Sandy’s Story
Posted by John | Filed under I Need Ideas
Hi everyone – quick update on my hubby: His heart sustained very little damage from his attack, so death is not imminent. However, they feel he is bleeding internally somewhere, so we’re waiting (and waiting) for scopes and scans to find out what is bleeding and why. Thanks for your continued thoughts and prayers!
Onto my “success post” – In April, I noticed that my credit card bill was ridiculous, and couldn’t for a few minutes put my finger on why – until I checked my spreadsheet where I record all purchases. It turned out that my dear hubby, who is a secondary cardholder, treated himself very well at the grocery store, multiple times in April! Our grocery/food category had ballooned to over $700, for three people, which is insane. We had been budgeting $100 a week for food/personal care, but with his multiple “I’ll just stop for one thing, and steaks were on sale, and I thought we might need” and his phone calls to me to pick things up that we had forgotten to put on the list, we went way over. I know he likes to shop for things outside of the list, and he’s changed so many of his financial behaviours over the last couple of years that I hate to take everything away. But how could I accomodate his preferences while still keeping on budget? Tracking the purchase after the fact obviously wasn’t working. He and I sat down to chat, and he was as shocked as I was about how much had been wasted that month. He did say though, that he thought our food budget was a little skinny, and hw would like to budget $500 per month instead of $400. Since our savings plans are on track, and we have very little debt left, that sounded reasonable. But I needed a self-limiting way of keeping him on track without harrassing him every day about what he spent. My first thought was, of course, cash in the jar. But I use my credit card for everything in order to get the points (and pay it off in full before the grace period ends), and I was really loathe to give that up (I would if I couldn’t figure out another way, but I REALLY didn’t want to.) And then…
BRAINSTORM!
The grocery store that we regularly go to offers gift cards in preset limits, that are good for anything in the store, plus gas!You can buy them with your credit card and get the points, and anybody can use them! So every week, when I go shopping, I buy what’s on our list, and then buy gift cards to top up to our budget limit for food. Then I carry one with me, and he gets another one, and that is what we have to spend outside of the list. Some weeks he gets a $10 card and I don’t get one (which I’m okay with as I don’t like to go into a store more than once a week, but once the card is used up, that’s it until next week. Lots of times we have money left on the card by the end of the week, and that means we can treat ourselves to things we would normally not buy. It’s worked out really well – no surprises, but no nagging, and I still get my points!
September 22, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Love love love the idea of the gift cards for your grocery store! Ours has the same thing, so I may need to hijack your idea! I hope your husband gets better soon.
September 23, 2009 at 2:43 am
God bless ur husband on better health…. Wow! That’s a really neat idea… I love that idea… Since I like to get my air miles points on cc.. I just have to do that to keep me better on top of groceries since I’ve been spending more than $500 a month for two adults on groceries, personal care. bird food ( once in while) and cleaning supplies……
September 23, 2009 at 9:12 am
I used to do the gift card at the grocery store before I moved and had to rediscover new grocery stores. I had totally forgotten about that gem! This would be hard for us now because I don’t tend to shop at one store anymore. But a preloaded credit card could work in a similar way. I know you can buy visa gift cards and the like, so that might work for stores that don’t have gift card programs. It really is a smart tool for the chains to offer because it means you will end up shopping in their store all the time.
Also, not sure where you shop, but at our old store in Victoria, the grocery chain had a fundraising component to their gift cards. Schools, sports teams or other charities could register with the store. Then you could buy a gift card in their sponsor group. 5% of all the money you loaded on the card would go directly to the group you were sponsoring. It was a fabulous system.
March 10, 2010 at 1:20 pm
We do the same with Esso gift cards. I buy them on my RBC VISA (which gives me RBC points) and use my Esso Extra card at the same time. And then when we use it for gas, we use our Esso Extra card. And Esso extra points can be converted into RBC points so in one purchase (I buy 100$ gift cards) we’ve made 3x the points! There is one Esso that won’t let me buy more than 75$ on a gift card using my VISA. So I just go to another Esso!