As the anti-social butterflies we are, we do not hang out with people. That is, until our Life Editors pitched the story idea of “ballin’ on a budget.” Still, our lack of social interaction shows: We had no idea what to do, and ended up choosing a $15 budget for a trip to the grocery store of all places. 

Since neither of us can drive nor have our permits (even though we are both second-semester seniors), we decided the best bet was to go to the nearest Target, as to not inconvenience our parents too much with our aimless social lives. But this is how we made the most of our $15. 

Target: Adding a new piece to our wardrobe

Upon entering the bustling store in Westgate Mall, we instantly defaulted to exploring the second floor in the kids’ clothing section to honor our last year of being minors.

After rejecting a cherry T-Shirt and ruining multiple neatly stacked piles of vividly colored apparel with cheesy designs, Carolyn latched onto a teal blue long-sleeve featuring two narwhals using their horns to knit. Adorned with pretty patterns and just the right amount of glitter, the shirt — from the kids’ clothing brand Cat & Jack — was happily inducted into her already Target-filled wardrobe of long-sleeve shirts, which features a concerning amount of Cat & Jack clothing stemming from a fifth grade Target shopping spree.

With a nice discount, the shirt cost a grand total of $6.83 with tax — a beautiful price considering how a bag of chips nowadays can cost anywhere from $3 to $6. After settling on the narwhal shirt, the rest of her search in Target was for naught. Unable to find any other clothes (or general accessories) that satisfied her thirst for reviving her childhood fashion senses, all she ended up doing was ruining a few more piles of shirts — which, in her defense — were folded differently than the method she was used to at home.

Upon realizing Carolyn had no idea how to refold the clothes in the manner the store had presented them, Christina jumped in to give a mini tutorial on how to fold shirts to display the designs on the front. After resolving the whole Carolyn-doesn’t-know-how-to-fold-clothes debacle, Christina sought to find a clothing item of her own.

Unlike Carolyn, Christina decided she’d outgrown the loud childish designs that the majority of the kids’ apparel featured (duh), but she was set on finding something from the kids’ section as it seemed to be the more inexpensive option. After a bit of rummaging, she came across a table with some more plain basics. Sticking to her comfort zone of muted neutrals, she settled on an $8.75 light blue henley top with lettuce edge hemming on the sleeves and bottom.

Frozen Yogurt: Spending the rest of our money on a worthy cause

With the remaining $7 of our $15 budget, there was really only one way to spend it — invade the nearby Yogurtland and grab the perfectly cold snack for an unseasonably cold day.

For this special occasion, Carolyn “conveniently forgot” the $15 limit and went all out — hounding multiple flavors of frozen yogurt including mango, plain tart, strawberry, strawberry shortcake and vanilla. To top off the overflowing yogurt cup, she stashed on mango slices, popping boba, oreos, peanuts and chopped almonds. Her monstrous creation — albeit still under-budget — totaled to approximately $8, overtaking the $6 price of the Target T-shirt.

Christina, on the other hand, opted for more conservative ube and cookies and cream flavors. Having been previously traumatized at not being able to finish her frozen yogurt, she only filled her cup halfway and topped it off with a minimal amount of popping boba and mochi, landing the bill at $7.11 — a slightly suboptimal total of $15.86, just a tad bit over the original budget.

By the end of our miniature adventure, both of us surprisingly stayed approximately below our budget. While it was daunting to know a number loomed over our heads, by the end of our shopping experience, that limit felt irrelevant; we only wanted to get a T-shirt, and our budget was more than enough to meet our needs — and hey, we got ourselves cold icy treats too.

Although our initial incentive to go out was purely for the purpose of writing this story, perhaps for the sake of our mental sanity, we’ll raid our local Target and Yogurtland yet again in the near future.