2 points if you can spot the Teacup feet!
Have you heard of the Disney Curse?
It goes like this: you are saving and working towards paying off your trip, things are going well, you have a sizable chunk saved, and then bam, an emergency happens that requires almost the exact amount of money you have saved for your Disney vacation. It’s like that scene in Up! where Carl and Ellie have to keep using their Paradise Falls money for something else. The Disney curse is the sound of a hammer shattering a piggy bank.
My friend Kristen D recently had some trouble with the Disney Curse, but I count myself lucky that I have steered clear of it…so far. But I am not unmarked by misfortune! I, too, carry a curse. The curse I carry is a different burden, heavy in it’s own way.
The Grocery Curse.
It goes like this: you don’t go grocery shopping before vacation, because you’re going to be gone, and you think you’re hot stuff because you saved so much money on groceries that week, but then you come home from vacation and there is no food in your home and you’e so freaked out by all the empty shelves in your pantry and your fridge that you go way overboard and way over budget.
Guys, I was so confident before I left for Disney. I had gotten the budget back under control, I was even a few bucks under. When I entered the Kroger, I was practically strutting. Then I got to the register, saw the total, and made this face.
How did this happen? How did I get here? Can I just take a mulligan on this and go back to Disney?
After some investigation, it seems the fault was in our meats. Proteins are expensive, and they make up so much of our diet that whenever I see them on sale, I just pounce. Especially Manager’s Specials. Because who knows if the meat will ever be that cheap again? I’m still recovering from the Sausage Drought of ’18, when sausage was $4.25 a pound and we didn’t buy any of 6 months.
So of course, when sausage, steak, and salmon were on sale, I grabbed it all. Sausage and steak and salmon, oh my! Did I need that chicken? I did not. Did I buy that chicken? You betcha. Why? Because I was shopping under a crazy combination of post vacation confidence and the thrill that comes with deep discounts on your fave items.
Grocery Curse.
I grabbed three cans of Red Gold Canned Tomatoes because I was certain I had seen them on Ibotta for $.60 off three cans. But as soon as I arrived home and opened the app, it was like the offer had never been there. Like I had imagined the whole thing and the Ibotta app was laughing at me. “Ha ha ha ha, 60 cents for your canned tomatoes? Dream on, lady!’
Grocery Curse.
I signed up to bring three boxes of spaghetti to the Frying Pan’s pre-school for some kind of arts and crafts activity that requires dry pasta but forgot all about it until I got home and the normally very cheap Kroger Dry pastas were, for some bewildering reason, more expensive than the name brand dry pasta. What crazy pricing structure is this? I’ll tell you what, the kind that’s part of a curse.
Grocery Curse.
After THREE YEARS of being the exact same price, mangoes have mysteriously gone up $.26 a piece. Why? Why now?
Do I even need to say it?
- Bananas, 2.17 lb -$1.28.
- Black Plums, 1.39 lb-$1.35. $.97 a pound.
- Boar’s Head Honey Ham, .5 lb-$5.79.
- Creamette Pasta (3)-$2.97.
- Haagen Dazs Bars,3 count-$2.99. *Digital Coupon* for $1 off anyHaagen Dazs pint.
- Heritage Farm Chicken Breasts, 4.67 lbs -$9.31.
- Kroger Italian Sausage, 2 lbs-$6. In store sale.
- Mangoes (2)-$2.50.
- Marieke Gouda-$5.09. Manager’s Special!
- NY Strip Steak, 3.98 lbs-$20.11. Manager’s Special!
- Private Selection Wheat Bread-$1.99. Two breads.
- Private Selection Honey Turkey, .5 lb -$5.11.
- Private Selection Maple Ham, .5 lb-$3.82.
- Private Selection Pepperoni, .5 lb-$3.63.
- Red Gold Tomatoes (3)-$3.
- Roma Tomatoes, 2.58 lb-$2.55.
- Red Leaf Lettuce, .99 lb-$1.67.
- Salmon, 3.24 lb-$19.34. *Digital Coupon* brought it to only $5.97 a pound. How could I resist??
- Simple Truth Organic Baby Food Pouches (7)-$8.33. My baby is now addicted to pouches.
- Simple Truth Organic Teething Rusks-$2.49.
- Vidal Onions, 1.73 lb-$1.71.
- Yellow Peaches, 2.88 lb-$2.79. $.97 a pound.
- Apps I’ll submit to: Fetch Rewards, Ibotta ($.20 Off Any Item), CoinOut
Total Budget: $87.09
Total Spent: $111.02
Total Saved: $17.56
Deducted From Next Week: $23.93
I don’t want to trigger the curse more, so I’m just going to take the defeat on this one, keep my head down, and hope that I’ll live to tell the tale of next week’s grocery trip.
Have you ever experienced the Disney Curse? What about the Grocery Curse? Is there another Curse I don’t know about?? Let me know down below!
Kristen B. is wife to the best Prince around, mama to the spunkiest little princesses, and lover of all things Disney. She started her savings journey five years ago and is now dedicated to making her family’s wishes come true one coupon at a time. She is so excited to take her love of saving to the next level and share her journey with you! Click here to catch up on Kristen’s Savings and join in on your own savings adventure!