The Supermarket Game

First I'm going to point out that it's 11.15pm, and Lolly is STILL awake. She's decided she's had enough sleeping for one lifetime.

Grrr.

Second, I'm very excited and want to talk about it!

"What?!" I hear you thinking. "I wonder what news she has! Is she pregnant? Did she win the lottery? Did she get a part in that musical?"

No, no, and, well, yes actually.

But that's not what I'm so excited about.

I'm excited, because I budgeted £35 in The Supermarket Game, and only spent £21! AND I got everything on my list!

(Except the chocolate chip cookie dough. They must only sell that at the Greenock Tesco. I was rather gutted, considering I'd put it on the shopping list and budgeted for it and everything, but in the end, I suppose I didn't exactly NEED it...)

And now, I can hear you thinking "Supermarket Game? Is she just randomly capitalising words like she's Emily Dickinson, or is this actually a game? And is it a real game, can I Google it, or did she just make it up?"

I made it up. But it's got real rules and everything. And it's awesome. It's transformed my grocery shopping habits FOR REAL.

You see, some of you, if you are loyal Scott and Lori blog readers, or stalkers, or both, you'll know that I have a problem with shopping. Grocery shopping. I have a real problem sticking to a list. So then I overspend, and then I feel guilty, and then I have to borrow from next week's budget, etc etc etc. Well all that has changed with The Supermarket Game.

(In case this comes back to bite/sue me, I do not have a trademark for this name and could very easily be stealing it from someone who does own the trademark. Sorry if the latter is the case.)

Here's how it works.

The Supermarket Game (by Lori)
Pre-Game Preparation:
*Make a breakfast/lunch/dinner/snack menu for one full week.
*Break that menu down into a list of things to buy.
*Do not forget to add non-food items such as toilet roll and shampoo that you ordinarily buy with your shopping.

Game Step 1:
*Break the list down into the different shops you will get each item in.
*Within each shop, next to each item, predict the price. You can get as detailed as you like, though I'm mathematically challenged and prefer to round up or down to the nearest 50p.
*Tally up each shop's price list, and this is your budget for that shop.
*Beside that number, tally up the number of items. This is for the bonus round.

Game Step 2 (Budget Round):
*Give yourself 1 point for each item that is priced below your prediction or exactly your prediction. You could give yourself 2 points for exact predictions.
*Give yourself no points for prices above your prediction.
*Deduct 1 point for any extra items you pick up while in the shop.
*Neither give nor deduct any points for items not on the list but genuinely needed.
*At the end, if your receipt price is under your budget or exacly your budget, you WIN the Budget Round. But if it goes over your budget, you LOSE the Budget Round. BUT...
*Tally up your points you accumulated from your predictions. If the number of points is close to your number of items counted for the Bonus Round, you can give yourself an A, B, C, D or F by calculating your score like in school (for example, if you get 20 out of 30, you'd get a 66%, which is a D). So you may not WIN, but you could still get an A or a B.

Bonus Round:
*This is the hardest one to win. Go back to your number of items and if you only bought that number of items or less, you win the Bonus round! Even if your budget went over and you lost the Budget round, you could still win the Bonus round!


And that's it, folks. That's The Supermarket Game. And it's crazy, but I have never felt so in control of my grocery shopping before in my life.

And now maybe you'll understand why I'm so happy. Because for the first time ever, I've not only won the Budget round, I won the Bonus round!

I wish I had some raw chocolate chip cookie dough to celebrate with.