$70 Budget: What We Ate & What We Bought This Week

I’m currently challenging myself to stick with a $70 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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I Found a Great Deal on Ground Beef!

I was so excited to get a good deal on higher quality ground beef this week as part of our $70 budget.

We don’t use a lot of beef since it’s more expensive than many other meats and I don’t often find good markdowns on it, so I’m always excited when I find a deal! We used one pound this week and put the rest in the freezer.

Kroger Shopping Trip #1

• Eggs — marked down to $0.99
• 4-pack Greek yogurt — marked down to $1.49
• Sausage — marked down to $1.99 + get $0.95 back from iBotta
• 2 boxes powdered sugar — marked down to $0.39 each
• Enchilada sauce — marked down to $0.59
• Kinder Joy egg — marked down to $0.39
• 5 pounds Simple Truth ground beef — marked down to $3.79 each
• Bag of Brussels Sprouts — marked down to $0.99
• Tomatoes and avocados — marked down to $0.99
• Bag of pears — marked down to $0.99
• Clementines — marked down to $0.99
• Apples — marked down to $0.99
• Oranges and pears — marked down to $0.99
• Bagged Salad — marked down to $1.99
• Romaine salad — marked down to $1.39 + get $0.25 back from ibotta
• Carrots — $0.99
• Sweet potatoes — $0.79/lb. = $2.35
• Milk — marked down to $1.99 (I was super excited to find Whole Milk marked down!)
• Total with tax: $42.34

Stocking Up on Oatmeal & Cheese & Peanut Butter

I was excited, because the Kroger weekend deals this weekend were great stock up deals on some of our favorite foods: Cheese, peanut butter, and oatmeal!

Kroger Shopping Trip #2

• 5 packages of Kroger cheese — $0.99 with Kroger Weekend Digital deals
• Half & Half — $1.49
• Vitamin D milk — $2.69
• 5 boxes of Kroger oatmeal — $1.49 each, used $0.50/1 Kroger Digital Coupon (limit 5) = $0.99 each
• 5 jars Kroger Natural peanut butter — $1.79 each, used $0.50/1 Kroger Digital Coupon (limit 5) = $1.29 each
• Total with tax: $21.81

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.

Our Menu Plan

Breakfasts:

• Cereal, Oatmeal, Scrambled Eggs

Lunches:

• Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwiches, Carrots, Oranges, Salads, Leftovers, Cookies

Snacks:

• Fruit, Cookies, Popcorn, Ice Cream, Crackers & Cheese, Carrots & Hummus

Dinners:

• Sunday — Fend for yourself
• Monday — Meatballs, Roasted Brussel Sprouts, Roasted Potatoes, Mangos
• Tuesday — Salsa Chicken, Rice, Fruit
• Wednesday — Leftover Meatballs, Roasted Brussel Sprouts, Roasted Potatoes, Mangos
• Thursday — Chicken Fajitas, Fruit
• Friday — Dinner out
• Saturday — Salads topped with leftover meatballs & roasted Brussel Sprouts, Toast (Jesse and I brought food and ate it on the road while we drove to Destin, FL. The kids stayed home with Jesse’s dad this weekend and they told me that he took them out to dinner.)

Grocery Budget Totals

Total spent on groceries: $64.15

Cashback earned this week: 50 points for submitting my receipts to Fetch rewards + $1.35 for submitting my receipt to iBotta rewards.