Mind Your Money - Blog Posts

Money on My Mind

I just went shopping on my way home from being a Home Chef for a friend of mine becasue I wanted to make Stuffed shells for dinner after I made her manicotti. Of course I ended up buying a whole lot more, but honestly I can't just run into the store and grab one item.😅

So I grab a cart and start in the fruit like most people do. Almost out of garlic so I grabbed a big jar cause it goes for a long time. Grabbed some Snap Dragon Apples and Raspberry oranges. Now those all sound boujie but all the apples were $3.99 a bag and my oranges were cheaper than navel ones!😲

So then I head to the areas where I am supposed to be going aka the pasta. I grab Italian bread to make garlic bread and found pie and bagels discounted so scooped those up. I even found a decent size pork roast on discount for tomorrow's dinner! Then I hit the pasta aisle.😄

I found sauce for a crazy sale price and stood in the pasta aisle for like 15 minutes comparing sale prices. I tried to make it down the cookie aisle safely, but I ended up seeing store brand butter cookies so snatch.😆

Next came eggs but I was not worried cause i cased them earlier in the week I knew that I could get 24 for $8.25 which is a steal nowadays. Got a big bag of meatballs that will last a while too. Finally I hit the dairy and to my lovely shock I found butter on sale! Let me tell you even on the holidays I could not find butter on sale like this! I will be going back later this week to grab more cause butter is so expensive right now!😖

Finally grabbed all the cheeses I needed for the shells and found cream cheese on a fantastic sale. Grabbed my daughter's Greek yogurt and then on my way to the register I remembered a vid I watched about olive oil being scarce in the coming months so I decided to check that out and after another 15 min of price comparing I chose one and that was the most expensive thing I bought at $14.99 but it will last me months.🧐

When all is said and done I spent $141.35 and it filled four bags, which is not many, but everything I bought except for the cookies was all healthy and unprocessed or will last months. I think I did damn good! Then I spent $2.89 on a bottle of blackberry Dr. Pepper and made mac and cheese cause it was too late to cook the shells cause I took two hours to shop.😂

No for serious, right now as i am writing this I am roasting the veggies in my fridge so they don't go bad and I can freeze them. I really am trying not to let anything go bad in my fridge anymore cause that was a bad habit we had and it wastes soooo much money. So yeah, I think I did really good and the two most expensive things i bought were the garlic and the olive oil. The pantry is full and we will be too for a few months!🥰

Mata ne Mina!🤗

Weirdly Productive?🤔

I haven't done much today honestly physically cause I still can't, but mentally...yeah I've done quite a lot...if that makes sense.😬

Let me explain. I decided to be part of the low consumer 2025 movement or under consumption core where i only get what I truly need and nothing else. I have been waiting for my taxes to come in order to make this happen and today is the day. 😤

Right away I bought the rolling cart for the kitchen cause I have a kitchen converted from a laundry room...don't ask, and have no counter space to cook properly. Then I got the meat slicer that I needed to buy bulk meat and cut it down to the sizes I need which is gonna save money for sure cause I need super thin meats for Japanese recipes and that is considered exotic or special cut and costs more.🤨

The last thing I picked up was new silverware cause out of three sets i bought in the last three years I have all the knives and nothing else. Yeah...my kids heard it good about that and now it is a $5 charge if I find ANY missing from the new set from everyone. I'm not messing around with this shit.😠

Other than a few used pieces of clothing for my daughter and I from Thred Up and adding three subscriptions for groceries including Costco, I am done. That's it. Also I learned something interesting that might be useful for others. Think about what you make an hour and then think about what you want to buy. How many hours do you have to work afford it? My daughter's sushi plate at Shop Rite is $14.99. That's a little less than an hour of my pay. If I eat my fav at Taco Bell, it's $8.00 and than includes up charge for frozen drink, added rice, and rounding up for charity. That's half an hour of work for me. Interesting huh? Think about that next time you want to treat yourself.🧐

More Reasons to Boycott Walmart😒

My daughter and I have been boycotting Walmart since Thanksgiving when they decided to Roll Back DEI and announce it while every one was eating dinner. Naturally people were pissed and imagine that no one wanted to shop on Black Friday there. I wonder why?😈

Anyway, I've never been happy that I had to buy from Walmart cause I can't afford not to, but after that mic drop I was fully done. Now in the last few months with all the news coming out about lawsuits and screw overs, I am really happy about my decisions even if it means I pay a little more here and there. My conscience is clear.😇

Let me also preface that I do this with all companies that pull shady shit like McD, Valero, Home Dept, and Target to name a few. I pay a lot of attention to where my money goes now and who gets it. Right now I am standing with Costco and Aldi for sure. Take a moment and look up who is being bought to decide who you want to still buy from.😉