Hi Fellow Mustachians!
I am new to this forum and as the username states, I am finally embracing frugality. We have always spent like crazy on food, justifying it because it was all healthy/quality stuff. But as you know it all adds up. In January we set a budget of $600, but spent $685 on groceries alone and another $145 on eating out. (This is actually an improvement over our past spending!) We are a family of 2 adults, one 4 year old who eats more than me.
So we decided to get serious for February. I planned our meals, did a bunch of research, compared prices and only shopped at Costco and Aldi and we are at $350 for the month and don't need to buy much else - maybe another gallon of milk! Hooray!
So here is my conundrum:
I have plenty of food in my pantry,fridge/freezer to get us to the end of the month, but we will be flying to CA for the last week of Feb and the first week of March. We will be house-sitting and dog-sitting for a friend, so we have access to a kitchen. I am thinking about packing my dry goods (rice, beans, coffee, oatmeal, flour, sugar, etc) just so I don't have to buy more of certain things. Is this crazy? It feels a little crazy to pack groceries into my luggage. Of course there are grocery stores there! I have caught the frugal bug hard and I don't want to spend more money on food that we have already, even though it is inevitable since I can't bring 2 weeks of food or many perishables on a plane.
So any tips on not overbuying groceries on vacation? Or your craziest packing food stories for plane flights? I know we are planning to visit a couple of restaurants, and we are setting a budget for that and will be mindful when ordering. I feel like my internal spending pendulum has swung in the direction of SPEND NOTHING and my hubby thinks I am taking things too far -- this is supposed to be a fun vacation to see friends in an area where we used to live.
Tips? Thoughts? Suggestions?
Thank you in advance for your guidance!