The March receipts live in a sandwich bag clipped to the side of the fridge. On Sunday night I dumped them on the kitchen table, all 23 of them, flattened the curly ones under a cookbook and typed every line into the spreadsheet I started in January. Jack walked through, saw the pile and asked if we were in trouble. Not yet.
The total for March was $918. That covers food and basic household things (paper towels, dish soap, laundry pods) for two adults, an 11-year-old and a 7-year-old. It does not include eating out or our one night in Chattanooga over spring break, because trip food goes in its own envelope and gets its own math.
Where the $918 went
- Aldi in Columbia: $286 over four trips. It's on my drive home from school, so this is where the weekly basics come from: milk, eggs, bread, cheese, fruit, canned tomatoes, pasta.
- Kroger in Spring Hill: $251 over three trips. Most of our meat, the two brands I won't trade down on (White Lily flour and Duke's mayonnaise) and whatever the digital coupons lined up that week.
- Publix in Spring Hill: $163 over seven trips. Seven. Nearly every one of them started as a run for one thing.
- Costco in Franklin: $218 on one run. Coffee, butter, chicken breasts, toilet paper, a two-bag pack of shredded cheddar and a rotisserie chicken the kids had picked at before we got off the interstate.
Spring break shows up too. Both kids were home for lunch three days that week, and I can see it in the Aldi column: an extra loaf of bread, an extra pack of deli turkey, a second box of cheese crackers.
What Tennessee's grocery tax adds
Tennessee taxes groceries, which surprises people who move here from states that don't. Food gets a reduced state rate plus our local tax, and anything that isn't food gets the full rate. That includes the paper towels, the dish soap and the candy bar Jack talks his way into at the register. I couldn't recite the rates if you paid me, but I can read a receipt. In March, tax came to about $61 of the $918. That's roughly one of my Aldi trips, every month, that never turns into a single meal.
Where we overspend
I went in sure that meat was the problem. Beef is expensive, and Ryan and Jack would eat pot roast five nights a week if I let them. But when I sorted the lines, beef came in close to what I'd guessed. The leaks were smaller and more embarrassing.
- The one-thing stop. Those seven Publix trips averaged about $23 each. I went in for buttermilk for biscuits and came out with buttermilk, a bagged salad, two kinds of crackers and a candle that smelled like lemon pound cake.
- Grading nights. March is the end of the third grading period, so twice a week I was at the kitchen table until ten with a red pen. Those nights were rotisserie chickens, salad kits and one frozen pizza I'm not proud of. I counted about $70 of convenience food that a little Sunday prep would have covered.
- Snacks. Granola bars, cheese crackers, fruit snacks, pretzels. About $64 for the month, close to what I spent on fresh vegetables.
- Coffee. Ryan's shift starts at 6:00 a.m., and he's been working some Saturdays this spring. We went through a full Costco bag and part of another. I'm not touching that line. Some things are infrastructure.
The why behind the one-thing stop is something I teach in my budgeting unit every spring, which makes this extra humbling. Milk, eggs and bread usually sit along the back walls of a store, so a quick trip for one of them walks you past everything else on the way there and back. My students can explain that on a worksheet. Their teacher apparently cannot apply it on a Tuesday.
So for April, three changes. A list on the fridge that everybody adds to, so I stop discovering we're out of something at five o'clock. A rule that a Publix stop needs at least five things on that list, or it waits for the next real trip. And one hour on Sunday afternoon to prep for the two grading nights, so a rotisserie chicken is a choice instead of a rescue.
Is $918 a lot for four people? I honestly don't know what normal is. Ask around the teachers' lounge and you'll hear everything from $600 to $1,500, usually from people who are guessing. I'm less interested in hitting a particular number than in knowing where ours goes. I'll check back once April's receipts are in the bag.
