What I realized is that our budget is kind of like my eating habits. When I don't keep track of it closely, it goes out of control until two weeks later I'm left with cupcake crumbs around me and a lighter wallet. We don't spend like crazy because we're not millionaires, but we also don't do things like vacation. So we've let our "little luxuries" take the place of big purchases, which is also a bad habit to get in to.
In an effort to cut, we've had rousing discussions around our cable bill. Mostly because Comcast sticks it to me by making ESPN only available on the full basic cable. I mean, it's one of the most popular channels and we can get everything BUT ESPN for $10 less a month, but they're milking suckers like me that don't want to miss Monday Night Football or who like to fall asleep watching SportCenter.
But the luxury that I thought was going to be the hardest was cutting our name brand groceries. Primarily the carbonated beverages. I'm a sucker for cold bubbles tickling my nose with a combination of sweet chemicals and deliciousness, but am mostly a sucker for the name brands. Since I've cut a lot of major sweets out of my diet, diet drinks are one of the things that satisfy my sweet tooth. But I digress.
In the swap, my favorite thing about buying store brand cola, aside from saving about $10 a week on drinks alone, are the names. I'm currently shopping Kroger so these are all Kroger brand, but if you have any suggestions, let me know. Here are some of my favorite new drinks and my opinion:
- Diet Dr. K (aka Diet Dr. Pepper--all doctors hang out together): sweet, really sweet and lacking the pepper bite at the end, but not a bad substitute.
- Diet Citrus Drop (ala Diet Mountain Dew?): this one doesn't really know what it's supposed to be. Is it Diet Mountaint Dew, Diet Sprite, Fresca? Or maybe it's like the diet cirtus version of a suicide that I used to get after softball games when I was younger. Nothing quenches the thirst of a kid who's just played sports like a little bit of RC, Big Red, Mello Yello, and Diet Rite mixed together.
- Big K Oh! (aka Coke Zero): My favorite thing about this drink is the exclamation point at the end of it's name. It's so excited to be added to the line up. Honestly, it's the best drink that I've found so far, so I'm pretty excited about it too.
What's your favorite off-brand product?
1 comment:
Big K Oh! is quite good. Not as good as Coke Zero, but far better than any other brand-name or off-brand diet cola. I'm glad they finally had the foresight to create a generic alternative.
One thing I also used to like a lot was Diet Pepsi Twist, the lemon-flavored Diet Pepsi. The lime version is still available here and there, but it's not as pleasant-tasting.
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