I decided at the beginning of this week that I was going to spend NO MORE than $100 per week on groceries & dog food ($60 for dogs, and $40 for us). No more spending creep each week!!! That was until I checked my email early in the week and had a $15 off $60 purchase coupon from Petsmart. I went the first day and found my Purina Dog Chow on sale for $17.49 per bag. That's a super price!!! I quickly bought my $60+ worth. After coupons, it was under $50, so all was well. I did several grocery stops and came in just barely over my $40 allotment. And then I started thinking...

Did it really make sense to go back to spending full price next week, and the week after when I had these coupons available and it was on sale until Sunday? I went back two more times!!! So, while I way overspent my $100 allotment this week, I think it was a wise decision to strike while the iron was hot. Shopping for the next two weeks should be simple. I can spend $40 one week and $39 the next week, and with any luck the dog food will carry me well over into the following week.

I also changed my mind on one of the Walgreens items I purchased earlier in the week. It was for the Physician's Formula makeup - spend $10 or more and get $10 back from their monthly rebate. Well, I wasn't thinking clearly. I bought some on Wednesday with an Earth day 15% off coupon, and they took the 15% off their already 40% off sale price this week. But my purchase was under $10. For some reason, I was thinking it was free after rebate up to $10. So, my choices were to (1) buy more and register my receipts to get the $10 rebate, basically spending another $5 or $6, and getting about $25 worth of makeup for $4 or $5 after rebate, or (2) return what I'd bought. I don't NEED the makeup, so I chose option 2. The manager kept saying "no problem" but I really think he was a little ticked off at the reason I returned it.

It almost backfired on me too. The money was credited back to the Visa card I had put it on. Well, this Visa card was a rebate card from some purchase last year. I had just used up the last 76 cents on the rebate card earlier in the week, and almost threw it out. So glad I didn't!!! I guess that technically gives me another $7 to spend during the next two weeks if I have to go over the $40/week budget, since it brings down my spending this week on groceries to roughly $33.

I hope that as I focus on little things, bigger things will fall into place. I can't stop this nagging feeling that I spend so much time worrying about small money when I should be focusing on a much much bigger picture.