Personal Financial Crunches

The financial crisis is hitting everyone, of course, and some more than others. I'm currently a renter and don't have a mortgage. I could've taken out a mortgage in the past few years, but chose not to because it didn't seem financially prudent, and boy, am I glad now. The housing crisis could still potentially affect me, though, because my landlord is one who bought several houses to try to make money off of real estate. So, if he starts defaulting on his multiple mortgages, I'll be looking for a new roof over my head. But he seems pretty solvent so far.

I'm still investing the same amount in retirement as I did before. We didn't remove any money from our savings account "just in case." Our stock market portfolio did lose some money, but not to the tune that the general market did, because we're invested in blue chips. We're not panicking. But one place where we are being pinched pretty hard right now is food.

Sometimes it takes a crisis to make you realize the things that you should've been doing all along. When you don't really feel the pinch in groceries, it's easy to spend a little extra money on stuff you don't really need, or the "good" olive oil, or the stuff you think you're entitled to eat, or whatever. One of the things I've noticed recently is the rising cost of food. Yes, I know it's been rising for a while, but when you're essentially a Wal-Mart shopper with Giant Eagle on the side, you don't really notice it until it becomes serious. I know people dig on Wal-Mart. I don't care. When I was a single mommy of 20 years old, I could go in and get a box of diapers, formula, groceries, and other necessities and not wipe out my meager budget. People who bitch about Wal-Mart, in my opinion, are rarely the people who have to shop there. But that's another bitch for another post. Recently, I noticed that Wal-Mart prices are out of control--at least for my family they are. So I went to Aldi.

The difference is incredible. Here's a link to Aldi's homepage. They keep their prices down by (among other things) making you come up with your own way to carry your food out and by charging you a quarter to take one of their carts (which you get back at the end of your shopping trip). There is in some cases a 50% difference in the prices offered. The meat they offer is at least 30-40% cheaper. The downside is that you don't get nearly the amount of choice that something like a Kroger or even a Wal-Mart would offer you. You can't find a lot of fish, seafood, or different cuts of beef and pork at Aldi. But at 50% off, I'd have to care at this point.

I spend somewhere between $70-90 for three days worth of food and supplies. I have no idea how that stacks up with the average American family, but it's for three people, two adults and one growing 11 year old. I shop for the generic in store brand where possible. I know where the problem lies. The problem is that I cook real food. If I fixed hotdogs and frozen pizza every other day, or even those heat up lasagnes and flash frozen veggies, I'd cut my expenses by at least a third. Damn me for making barbeque chicken in the oven from scratch, with garlic mashed potatoes and green beans (in a can, but with onions, etc. added). And screw me over again for making a vegetable lasagne with a bean dip spread, real veggies and spinach chopped up and sauted, with cheese, tomato sauce, blah, blah, blah. Whenever I go to Wal-Mart for a grocery run, I stop in the Subway that's in the store and pick up dinner, because it's usually too late for the hour and a half my cooking takes from start to finish. It's a sad realization that I can feed my family from Subway for less that it costs me to do it from scratch. It's not like I'm even buying organic most of the time. I wish I could, and I do when the organic product is within .50 cents of the price of the other (or really close to that), but I can't afford to make my ethics match my purchases.

And that just sucks. But you know what? I should've been eating out of Aldi's the whole time. I would've had more money to save, to go on vacation, or to fart around with in general. We've already been making concessions in our grocery bill, because that's really the only place that has any elastic to it. It's not like you can tell the landlord, "Hey dude, we've only decided to pay 70% of the rent this month." We rarely have fish anymore (and it's so contaminated, it's not recommended in the servings it used to be anyway). I've cut down on junk food for many reasons, including the bill. El Hijo is awesome at packing a lunch for the two of us to take to the university--I suck at that. It saves us a lot of money each month just by not eating out for lunch. But our menu options are starting to shift to reflect what's available in the Aldi grocery store. I never expected a store to beat out Wal-Mart prices. But here it is.

I'll be shoving my little quarter into their grocery cart to unlock it and stuffing my groceries into all the bags I have left over from Wal-Mart. I can still buy the supplies for bbq chicken, and the neighborhood boy vote is that my bbq chicken is "awesome." Shopping at Aldi's doesn't change its awesomeness. It's worth it, and I should've been doing it all along. I may even have enough money saved to take my family on a small cruise this summer. Here's to fiscal responsibility and rewards.

-- DV