For one hot minute many years ago, I dated someone completely wrong for me. To this day, thinking of him makes me irrationally angry. Not because we had that wake-up, break-up moment over Steely Dan versus Nirvana. (Who the hell are you? I mean, I thought I really knew you after two weeks. Steely Dan?!)
He criticized what I bought at the grocery store, and I probably knew even then that he was right.
We were both young and quite broke. I don’t remember what I actually bought, although if I had to guess, it was probably a lot of cereal. He said I should be buying rice and beans and other cheap, bulk things. Since I didn’t know how to cook, I probably told him where he could shove his rice and beans.
Today, I love to cook, so grains, legumes, cheap cuts of meat are all a-okay. Bring ‘em on. (Just know that I am not braising and sauteeing to any bleeping Steely Dan. Okay, there’s not much Nirvana rocking out the kitchen these days either. There is mostly crying and whining and shrieking from the under-5 crowd at the dinner-meltdown-hour, unfortunately.)
Yet I am embarrassed to admit that it has taken us longer than necessary to stop shopping at our neighborhood gourmet grocery store, despite ample evidence that the same items were significantly cheaper elsewhere.
Why?
Leaving aside habit, and the convenience of knowing a store’s layout inside and out, I had identified with that store. I am part of this upscale demographic, I thought. But are we? Without seeing their insider marketing materials and just going on price alone, I’d say no. At least not for now.
It hurts a little bit to be priced out of your grocery store.
On the other hand, I’m the same person, with the same tastes, and food is one of the easiest areas to live large on very little. How little? Check this out: I told a friend of mine I’d check on what happened with this woman who spent just $200 for a month on groceries for 12, I believe.
She did it:
We did it! I still have $6 left from the $200 I stuck in my wallet at the beginning of the month. Keep in mind that I also went a couple hundred over budget stocking up during August (doing–ahem– crazy things like spending $11 on coffee creamer- yikes!) So really we probably spent $400 for September. But considering we usually spend $900, that’s a considerable savings.
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Adopting a new mindset about prices is changing how I see other things, too. For instance, we get a ton of those free weekly mailer coupons. I never used to look at them, and partly this is because of time. But I looked more carefully at them yesterday, and I realized that design has a lot to do with my 3-second perception of them. I just automatically equate better, more expensive design with better quality. Many times, yeah, the scam offers that are sometimes mixed in look pretty shoddy. But others are just neighborhood fliers that might save me some cash here and there.
MP Dunleavey writes about money and perceptions in “Are You Afraid to Look Poor?”
Are you embarrassed to use coupons? You love the concept of saving money, and those two-for-ones are a little tempting, but you’d rather die than stand at the register while people watch (impatiently) as you hand over little pieces of clipped paper. It screams cheapskate.
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This one sounded a little “ding” for me, even though lately the problem there is not misplaced pride so much as memory — we just forget to grab them on the way out the door.
Like this article points out, it’s a good exercise to question my own assumptions about myself, who I am, and what I think others think about me based on what I buy.
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Tags: beans · groceries · identity · lifestyle · Nirvana · rice · Steely Dan1 Comment
[...] what I’m talking about, we switched to a much cheaper chain grocery months ago, because our food bill was killing us. As that’s about the only shopping I do, I’ve spent a good portion of this blog [...]