much for busting her butt as I make for sitting at a computer tapping keys, but the frugalista in me wonders if I shouldn't be paying less.
Graphic courtesy of Dover Design Graphics.
5 Comments
kris said:
This may help you save time on restaurant.com next time
Kris said:
I do track my savings, but have the same trouble with Aldi. I save a ton by buying things there instead of other stores, but it's tough to track. I posted a savings/spending summary for the last third of the year.
http://frugalmomskitchen.blogspot.com/2010/01/2009-year-end-review.html
Frugal7 said:
I've learnt to clip coupons and compare prices as a better way to save. I'm not sure whether i should consider my self to be "frugal." For my online shopping, I prefer Onewayshopping.com, for coupon deals I prefer couponmom.com.
cloranz said:
I think the only way to really know how much you "saved" is to ask yourself that if you spent zero time planning and couponing and just went to the store once or twice during the week to buy food, would you have actually spent $192 in one week? I kinda doubt it, don't you? Because that would mean you would typically spend $750 - $800 a month, which seems pretty outrageous. I'm not sure how you can calculate what you save other than to compare it to what you would have spent without any planning (and just buying what you wanted, not buying things because they were on sale). Does that make sense to you? I'd be interested to hear what you think.
-Christina
Carrie Kirby said:
From an 2009 AP article: "The USDA tracks actual spending and breaks it down into four categories: thrifty, low-cost, moderate, and liberal. For a family of four ... with two kids under age 5, that spending ranges from a "thrifty" $524 per month to a "liberal" $1,014."
So $800 a month would not be outrageous for many families the size of mine, and in comments I got when I wrote about this on MSN Money (a more average, less thrifty sample), $200 a week was the most common grocery spending cited. So even though it seems outrageous to us cheapskates, $800 is not really way out there.
You're right, though, in that I probably still wouldn't spend $800 if I did zero preparation and made only one trip. It's very tough to pinpoint how much I would have spent because I shop so differently now. I buy some items because they are cheap that I would not normally splurge on; due to Super Bowl sales I purchased four bags of snack chips in the past few weeks (three were $1 each and one was free) which I will keep on hand for parties and just, well, the kind of day when I need some chips and dip.
One thing I didn't talk about in this post is that -- despite all the talk about the processed foods one can buy with coupons -- I have significantly upgraded my family's budget through couponing. The major upgrade was buying our own 1/2 side of beef, which is now half paid for through weekly grocery savings. That is, when I have a week that I don't need to shop due to all the stockpiling I've done on other weeks, I devote that week's $80 to the beef purchase.
So, long answer, but because I am frugal I probably wouldn't spend as much as my official "savings" show, if I didn't spend so much time on this hobby. I would probably spend $125 or so, but I probably would not be able to get as good stuff for that.
Also don't forget that I am now including my CVS and Wag's out of pocket expenses in my grocery budget, and have folded in household needs such as toiletries and diapers. I KNOW I would be spending at least $10 a week on diapers alone if it weren't for couponing, instead of the $5 or less I spend with couponing.
Before I started couponing and really aggressively bargain hunting, I was already thrifty.
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