Aldi
1 pkg Tomatoes – $0.99
1 Pineapple – $1.29
2 pints Blueberries – $1.49 each (I was so excited about this price as we love blueberries!)
1 Rice Cakes – $1.29
2 pkg Cheese – $1.99 each
1 pkg Flour Tortillas – $1.19
3 lbs Gala Apples – $2.99
3 Cucumbers – $0.59 each
1 Half & Half – $1.69 (I’ve recently started using this in my coffee and love it! 2% milk just isn’t the same…) 🙂
1 pkg Ground Black Pepper – $1.99
1 pkg Pecans – $3.29
1 Cauliflower – $1.69
1 dozen Eggs – $1.59
1 loaf Bread – $0.99
1 pkg Grapes – $2.98
Total with tax ($2.19): $32.89
Dillons
Items a part of the Mega Sale (Buy 5, Save $5 instantly):
2 Herbal Essence Shampoo/Conditioner – $1.99 each, used $3/2 coupon from the 5/11 P&G insert – $0.49 each after coupon
2 Gillette Satin Care Shave Cream – $1.19 each, used 2 $1/1 coupon from the 5/18 RedPlum insert – $0.19 each after coupon
1 Juicy Juice Apple Juice – $1.49 (Not the best price but we go through apple juice like crazy at our house.)
Other Items:
1 Kroger Cottage Cheese – $1.50 (not pictured)
1 Tyson Frozen Chicken Breasts – $6.99
3 Carefree Liners – $1 each, used 3 $1/1 printable (no longer available) – Free after coupon
1 Kroger Mayo – $2.19
5 lb bag Potatoes – $2.99 (I was disappointed to find my Dillons didn’t have any bags left of the brand that was on sale for $1.99.)
1 Kroger Natural Peanut Butter – $2.19
2.39 lbs Bananas @ $0.59/lb – $1.41
1/2 gallon Milk – $1.39
1 Lettuce – $0.99
1 bag Oranges – Marked down to $0.99
0.66 lbs Broccoli @ $1.59/lb – $1.05
Total before sales and coupons: $50.25
Total with tax ($2.33) after sales and coupons: $27.77
Total for all grocery items: $60.66
Menu Plan for This Week
We just got back from a 2-week vacation and I’m also having surgery on my wrist this week, so we’re sticking to really simple meals.
Breakfasts
Cereal, Fruit, Scrambled Eggs & Toast
Lunches
Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwiches, Cheese/Crackers/Veggies, Tossed Salad, Macaroni & Cheese, Leftovers
Dinners
Potato Bar, Steamed Broccoli
Salad Bar, Fruit
Pasta Salad, Sliced Apples
Soft Tacos, Peas (from the freezer)
Meal from my Mom (She was so sweet to offer to bring us dinner the day of my surgery.)
Grilled Chicken, Tossed Salad
Chicken Fried “Steak” (venison) from the freezer, Steamed Cauliflower, Toast
Jennifer Hoffman says
Gretchen I love reading your menu plans as we also are a family of 3 with a 2 year old! I was wondering what you do for snacks? Glad your surgery went well!!
Martha Artyomenko says
Great job! The trick to keeping food costs down, no matter the size of your family, is that every week you buy at least one thing that goes in your pantry. If chicken is on sale, buying an extra package for the freezer can help save money another week. If you set a goal of what to spend, you include some extras every week in that. That way, then, yes, you never have to buy everything for each meal, every week.
It can be a little more work, but that way, it saves a ton of money. I work hard to feed our family of 6, 5 of which are males, 2 very active teenagers and two on the cusp…so large eaters. I aim at about $250 a month as that is what we have to spend. It takes a lot of creativity, and it isn’t easy or fun most of the time, but I try to make it a challenge.
Sam says
Ok, I see that she is also pulling from the freezer/pantry. Thanks!
