I’m currently challenging myself to stick with a $70 grocery budget for our family of five. This includes almost all of our breakfasts, lunches, snacks, and dinners + most household products (toiletries, laundry soap, etc.).
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Kroger Shopping Trip #1
- 2 dozen Simple Truth eggs — marked down $1.19 each
- Kroger butter — marked down to $1.49
- Kerrygold butter — marked down to $1.59
- 3 cartons cage-free eggs — marked down $1.19 each
- 4 boxes Ronzoni Veggie pasta — $1 each, used $2/4 Kroger Digital coupon = $0.50 each after coupon
- 4 boxes Ronzoni SmartTaste pasta — $1 each, used $2/4 Kroger Digital coupon = $0.50 each after coupon
- 4 boxes Creamette pasta — $1 each, used $2/4 Kroger Digital coupon = $0.50 each after coupon — You can get $1 back from iBotta for buying two — which makes 2 boxes completely free!
- Whole Wheat Pitettes — marked down to $1.29
- 3 bags of grapefruit — marked down to $0.99 each
- Chopped spinach — $1.59
- Olive Oil Cooking Spray — $2.99
- 5 boxes Kroger Instant Oatmeal — $1.49 each, used $0.50/1 Kroger Digital Coupon = $0.99 each
- Sweet Tarts Ropes — free with Free Friday coupon
- Total with tax: $30.62
Kroger Shopping Trip #2
- Dannon Oikos Triple Zero — marked down to $1.89
- 1 bag of oranges — marked down to $0.99
- 2 Carmex Lip Balm — marked down to $0.29
- Organic Romaine Lettuce — $1.79
- Kroger Powdered Sugar — $1.49
- 1 bag of potatoes — marked down to $1.50
- Total with tax: $8.78
I also ordered a box of trash bags from Amazon because I saw that there was a great coupon available (I don’t think it’s still available? I can’t see for sure since I already used it!)
I used a gift card earned for free from Swagbucks to pay for this, but I still deducted the amount spent from my grocery budget to keep it fair for you all who are following along with our $70 budget.
I got some great freebies in the mail this week! Kroger sent me an envelope of coupons, including coupons for a free box of Cheerios and a free box of Quaker Granola Bars! (If you have a Kroger store, make sure your address is correct in your account. They send these out quite often!)
I also got my free Deer Park water coupon and my free Natural Calm sample. What did YOU get in the mail this week?
I complete forgot to take a photo of my last Kroger shopping trip… but I did do a video on Facebook that I shared above (you can click on it to watch it). Here’s what I bought:
Kroger Shopping Trip #3:
- 1 box of Cheerios — free with coupon mailed to me (see above)
- 2 packages of Jimmy Dean sausage — $1.99 each with Friday-Saturday coupon
- 5 packages of Oreos — $1.49 each with the Friday-Saturday coupon
- Jimmy Dean turkey sausage — $1.99 each with Friday-Saturday coupon — you can get $0.80 back from Ibotta, which made this just $1.19
- Vitamin D milk — $2.49
- 1 bags of oranges — marked down to $0.99
- 1 box of Quaker granola bars — free with coupon mailed to me (see above)
- Total with tax: $17.96
This was one of the salads I ate almost every day this week because it was so good: spinach, avocado, Swiss cheese, and dried cranberries.
I am LOVING those of you who are posting your salads on Instagram and sharing your pictures of salads with me. I thought the above message was really impressive and inspiring!
What We Ate This Past Week
Note: When you see the meals below, please remember this: I buy ahead often. Which means that when I find a great deal on something I know we’ll use, I buy as much as I can afford in our budget to have on hand.
This means that you aren’t going to see all of the groceries my shopping trip that I used to make all of the meals we ate.
Please also remember that I’m putting this out there and it’s not a perfectly balanced menu. This is just really what we ate — and I hope that it encourages you to see the real-ness and lack of perfection here. ?
Breakfasts:
- Cereal, Oatmeal, Scrambled Eggs, Hard Boiled Eggs, Peanut Butter/Banana Toast, Bacon
Lunches:
- Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwiches, Yogurt, Grapefruit, Avocados, Hard Boiled Eggs, Salad, Leftovers, Oranges, Cookies
Snacks:
- Yogurt, Oranges, Cookies, Grapefruit, Chocolate Cookies, Chips/Guac
Taco Casserole, Chicken Tetrazinni/Grapefruit, Fend for Yourself, Chicken Tetrazinni/Grapefruit/Salad, Chicken/Roasted Potatoes/oranges, scalloped potatoes, turkey sausage, oranges.
Dinners:
- Sunday — Taco Casserole, Salad
- Monday — Chicken Tetrazinni/Grapefruit
- Tuesday — Fend for Yourself
- Wednesday —Chicken Tetrazinni/Grapefruit/Salad
- Thursday — Italian Chicken/Roasted Potatoes/oranges
- Friday — Scalloped potatoes, turkey sausage, oranges
- Saturday — Frozen pizza (for the kids), Dinner out with two other couples (Jesse & I)
Total spent on groceries: $68.41
Psst! Need some help with cutting your grocery budget? Check out my series: 5 Days to a Better Grocery Budget.
Cashback earned this week: 125 points for submitting my receipts to Fetch rewards+ $1.80 back from iBotta for buying Creamette Pasta, Jimmy Dean sausage, and scanning a receipt.
On the markdown fruits and veggies… do you eat those right away / within a few days of buying them or do you freeze them?
Both! I try to only buy what I know we will either eat up before it goes bad or that we can freeze.
I love your grocery budget posts. I’m currently on an $80 a week grocery budget. That’s just groceries however. I have a separate budget of $70 a month for necessities. We like Costco for toilet paper and I have a 2 year old still in diapers so i find sticking to $80 a week with that very hard.
Love your grocery savings reports.
Could you do one on your task journal ? Also you mentioned you carry it with you. What purse do you have that can fit it?
It’s just a little notebook, so I just slip it into my bag when I go places.