Shopping Confession

I picked my boys up from school this afternoon, and we headed to Sam's. I wanted to pick up a bag of lettuce...a quick in and out trip...$2.00 or $3.00. Well, things didn't quite work out that way. :)

We were in the produce section picking up the lettuce. I hear one of my boys say, "The broccoli looks good." Well, you know that is music to a mom's ears, so of course I picked up a bag of broccoli...not paying attention to the $5.00 price tag. Then we walked a little further along. "Mom those cherry tomatoes look good." Again, into the cart they go...$5.48 a pop. Strawberries..."Oh those look good!" $3.76 for a 2 lb. container. (I know full well that these are on sale for $0.99 a lb. at Lowe's this week, but did I stop to think about that while at Sam's? NO.)

Then comes the dreaded free samples. A friendly lady was handing out turkey sandwiches on sweet rolls. "Wow, these are good! Can we have these for supper?" It's Wednesday, which means a mad dash out the door to church, and I hadn't even stopped to think about what we would have for supper...never mind that our freezer has pizza, corn dogs, and other easy meals in it. So we picked up the ingredients for the delicious sandwiches.

A few more aisles and a few more items being added to the cart. We got up to check out and what was supposed to be a $2.00 or $3.00 trip ended up being $60.00! I haven't been doing a lot of grocery shopping this month, so our grocery envelope was still full...who knew that a quick trip to Sam's would put a dent in it. :)

I thought about not sharing this little trip with you, but wanted to keep it real...yes, I sometimes don't shop with coupons. Yes, I sometimes make impulse buys, and yes, I sometimes deviate from the plan. You know, that is one of the best things about using coupons...having the freedom in my grocery budget to have trips like this every now and then. Before using coupons, if I had a random trip to Sam's like I did today it could mess with our budget for the rest of the month. We still have plenty of money left over in our food budget for the rest of the month...and I have several boys who are happy that they got to pick up random things at the grocery store. Black forest ham and rolls (Josh--our carnivore), Strawberries (Jacob--he loves to take a bite out of each one and then place them back in the container for me to find), and Pickles, Pickled Okra, and Cherry Tomatoes (Aaron--what can I say, a boy after my heart) :)

Do you have any shopping confessions you'd like to make? Feel free to comment below.