Costco used to be one of my favorite places to shop. Okay, it still is, but I refuse to go there more than once every month or two. The problem is that you can't coupon there. If you buy anything there that you could get with coupons elsewhere, you are spending more. There are a few items that are still cheaper there than I can get elsewhere, but I find that just walking into the store creates a massive hemorrhage in my budget if I am not extremely disciplined going in.
What will I allow myself to buy at Costco, then? Well, produce rarely has coupons, so I can get some of that there. But I have to watch out. No convenient little packages of baby carrots to put in the kids' lunches, for example. It seems like it has a pretty good price when you are there, until you consider the cost of a 5 lb. bag of carrots. If there aren't juice boxes on sale anywhere, those are reasonably priced at Costco. Some baking ingredients in bulk are okay to get there, as well. But really, I think I will be letting my membership expire at the end of the year. It isn't really worth the cost. It might be if I lived closer, but it costs about $6 in gas round-trip, so I think it is more of a burden on my wallet than a help.
If you do have a Costco membership, you might enjoy the free samples they occasionally offer to members. Here is one that is being offered right now. It is a sample of Dove deodorant. http://www.costco.com/Browse/ProductSet.aspx?Prodid=11764061&search=free+sample&Mo=2&cm_re=1_en-_-Top_Left_Nav-_-Top_search&lang=en-US&Nr=P_CatalogName:BC&Sp=S&N=5000043&whse=BC&Dx=mode+matchallpartial&Ntk=Text_Search&Dr=P_CatalogName:BC&Ne=4000000&D=free+sample&Ntt=free+sample&No=0&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Nty=1&topnav=&s=1
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Paying With Cash? Discuss!
I know that Dave Ramsey says to use cash instead of credit cards. I haven't been able to make the switch, though. Don't get me wrong - I don't have credit card debt. I have cards with no annual fee, and I pay them off every month. I use the envelope system, but it is through Mvelopes online. If I switched to cash, I would no longer know where every penny went. Sure, I would use physical envelopes instead of the electronic version, but there wouldn't be any way to see what stores I went to without digging through receipts. I would also be giving up my cash back rewards, which are normally around $30/month. I apply these to my credit card balance before I make my payment, and it really helps.
Another thing I worry about is how to allocate the money between my husband and myself. I do the majority of the grocery shopping for the family, but he does pick up milk, bread and bananas when he gets gas sometimes. He also does a monthly - or so - stop at Cub for food to stock his fridge and cupboard at work for lunches and snacks. I never know he is going to make this trip until I see it in Mvelopes. I don't think he ever knows he is going to go do that trip until he has a day where he doesn't want to go to the gym at lunch, so he decides to take care of that instead. I guess we could give him his own envelope for his groceries and for his sporadic stops at the gas station, but from month to month, the amount he does changes so much, I don't know how to plan for it.
My next concern is about losing cash. When we do have cash around, we tend to lose track of where we spent it - that or else we lose it. I think I would do pretty well with it. I have a coupon binder, and it has a zipper pouch inside that would hold several envelopes, and I think I could easily start using cash out of envelopes and stick the receipts into the envelopes. But my husband does not have a coupon binder. He has a money clip. I don't think he would want to start carrying around his planner all the time. He says he would like to try going to cash, but I am pretty sure he would want some cash in his clip, and there would be little categorizing or saving of receipts. Sure, they could go in his pocket, but then they could either end up on his desk at work or in the laundry at home.
I understand the concept that if you only have the cash that you take to the store with you, that is all you spend, so you save by not impulse buying. But what about when you see a great deal on something that you would like to stock up on, but can't because you didn't know about the temporary price reduction or clearance and don't have the money with you? For example, when I find my favorite spaghetti sauce for $1 per can, I buy a dozen cans of it. Is the trade-off of not having the money with you for times like those worth the money you save?
I have a weekly grocery budget. I am sticking to it fairly well. Not perfectly, but fairly well. Dining out used to be a category that we struggled with, but we are doing better since we started focusing on it. The only category that consistently is over budget is the home maintenance category. Something is always breaking around here, and we really can't wait to have the money in that envelope all the time, so we transfer from another envelope to cover it. Will switching to cash really make a difference? Or will I miss out on my cash back rewards and great sales and spend extra gas going to the bank for cash and risk losing my cash and not see a benefit?
I want to know what has worked for you. What struggles did you have with using cash? Did you just transfer money from other cash envelopes when you wanted to go over budget? Was it the envelope system that really made the difference, or was it using cash that did it, or a combination of the two? How did you work with a spouse on it? Do you both have to be committed to using envelopes in order for it to work?
Another thing I worry about is how to allocate the money between my husband and myself. I do the majority of the grocery shopping for the family, but he does pick up milk, bread and bananas when he gets gas sometimes. He also does a monthly - or so - stop at Cub for food to stock his fridge and cupboard at work for lunches and snacks. I never know he is going to make this trip until I see it in Mvelopes. I don't think he ever knows he is going to go do that trip until he has a day where he doesn't want to go to the gym at lunch, so he decides to take care of that instead. I guess we could give him his own envelope for his groceries and for his sporadic stops at the gas station, but from month to month, the amount he does changes so much, I don't know how to plan for it.
My next concern is about losing cash. When we do have cash around, we tend to lose track of where we spent it - that or else we lose it. I think I would do pretty well with it. I have a coupon binder, and it has a zipper pouch inside that would hold several envelopes, and I think I could easily start using cash out of envelopes and stick the receipts into the envelopes. But my husband does not have a coupon binder. He has a money clip. I don't think he would want to start carrying around his planner all the time. He says he would like to try going to cash, but I am pretty sure he would want some cash in his clip, and there would be little categorizing or saving of receipts. Sure, they could go in his pocket, but then they could either end up on his desk at work or in the laundry at home.
I understand the concept that if you only have the cash that you take to the store with you, that is all you spend, so you save by not impulse buying. But what about when you see a great deal on something that you would like to stock up on, but can't because you didn't know about the temporary price reduction or clearance and don't have the money with you? For example, when I find my favorite spaghetti sauce for $1 per can, I buy a dozen cans of it. Is the trade-off of not having the money with you for times like those worth the money you save?
I have a weekly grocery budget. I am sticking to it fairly well. Not perfectly, but fairly well. Dining out used to be a category that we struggled with, but we are doing better since we started focusing on it. The only category that consistently is over budget is the home maintenance category. Something is always breaking around here, and we really can't wait to have the money in that envelope all the time, so we transfer from another envelope to cover it. Will switching to cash really make a difference? Or will I miss out on my cash back rewards and great sales and spend extra gas going to the bank for cash and risk losing my cash and not see a benefit?
I want to know what has worked for you. What struggles did you have with using cash? Did you just transfer money from other cash envelopes when you wanted to go over budget? Was it the envelope system that really made the difference, or was it using cash that did it, or a combination of the two? How did you work with a spouse on it? Do you both have to be committed to using envelopes in order for it to work?
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