The Great Shopping Trip

I think I was in high school when my older sister and I had the bright idea to do our family of eight's grocery shopping for the week. We figured this way we could get all the food that we really like that Mom never seemed to buy. We were both naive enough to think that since we had both grocery-shopped with mom for years that we had this thing down!

First, we knew that mom always built our meal plan around sale prices, so we spent some time scouring the weekly fliers to find out what was on sale. Mom gave us the same budget she would have and told us we had to have 7 days worth of food, and sent us on our way.

I honestly don't remember how long it took us to do the grocery shopping, but I'm sure it took us hours. Neither of us had ever really paid that much attention to where things were located in a grocery store, so, naturally, this part took us quite a while.

Finally we arrived home, exhausted, broke, and pretty darn frustrated because we had spent so much time trying to buy everything that mom told us we needed for meals that week that we hadn't had any money to buy the things we really wanted. In fact, I think we found that we could barely even purchase all the meal items. Talk about an eye-opening experience!

Needless to say, that was the first and last time we ever took on that responsibility!

I share this because even though my sister and I  may not have entirely succeeded on our mission, we obviously learned some things by observing and participating in the process of grocery shopping. I think it's important for parents to have their kids take part in activities like this because someday they will have to do it for themselves, and learning to do it properly takes time and practice.

As your kids get into their teenage years you might even want to challenge them to take on the job of grocery shopping so that they can have real life practice in a skill that will help them be good stewards of their money later on in life.

Although I don't shop for groceries exactly the same way my mom does, the basic core is with me—look at sale flyers, know prices from different stores, and stick to the budget!

Do you have any memories of trying to do the family grocery shopping when you were young? Or an experience with your own kids? Leave us a comment to tell us all about it.

Keep pinchin' :-)