Personal Finance Advice

As I mentioned earlier, I have friends visiting me this week. Day one was spent at the hospital (long story that I’ll get to in another post when I have a bit more time to write) and today we’re off to Himeji to see the famous castle there.

One of the main goals of my friend is that he wants to eat as many strange foods as he can while he is out here. This being Japan, there is absolutely no problem with this request. While it isn’t an issue because this is something that he wants to do and has been budgeted as part of his travel plans, it has shown me is the great importance once again of shopping with a specific list of items you want and sticking to that list.

We went to the store last night to get toothpaste which he had run out of. We left the store with $30 worth of snacks and other food items he decided that he needed to try.

Dried squid - the perfect snack with beer

As we were walking down the isles we were putting in placing items in left and right. I’m sure that if I didn’t shop with a list, it would be extremely easy to add extra items as we were doing last night. There was a lot of, “oh, this looks interesting. I have to try this” and I’m sure in my everyday shopping if I didn’t have a list to focus on while shopping, I would come across items and say the same thing. No doubt they would end up in my grocery basket whether I needed them or not.

candy covered fish - a favorite of my wife

I know this to be a fact. We were able to reduce our shopping bill be over $100 a month when we started to use lists and never missed the food that we didn’t buy. While it’s fun searching for strange foods for him to try and I hope to show more over the coming week, it’s also nice knowing that shopping with lists has changed our personal finances for the better.