Teenager on a Food Budget: Week Three

I was just too tired last night after we got home from Wal-Mart to blog, but last evening was the Teenager’s third week on his grocery budget and my reaction this week is mixed.

Once again, the Teenager did not spend his entire grocery allocation and says it was 100% intention this week.  In fact, he didn’t buy much for food at all, only getting milk, cereal, apples, chips, and a couple other things.  I asked him about that in front of the checkout lanes, and he said he was good on pasta and sauce at home.  He declared he wanted to do a midweek grocery run and was saving the rest of the money for that.

I had a few misgivings about that in Wal-Mart, then the thought occurred to me after the Teenager went to bed: he may prefer to do his grocery shopping at Kroger.  When we hit Kroger for week two he had much more food in his cart as Kroger carries a better selection of things for vegetarians, especially in the store brand.

I should probably mention that the Teenager does NOT shop with us.  He grabs his own cart and heads off on his own, and doesn’t seem inclined to ask advice or even be within two aisles of our cart while shopping.  In fact, if we head for the dairy case in the back, he will start in produce.  I doubt if he would take advice given as advice, so I just ask him questions when I see him.  He calls me on the cell phone when he is done checking out to see where we are, and waits for us at the door.

If you’d like to catch up on this story, here are the previous posts about my experiment of putting my 14yo son on his own grocery budget:

As always, comments, suggestions, and criticsms are welcome.