u/Dry-Library1897

My grocery spend swings 20 to 30 dollars week to week and it is driving me insane. I have a spreadsheet. I track cost per serving. I plan meals before I shop. And I still walk out having spent more than I meant to almost every other week.

The main problem is protein prices. Chicken thighs are one price this week and a different price next week, and I have not figured out a system that accounts for that without just buying whatever is cheapest and then scrambling to build a prep around it at the last minute.

I tried building a flexible meal plan where I swap proteins based on what is on sale, but that only works if I already know what I am making with each one. If I do not have a plan for ground beef ahead of time, I end up buying it anyway and then burning mental energy figuring it out in the store parking lot.

Curious how people who prep consistently handle this. Do you set a hard number and cut something if you go over? Do you stockpile when prices drop? Do you have a backup prep that works with almost any cheap protein so you are never stuck?

ETA: I am not trying to meal prep on 25 dollars a week or anything extreme. I just want it to stop being a guessing game.

Four months in and I finally sat down and looked up what dental assistants in my area are making per hour because I realized I had no real baseline when I took this job. Just accepted what was offered and assumed it was somewhere in the range of normal. It was not a reassuring afternoon.

The problem is the range for part time assistants is all over the place depending on whether you're certified, what procedures you assist with, how long you've been at a practice, and apparently just how much the office feels like paying. There's no obvious number to point to and say this is what this work is actually worth.

What I can't figure out is whether anyone actually negotiated when they started or if most people just take the number given and move on. And for people who have gotten a raise, how did that conversation go. Did you bring data or just ask and hope, and how long did you wait before bringing it up at all.

The experience argument gets used a lot to justify lower pay for newer assistants and I get that to a point, but at some point the experience you're building has to show up on the check.

ETA: state and whether you're certified would be useful context if you're willing to share actual numbers.

Genuinely asking because I rotate through the same 4 or 5 things and two of them I am starting to resent opening the fridge. Work schedule is unpredictable, budget is tight, and I do not have time to be bored of my food on top of everything else.

Right now my rotation is chicken thighs with roasted vegetables, ground turkey rice bowls, and egg muffins for breakfast. The egg muffins are the only thing I never get tired of. Everything else starts feeling like a punishment around day 3 or 4.

I track my grocery spend obsessively so I need things that are cheap per serving, not just cheap ingredients on paper. Like buying a whole rotisserie chicken sounds affordable until you are buying one every single week and not stretching it far enough.

I keep seeing stir fry come up a lot and I want to know if that actually holds up for 4 to 5 days in the fridge or if people are just posting day 1 photos. Be real with me.

Also curious if anyone has cracked a prep that works for protein, carbs, and something green without it becoming a sad desk lunch every single day.

ETA: not looking for recipes that require 14 ingredients. Simple stuff only please.

Part time at a dental office means part time pay, and I've been running the numbers on this for a while. After gas, scrubs, and whatever random stuff the office expects you to just have on hand, the hourly rate starts looking a lot less appealing than it did when I took the job. Full time positions at this practice aren't available right now and I have no idea when one would open up.

What I keep coming back to is whether the experience I'm building now is actually worth the financial hit, or if I should be looking at something else. I know the skill set transfers, and getting faster and more comfortable with procedures is real progress. But skill set doesn't pay a bill.

For people who did part time for a while, how long did you stick it out before something changed? Either you found full time somewhere else or decided this field wasn't going to work financially. Did you pick up a second job, and if so, how did you manage the scheduling around appointments and procedures?

ETA: not looking for anyone to tell me to just budget better. The budget is already tight and accounted for. Genuinely asking how other assistants navigated this specific situation.

My doctor has been doing this for like 20 years and he just moves at a speed that feels impossible to anticipate sometimes. I'll have the suction ready and he's already three steps ahead calling for something else. I feel like I'm constantly playing catch up and then he gives me this look like I should have known.

I've been at this practice for about four months so I'm still learning his patterns and preferences, but some days it feels like I'm never going to get ahead of it. Other assistants who've been there longer make it look so easy and they barely even talk during procedures. They just hand things over before he even asks.

Is this just a timing thing that clicks eventually, or is there something specific people do to get faster at reading what's coming next? Do you just memorize every step of every procedure until it becomes automatic, or is it more about watching the doctor's hands and body language? Right now I'm relying on him calling out what he needs, and that clearly isn't working.

Curious if anyone went through this and at what point it actually started feeling natural.