Lindsay says
You have to look at the type of meals she is cooking as well when you think of a budget that low, they are simple meals, not much meat. I coupon a lot and could keep our budget that low but we choose not to. We budget $500 for 5 people (2 adults and 3 kids, 9, 7 and 4) because we like more variety and meat. We cook a lot of steaks, seafood, pork, exotic dishes. It’s so worth it to us. We love to cook and this keeps us out of restaurants. And $500 month for GOOD stuff isn’t bad at all IMO.
Erin says
I agree–$500 isn’t bad at all for the types of meals you are eating, and if it keeps you out of restaurants, all the better! You sound like us. We are huge foodies and we’d be bored eating the same things every week. I was raised to be an adventurous eater and I’m trying to expose my kids to all kinds of foods and cuisines.
Gretchen says
I’m blessed to have a husband who could eat the same thing every night of the week. He is super easy to please and since we only have a 2 1/2 year old right now, I just stick to the same few meals we all like that are easy for me to make. Some day when we have teenagers (who can cook too!), I’m sure we’ll do a lot more variety in meals. 🙂
Rds says
Gretchen thanks for adding the note about stockpile items! Ive got to brush up on how to do this better since my family eats a Paleo diet, but its a great point! I’m glad to hear your surgery went well!
Amie says
Nice job! I think that what keeps me from spending a ton is that I keep a stockpile. Yesterday, I had a dental appointment in a city with a Save-A-Lot and a Publix so I shopped after my appointment. When I coupon at Publix, I stock up on free/almost free processed items for quick meals and snacks. I only buy that type of food when it is super cheap and it is not the majority of our diets so it goes into my pantry and lasts us several months. I spent about $60 and got:
Save-A-Lot
13 12 oz ground turkey rolls (we usually eat ground turkey 1xper week)
8 packages turkey bacon (we eat t-bacon a few times per week)
1 dozen eggs
1 gallon milk
a large bag of grapes
8 lbs of potatoes
a few lbs of peaches
2 bags of chips
Publix:
4 Maxwell House coffee
3 Tuna Helper
4 Suddenly Salad
2 BC Instant Potatoes
4 Gogurt Yogurt
2 BC Fruit Snacks
2 BC cake mixes
4 Totinos Pizza Rolls
15 Campbells Soup
1 2-pk sausage
4 12-pks 7up
8 Reynold’s Baking Cups
Dinner last night was: Baked potatoes with cheese, pork loin, and broccoli… and the potatoes were even from a previously purchased bag. Last week, I purchased the pork loin when it was $1.99lb and we cut it into meal sized portions and froze it. I also has chicken in the freezer. I still need to make a very small trip to Kroger for OTC meds for my son that I cannot find elsewhere, bananas, tomatoes, lettuce, and cinnamon rolls. I estimate this will cost about $10.
Gretchen says
Great job! It was fun to read what you purchased!
Sam says
Is Gretchen’s meal plan based solely off of the groceries purchased in these posts/ pictures? It looks like she gets some great prices, but I am having a hard time seeing how this food feeds a family 3 meals daily for a week. Maybe we just eat a lot at our house, lol. I’m trying to reduce our grocery budget, but we need a larger volume of food than this. Are many of her meals meatless? Thanks!
Anne says
I have a family of three and this would be fine for my family (although I am lactose intolerant, i buy my toddler organic milk, and we recently discovered my husband is allergic to gluten). Like Gretchen, though, I also have things stocked in my freezer and pantry from other weeks when there was a good deal.
Lea Stormhammer says
Often people on a lower grocery budget shop their home first – what they have in the freezer, pantry and fridge – before buying food “for the week” so they can buy what is on sale and stock up for later at the best price. It looks like the venison on her menu is from her freezer, for example. She also has cereal on her menu and she didn’t buy any this week so that would be coming from her pantry.
How much your family eats each week depends on the ages of the family members (toddlers usually eat less than active teens for instance) and weekly activities (a construction worker usually eats more than someone who works at a desk all day for example). If you have active teens or work physical jobs, this amount of food would probably not work for you!
