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A Good Frugal Shopping Day (sort of)

November 3rd, 2004 at 02:16 am

It was the day for my weekly trip to the city for shopping today. These are the days that the bulk of the discretionary money gets spent. This week I made a concise menu and list of only the items I absolutely needed. I allotted myself $100 for groceries including a few bulk items that will last for a long time. When the shopping was done I came in at $67.08 for the items on my list and two other things that I had forgotten to write down. I did not buy one impulse grocery item. That's big for me.
I also bought a tire pressure guage that I've been needing and I hit the consignment store for a snowsuit for the baby since his 9 month suit won't likely fit him past Christmas. Add to that $10 for gas which I put on the Visa to get extra Esso points and all told I landed at $101.33.
The key was to not take a shopping cart at Costco. I just got my 3 items and headed to the till. When I was at the till the guy was wondering why I had no cart so I told him. "If you have no cart, you can only buy what you can carry." The lady behind me in line told me she liked my logic. I did too- I will have to employ that kind of logic more often.
I also renewed our homeowner's insurance. After making one arduous phone call to a different insurance broker I decided to contact my current carrier and ask what the differece would be if I moved our deductable up from $500 to $1000. It saved me $60. That made me happy too. I have earmarked that money to go to the Visa bill.
I also received the first of my mail in rebates from some computer components I purchased. That's another $40 to go to the Visa once I cash it.
There were two frugal flops, though. One was my toddler's flu bug. It had him poop right through his diaper into his jeans about 1/2 an hour before I was to pick up DH from work. I considered washing the pants really fast and hoping they would dry in time to leave, but then decided to run out to pick up a pair of sweats for him. I headed to Old Navy because last week they had a huge clearance on boys' sweats. Unfortunately there were no more marked down items so I picked up two pairs for $18.00. I left one at Mom's for the next emergency. You just don't expect a two year old to need a change of clothes when out and about! Had I not been pressed for time I would have left Old Navy after seeing that the sale was over and gone back to the consignment store for pants. Oh well. It's a small transgression.
The other flop was with my cell phone. I cancelled my current plan because it semed that the extra charges were going higher every month and the bill was getting absurd. I asked them to switch me to pay as you go, but they wanted to charge me $50 to do so. I asked them to "throw me a bone"- as in free minutes or something for being a good customer for 5 years, but they guy wouldn't budge. So I got mad and told him to cancel the plan.
I took my phone to another provider today to see how mch it would cost to go to pay as you go there and the guy told me that the phone I have isn't compliant with their system. AKA I need to buy a new phone. Crap. The cheapest phone they had was $200. For a few seconds I thought of pulling out the Visa and getting the process overwith. Thankfully, I resisted the evil urge and walked out of the store with my inactive cell phone. Now I have to decide if I should swallow my pride and go back to the old carrier, pay the $50 and be done with it or try to get an old phone hooked up with a new provider. I got an old Sasktel "compliant" phone from my Mom that might do the trick. I just can't justify buying a new phone. Even if I use the old one from Mom the phone I have will be a waste left unused. *sigh* Who knew it would be so difficult?!

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