## Sunday, August 15, 2010

### Mean Weekly Victual Cost™ (MWVC)

Well, yesterday marks the first time I have spent more than a hundred dollars in one grocery store run. It's a bit special for me, because I've been priding myself on keeping it below a hundred dollars each trip, despite the high cost of food here. Mostly it was so high because I was restocking on necessaries now that I'm back from California, though I did cave to a few luxury items (Parmesan cheese is expensive...and milk! Gallon for gallon, it's worth more than gas in California. You'd think they have to pump it out of the ground or something).

On a whim, I went through all my receipts over the last semester, and figured out how much I spent on food, then normalized it by the number of weeks in the semester to figure out my Mean Weekly Victual Cost (MWVC). While the total figure took my breath away ($850.73), my MWVC looked a lot better: a mere$36.99. That's right, I can feed myself happily for less than $37 a week. In fact, I could probably feed myself contentedly for a lot less than that, since I could admittedly have gone without certain beverages (and after getting two cavities filled over vacation, I'll be cutting back on them quite a bit this semester!). I did the same thing for the previous semester, and while I don't remember the exact figure I know it was between$40 and \$50, so I'm getting a little bit thriftier. The challenge is on, now...I shall do the same thing this semester, and see if I can't lower my MWVC even more.

Oh, and don't forget to vote in the poll!