Spend report-a-palooza: Spend Reports #16 to #21

I've gotten incredibly far behind on my posting, specifically my spend reports. I got derailed after Christmas. Going through two months of receipts is not fun, but I've done it. December and January were the months of both shopping at Wal-mart and at a whole bunch of fast food joints. I must have never said no to my son when he wanted to go to Tim Horton's or McDonald's. I have to work on my resistance to letting him get his way. Him saying, "Wow, you're letting me get away with so much stuff," one day really drove that point home. And let's face it, I don't think I ever said no to myself either when I felt like eating out.

I've decided to do one condensed spend report for Dec./Jan. and then catch up on February later.

In February, I'm not shopping at any big chain grocery stores, so I will put together a post on how that's going. Sneak peek: I have paid $5.99 (!!!) for 4 litres of milk and .99 cents/100 g for Black Forest ham (also !!!, but in a good way).

My last spend report was from way back in December, so this one covers from Dec. 17 to Jan. 27.

From Dec. 17 to Jan. 27, I spent approximately $3,000 in New Westminster. (Wow, that's a big number. Bear in mind two things: this includes Christmas shopping and covers six weeks.) I bought:

• Groceries at Safeway, IGA, Donald's Market, PriceSmart, Save-on, M&M, and Kin's
• Baking supplies, mostly nuts, at Galloway's. Their nuts are so reasonable compared to grocery stores.
• Food/drink at Hi Dozo Sushi, Indian Star, Taco Del Mar, Boston Pizza, Starbucks, Opa Souvlaki, Tim Horton's, Schanks Sports Grill, Great Wall Tea, Graze, Dairy Queen, McDonald's, and Queensboro Pizza
• Christmas presents at: Fraser River Discovery Centre gift shop, Black Bond Books, Home Outfitters, Purdy's, Wal-mart, Pedagogy Toys, Chatters, London Drugs, Moores, and Shoppers Drug Mart
• Clothes at Laura
• Winter boots at SoftMoc
• Toner at BestBuy

I also did some non-New West spending, including a trip to the Vancouver Aquarium, which is a pre-Christmas tradition for my family. After my husband's Christmas party, we stayed downtown at the Hyatt. We could not resist taking advantage of the grandma in-home babysitting, which is not available to us very often. I also went to a movie and to the Burnaby Village Museum. I've never really settled on what I'm doing about stuff like this, which is not exactly shopping, but it is spending money outside of New West. I do want to make more of an effort over the upcoming months to go to New Westminster events and entertainment.

I also took a trip up to Dawson Creek for my uncle's funeral and a trip to Kamloops for a fundraiser at my high school. On trips, I'm buying only essentials: food, gas, lodging and not doing any other shopping.