Want to see what we bought for this week’s $70 grocery budget? 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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We Were a Family of 8 (+ baby!) This Week!
We had a very unexpected, but blessed and stretching week this week! I mentioned last weekend that we took in three kids for a temporary foster care placement (ages 13, 11, and 3). They ended up staying the entire week instead of just the weekend since they are still working to find permanent placement for them (and we didn’t want them to be sleeping in the DCS office this week — something that often happens in these cases, sadly.)
It was interesting to go from 3 kids and one on the way to having a 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, and 3 year old + baby on the way. We had to re-remember how to do the whole car seat thing (which we quickly discovered we were very rusty in!) and shopping with a three-year-old! 🙂
We’ve had so many special moments and made so many fun memories and I’m grateful for the opportunity for us to pour into these sweet kids! We also bought quite a few more groceries than normal since I wanted to make sure to have plenty of their favorite foods and also because 13-year-old boys who are 6 feet tall eat a lot! 😉
(By the way, this week reminded me of how grateful I am that I have such a great stockpile of all sorts of things on hand. It definitely helped allow us to have lots of different meal and snack options without having to keep running to the store or spending a bunch of extra $$ on full-priced groceries!)
Here were the groceries we bought this week…
Kroger Shopping Trip #1:
- 2 Barilla microwave meals — marked down to $0.79 each
- 1 dozen eggs — marked down to $0.49
- 2 Ore-ida Mashed Potatoes — marked down to $0.39 each
- 3 St. Ives Sheet Masks — marked down to $0.89 each
- 2 dozen cage-free eggs — marked down to $1.29 each
- Garlic Bread — marked down to $1.89
- 2 cartons Minute Maid Peach Punch — marked down to $0.89 each
- Stoneyfield Yogurt — marked down to $0.99
- Green Grapes — $3.36
- Red Grapes — $4.58
- Lettuce — $1.79
- 7 Simple Truth Yogurts — marked down to $0.29 each
- 2 cartons of raspberries — $1.25 each
- 4 bags of apples — marked down to $0.99 each
- 1 bag of avocados — marked down to $0.99
- 1 bag of potatoes — $1.99
- 2% milk — $2.59
- Whole milk — $2.99
- 2 Stayfree pads — $1.99 each when you buy 5 participating items, used $3/2 Kroger digital coupon = $0.49 each
- 2 Colgate toothpaste — $1.99 each when you buy 5 participating items, used $4/2 Kroger digital coupon = free after coupon
- Simple Truth Tortilla Chips — $0.99 when you buy 5 participating items
- Total with tax: $44.90
There was this HUGE section of dairy markdowns at the store one of the days I went this week! I wished I had more refrigerator space because I would have bought more!
Kroger Shopping Trip #2:
- 3 boxes of Kroger cereal — $1.49 each
- 2 boxes of Coconut Cheerios — marked down to $0.79 each
- 4 Stoneyfield yogurts — marked down to $0.29 each
- Kroger rolls — marked down to $1.09
- 4 6-packs of Danimals drinkable yogurts — marked down to $0.49 each
- 2 2-packs of Oui yogurts — marked down to $1.09 each
- 4 bags Kroger potatoes — marked down to $1.49 each
- 2 Simple Truth yogurts — marked down to $0.29 each
- 1 can of carrots — marked down to $0.29
- 5 bags of Birdseye frozen veggies — $1 each when you buy 5 participating items
- Total with tax: $33.33
Kroger Shopping Trip #3:
I wasn’t planning to go to Kroger a third time, but when I saw their deal on cheese over the weekend, I knew I had to run by there again!
- 5 packages of Kroger cheese — $1.29 each with weekend deal
- 1 gallon of water — $0.89
- 2 bottles of apple juice — marked down to $0.89 each
- 1 bag of onions — marked down to $0.99
- 5 boxes of Jolly Time popcorn — $0.99 each when you buy 5 participating items (only 3 are shown because Kathrynne took two boxes to school for a party)
- 1 loaf French bread — marked down to $0.99 each
- Total with tax: $17.27
This Week’s Dinners:
Monday: Ritzy Chicken and Peas (the three kids we’re taking care of were with their worker this evening and we just had a crazy simple dinner because we had three different places to be this evening!)
