Does a Shorter Grocery List=Overspending??

As I walked into Wegmans for this week’s shopping trip, I was on my way home from a nearly 2 hour odyssey through upstate New York farm country searching for our CSA farm to pick up my Fall share. I had a trunkful of nearly every fall vegetable you can imagine.

So obviously I didn’t need to buy too much.  I had all of five items on my list. Which is why it is completely baffling that I still spent $70 at Wegmans. I got in the store and the Wegmans spell fell over me. I reasoned, I don’t need too much, so I can get a few extras today.  That faulty reasoning is one thing that prevents us from reaching our savings goals. Oh, we got an extra $ X amount this month, let’s go out to dinner. Bad, bad idea.  I wish that, instead of having $10 leftover this week to put into savings, I had $20 or $30, which might have been possible if I didn’t make those random impulse purchases. In the spirit of “warts and all,”  here’s the lowdown:

First, the random impulse purchases:

• Organic Ice Cream — $5.99
• 5 pound bag of flour x2 = $.99 each (on sale! I am stocking up!)
• Simply Organic Vanilla Extract = $7.99-$1 coupon
• Justin’s Organic Peanut Butter Packets x4 = $.34 each
• Pack of Disposable Diapers (ugh) = $6.49 ( My daughter’s on antibiotics right now and there are some undesirable side effects that occur with those)
• Peanut Butter =$1.29 (No idea why I bought this, since we have some at home)