A Tale of Two Chickens

It’s time for an update. The numbers are not so pretty.

When we last met, we had spent NIS 270 of our allotted NIS 1000. We were doing quite well.

You might recall that I mentioned in a previous post that we had a couple chickens and a brisket in our freezer. Funny how we didn’t actually have any meat in our freezer. Or chickens. And this is where the tale begins to go downhill.

First, let’s do the tally.

I’m not counting NIS 86 that was spent on lunch out on June 8. My husband and I forgot our anniversary, remembered, and decided to enjoy a meal out. As allowed by the rules at Small Notebook, I’m accepting that this isn’t the usual sort of spending and that one exception out of a month for a celebration is acceptable. Happy seventh anniversary!

I also got my NIS 16 from my overcharged yogurt back. Small victories.

So, what did we buy?

We were asked to host someone last weekend for Shabbat and were happy to have a guest. We also invited another guest – as we have two children under the age of two, the likelihood was that we would both be called away from the table during lunch at one point or another to take care of the kids. In our absence, at least they’d have each other.

That said, guests mean more food – two chickens instead of one, for example – we spent NIS 209 getting the week’s groceries, challot and chickens for Shabbat. It was worth every shekel and we had a really lovely lunch with wonderful discussion.

Another funny thing happened as it neared mid-June in Israel. It got really hot. Our daughter was in pretty desperate need of shorts, and we found some really cute inexpensive ones – five pair for NIS 100. Bonus – a one-piece outfit for her little brother for another NIS 5.

While we made it through the weekend, Sunday meant a relatively empty fridge. It was time for a good grocery shop – and as I had a rental car for a business meeting, it meant going to the big less expensive supermarket on the outskirts of town. While I’m really dedicated to sticking to a budget this month, I’m not willing to pass up the fact that food is significantly less expensive at the big market – Supersol Deal – than it is in town. Some examples:

• Watermelons were NIS 2 a kilo instead of NIS 2.5-4
• Whole chickens were NIS 10 a kilo
• Ground beef was NIS 35 a kilo instead of NIS 45

We bought a lot and blew our budget, but we also saved a lot. Total spent – NIS 633, but it bought enough meat to last about six weeks. While not sticking strictly to our spending limit, it is certainly in the spirit of our challenge. We didn’t buy processed foods – just a wealth of good, tasty, wholesome foods that will keep up well fed for a while.

In short, had we not stocked up on the deals when we did, we could have likely kept the bill to a range that would have kept us under NIS 1000 for the whole month. As it is, I’ll be pleased as punch if we can keep it to NIS 1500 or so.

Finally, two other expenses:

• The little filter thingee at the end of our kitchen sink faucet went kablooey and needed to be replaced. We could probably bill our landlord for it, but won’t – his good graces are worth much more than the NIS 33 it cost to replace it.
• The husband needed deodorant. It’s hot here. This is not an optional item. Fortunately, it was buy-one-get-one at SuperPharm. NIS 28 for two.

Where does that leave us on June 16? NIS 1257 and we have almost half a month left. This is going to be interesting.

What more have we learned? It might take us more than NIS 1000 every month to live, but it’s still a lot less than what we were spending in any given month. At least now we’ll have a reasonable starting point from which to set the budget.

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