Tuesday: Homemade Rotisserie Chicken in the Crockpot, Mashed Potatoes, Peas, Grapes, Garlic Bread.
Wednesday: Barbecued Meatballs, Cinnamon Apples in the Instant Pot, Roasted Broccoli, Mashed Potatoes, Rolls
Thursday: Dinner provided by Brown Bag (My friend coordinated with them to have them make dinner for us — something that they offer free of charge to foster families! How kind and amazing is that??)
Friday: Salad, Grapes, Ritzy Chicken Casserole, Leftover Corn & Peas, Leftover Mashed Potatoes, Garlic Bread
Saturday: Dinner out
Plan for Sunday: Steak, Roasted Potatoes, Roasted Broccoli, Grapes, Leftover Garlic Bread
When did you buy the chicken and steak? This grocery list is a bit misleading thinking that you budgeted for 8 people when really you had things already in the freezer. Higher priced items such as steak and chicken. I think if you’re going to make a grocery list for the week it should be more realistic and be item for item that’s actually used for the entire week that you don’t already have n the fridge or freezer.
I’m guessing you’re new here! Welcome! I always buy ahead when things are at their lowest prices so that I have extras in the freezer/fridge/pantry to use for the coming weeks. So for instance, this week, there weren’t any great meat deals, so I used what we already had on hand. However, I stocked up on cheese, popcorn, potatoes, onions, eggs, Stayfree, yogurt, toothpaste, and apples. We only used a little bit of the apples, some of the potatoes, and some of the yogurt, and two boxes of popcorn. The rest of the items listed were ones I bought ahead to be used in the coming weeks.
This is the beauty of buying ahead and it’s how we keep our groceries budget so low. Most weeks, at least half of the groceries I buy (if not more) aren’t ones we use that week but ones we’re stocking up on for the coming weeks. It means we can keep our grocery budget low while also having lots of variety in our pantry, fridge, and freezer.
Keep following along with my grocery posts and menu plan posts and you’ll start to see how this works… and hopefully it will inspire you with ways you can cut your grocery budget, too!
Great job feeding all these people for so little money! I am blessed and encouraged by hearing about your experience with foster care. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you for your encouragement!
I’m so glad to see the extra snacks and food! As an attachment-trained, trauma informed therapist, I can’t overstate the power of connection in foster parenting. A “yes” basket of snacks and an over abundance of food when possible are the very first steps to helping foster kiddos feel stable. You can’t deal with higher-order thinking until those foundational needs are met! If you haven’t checked out the Parenting With Connection FB page, I strongly encourage you to do so!
Thanks so much for your encouragement! I was grateful for our very well stocked freezer and pantry because it meant we had lots of different types of food to offer them at a very short moment’s notice until I could figure out what they liked best and make sure we had that on hand!
Hi Crystal! I LOVE seeing you, and your sisters, weekly meal plans! It helps me come up with ideas every week! Just a suggestion- you should put all the menu plans in the menu plan section. I would love to be able to compare all the menu plans without searching the posts for yours!
Thanks again for the super helpful posts!
Thanks so much for your encouragement! You can see all of my menu plans here: https://moneysavingmom.com/tag/my-70-grocery-budget/
Hi! After reading about the kids you are fostering it reminded me of my brother and sis in law. Their daughter and her husband adopted a little boy out of foster care and after that they created the xander bunny. It’s a super soft stuffed bunny with a lavender bag inside that smells really good that you can warm up. We have some of the bunnies, (we have 6 kids!) and they are very nice. Anyway they use them to support foster care, for every bunny purchased they give a bunny. I’m not sure how you could get one for your foster kiddos but here’s the link. https://lavender-life.com/collections/lavender-warmable-toys https://lavender-life.com/pages/xanders-story