The biggest thing we have learned by our experimental weekly fiscal fasts on Wednesdays, and going into the first full week fast, is a heightened awareness of where we spend money, and figuring out ways to trim our daily costs. Later in the week I plan to share some ways we have decided to cut some costs not only during our fiscal week, but hopefully for the good. In this episode of our fiscal fast analysis, we want to concentrate on our biggest monthly expense, food.
We spend around $400-600/month on groceries, including paper products, cleaning supplies, etc., and not including eating out. Food is a large expense for our family of four, and we are looking for ways to start trimming our costs; however, with two growing boys, we tend to go through a lot of food and supplies. Paper towels, for example, somehow seem to just flow in and out of our house like the breeze. Dirty faces, spills, and messes require a lot of paper products for cleanup when normal wash rags will not do the job.
The greatest variability in our spending comes from weeks where we stock up on supplies and freezable items. Stockpile weeks typically include piles of coupons, paired with sales, and a lot of times added discounts (Food Perks) from our local grocery chain, which can amount to up to a 20% discount. So while we do spend a lot, we also do so smartly by using as many discounts as possible without going to the Extreme Couponers. We hope to make some changes though as a result of our outlook from the fiscal fasts.
Heading into the first day of our fiscal fast, we had to do some planning for food and meals throughout the week. Mostly, we will be able to use up items in the chest freezer in the garage and the stock pantry, but there are some items that need to be purchased right before going into the fast. Therefore, we stocked up on milk, bread, juice, and several other items to complete meals throughout the week.
Luckily, we already had some backlog of baby formula, baby foods, and a large stockpile of diapers and wipes. However, want to know what could really cause a mess of a fiscal week long fast? Running out of toilet paper. The funny thing is I am not trying to be funny. We usually buy the largest packages of toilet paper as possible and have an extensive closet full of backlog. As we were walking out the door for our last minute shopping trip, we realized we were at the end of our supply. It was a lucky catch because it could have caused us to break. I am thankful we now do not need to go to the extent of one of the Extreme Cheapskates and use washable rags. It was a lucky catch, and really makes one realize all the little things you might take for granted, and need to account for over a week when spending, or no spending, matters.
So the basic summary is there were certain items we did need to stock up on prior to the fiscal fast. They are items we would have purchased normally, and yes we did have to shift our spending, but it was not extraneous spending. In the process, we also used a bunch of gift cards we acquired over the holidays, so very little actual spending was done to plan our week at the last minute.
The other great thing about stocking up for the week, is knowing exactly what the menu will be all week. There are quite a few weeks where my wife and I plan out the meals; however, there are also weeks where we wing it, and often times do not feel like cooking and might decide to go out instead on the occasional night. So it was kind of fun going through the pantry and freezer to see what we might have buried at the back or bottom, and decide what we could use up.
On the menu for the week for dinners is tacos, some type of pasta dish, fish sandwiches, chicken soup, and a full turkey meal. It should be a pretty exciting week of some hearty meals that can also be used a lunches. We will also use up lots of side dish items from the pantry and freezer.
Here lies my biggest concern though about the fiscal fast week. The goal is to use up as much stock as we have on hand over the course of the week so there is less stuff that reaches expiration and needs to be thrown away. However, what this means in that next week, we need to stock up again with another large shopping expense because the shelves may be close to bare. So while it will be great to use up some stock, it inevitably means we need to spend more to restock. We will not completely empty the shelves by the end of the week, but a lot of the larger, more relied upon items might be used up, and require new ones.
Normally, we do at least one large stock up trip per month with smaller trips each week. However, we had one of our stock up trips a couple weeks ago knowing the fiscal fast week was coming. So I am worried that while it is good to empty the shelves, we also are gearing up for a possibly abnormal big grocery spend.
My other problem is I have not come up with a big gauge of ways to keep track and monitor the impact of the fiscal fast from a pre versus post spend. I am hoping something clicks as we progress through this experiment throughout the year.
Stay tuned for the rest of the week as we discuss various other ways we have trimmed existing expenditures, while also spending no money throughout the week.