We have 4 in our family – 2 adults and 2 9-year-olds – and this is about what I buy too, though I buy different things. One thing that worked for me was to start watching serving sizes – we tend to overeat in the US. My registered dietitian told me a good guide for a serving size is the palm your hand. Just following this cut down the amount of food we both bought and ate without a whole lot of effort.
Hope that’s helpful!
Lea
Randi says
This is the same challenge i am having. I have asked Crystal (when she posted asking us for input) to write a post about how her budget shopping, menu plan, and deals all pan out. Like you , its hard for me to see this feeding a family of 5 for 7 days!
Crystal Paine says
I share pretty specifically how I menu plan based upon what’s on sale in my 31 Days to a Better Grocery Budget series: https://moneysavingmom.com/series/31-days-to-a-better-grocery-budget
I hope that helps!
Rds says
Awesome, I’ll check this out! Thanks Crystal!
Sheila says
I think you just have to look to posts like these for ideas rather than trying to duplicate it in your own family. There’s no way it would feed my family of 4 either, but I have a 17 and 14 year old and we are a family are all very physically active and probably eat more than some families of the same size and ages. I quit following $5 dinners because it would take two of her meals to feed my family of 4 and $10 dinners isn’t all that awesome. 🙂 (not to disparage her site at all – it just wasn’t for me). There are other blogs where they are feeding larger family than the one’s in Crystal’s family: Prudent Homemaker, Mom’s Frugal, Homemaking on the Homestead are ones that come to mind that I read. I just try to pull things I learn from this site and others and apply them in ways that work for my family. I should say that I say this because for a while I felt a little frustrated over these posts because I kept thinking they must eat like birds, who could live on that, and then realized I was being silly and needed to just glean what I could and realize that every family is different and I can definitely learn from all of them!
Sheila says
I wanted to clarify about $5 dinners. It wasn’t for me because of the portion sizes and also because her family’s tastes are not similar to mine. I still think she has a great site.
Brandy @ The Prudent Homemaker says
My husband went to the store for me this week after we haven’t shopped for food for 4 weeks. We are a family of 9.
He bought 3 gallons of milk, 5 pounds of shredded mozarella cheese, 100 corn tortillas, 80 flour tortillas, 3 pounds of pepperoni, and 12 pounds of brown sugar. Of course that isn’t all we’ll eat! We’ll eat from the pantry, freezer, and garden, too–just like we have been while not going shopping for the previous 4 weeks. I don’t anticipate that we will need much more from the store (for food) this month, if anything.
One of the key ways to reduce a grocery budget is to stock up while items are on sale at the lowest price. Then you don’t have to buy everything you need for the week that week and can only buy what is at the lowest price. If there are no great deals, you don’t have to spend more to feed your family than the lowest price, because you already have plenty of things in the freezer and pantry that were bought at the lowest price. In fact, you don’t even have to go to the store at all.
Gretchen, I LOVE your meal plan for this week! It sounds very simple, which I love. I hope everything goes well with your surgery and that you have a quick recovery!
Sheila says
This is an excellent series on Brandy’s site: http://theprudenthomemakerblog.blogspot.com/search/label/40%20Cents%20a%20Day
Gretchen says
Thank you! The surgery went well and slowly I’m learning how to do everything with one hand for the time being. 🙂 I can’t imagine having 180 corn/flour tortillas in our house but when we have more/older children I’m sure that will be a common thing in our house! 🙂
Brandy @ The Prudent Homemaker says
We ate 18 flour tortillas in bean burritos for lunch two days ago.We went through 25 corn tortillas at lunch today. They go fast! I’m with Crystal on not making them; I’ve done it, and it takes me 3 hours to get a small batch made–which is no longer enough for the family. For my time and money, my time is better spent working in the garden.
Gretchen says
I use a LOT of things in my pantry/freezer that I stocked up on when they were a great deal. Things like rice, pasta, oatmeal, spaghetti sauce, beans, cereal, etc are things I almost always have in my freezer/pantry because I got a great deal on them. And we almost always have venison in our freezer which I use in place of ground beef in most recipes. 🙂