I have had my eye on some lobster tails at Walmart for a few weeks now but at a cost of $24.92 for two tails it always pained me to think of what that would do to my food budget. (If you are not reading this directly from www.howisavemoney.net or from the feed you may be reading content that has been scraped) Since I started over this month I decided to take the plunge and get the lobsters and I put the pot of water on to boil while I read the back of the box. Normally I check the expiry dates on food but I guess I was just too excited at the prospect of finally getting my lobsters that I did not bother in this case.

Well as soon as I flipped the box I noticed that the lobsters had expired in JUNE of this year!!!!

I brought the lobster back and got a refund and went back to the freezer to see if I could find a replacement that was fresh since I was really CRAVING lobster now. I looked at the first box and it was expired too, second box same thing. I flipped two rows of boxes only to find that they all had the same expiry date and I was getting annoyed but I could see a third row way in the back that hopefully would have some good lobster.

I called an employee to help me reach the boxes in the back since they were on the top shelf and I was not tall enough to reach but to my dismay they were all expired as well. The employee said that they would just have to trash all of them and he merrily got out his little scanner and began scanning boxes and throwing them onto a cart, while calling yet another employee to get on disposal duty. He then cheerfully said to me that there were 24 boxes on the shelf so that was a loss of $600 to the company but on the bright side I could try the crab legs because he knows they are fresh.

I smiled and thanked him for helping me and looked at my refund slip and drove back home with my stomach growling at the thought of the missed lobster. So I guess I can say I saved that $24.92 today because I was really determined to get my lobster but I guess the spirits of finance and budgeting blocked that dream for me today.