Aldi, Sprouts, Big Lots, and Kroger Shopping Trips + Our Weekly Menu Plan

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.).

For live updates, be sure to follow my Instagram Stories. See all posts on my $70 Grocery Budget here.

I finally made it to Sprouts on a Wednesday!! If you’re unfamiliar with Sprouts’ sales cycles, they have overlapping sales on Wednesdays — which means you can get the sales from the last week + the sales from the coming week on Wednesdays!

They had some great produce deals that I stocked up on:

Sprouts Shopping Trip

• 6 packages of strawberries — $1.25 each
• 3 Cantaloupe — $0.99 each
• 2 Pineapple — $0.98 each
• Sprouts Chocolate Chip cookies — used free coupon
• Total with tax: $13.24

Did you get your freebies from Sprouts? If not, be sure to sign up for them here.

I was SO excited to find so many good clearance deals at BigLots when I went on Wednesday!!

My biggest score? Boxes of Kodiak Cakes for $0.75 each!!! Jesse loves these and he was super thrilled at this score!

Big Lots Shopping Trip

• 4 boxes of Kodiak Cakes — marked down to $0.75 each
• 5 packages of bread, bagels, & English Muffins — $1.40 each (I stuck these in the freezer.)
• 1 can of Split Pea Soup — marked down to $0.25
• 3 cans of corn — $0.25
• Total with tax: $11.74

Aldi Shopping Trip:

• Honey Crunch Oats — $1.59
• All Purpose Flour — $1.89
• 2 packages of hot dog buns — $0.85 each
• Milk — $2.49
• Cream Cheese — $1.29
• Cheddar Cheese — $1.99
• Eggs — $0.73
• 10 lb potatoes — $3.49
• Watermelon — $2.99
• Total with tax: $19.39

Have you read my post on my 25 Favorite Things to Purchase From Aldi. And 5 Things You Should Not Buy at Aldi.

Kroger Shopping Trip #1

• Eggs — marked down to $1.39
• All Egg Whites — $4.99
• 2 loaves of bread — marked down to $0.89 and $0.99
• 1 bag of apples — $0.99
• 1 bag of grapefruit — $0.99
• Total with tax: $11.36

Kroger Shopping Trip #2

Bush’s Baked Beans — $0.99 each with the Weekend Only deals

This past week, we got to host three college girls from Pine Cove all week long who were here leading a Camp in the City for local kids.

We provided breakfast every morning for them. Then, we got to have dinner with them on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (they had dinners elsewhere the other nights).

Just for fun, we invited extra friends over on Wednesday and Friday night. I was excited that we were able to do all of the entertaining and still stick with our $70 grocery budget!

Oh and we ate a lot of leftovers this past week because we had a lot of extra food. 🙂 (I always want to make sure there is a enough food when we have guests, so that means I tend to plan a lot more food than we actually need! But hey, it means dinner is taken care of the next night!)

What We Ate On Our $70 Grocery Budget 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, Pancakes, Bagels, Toast, Waffles, Fruit, Yogurt, Bacon, Sausage, Banana Bread, Apple Muffins

Lunches:

•  Leftovers, Salad, Mac & Cheese, Turkey, Fruit

Snacks:

• Fruit, Popcorn, Cookies, Banana Bread

Dinners:

• Sunday — Fend for yourself
• Monday — Dinner with our guests: Spaghetti with Meatballs, Green Beans, Fruit, Salad, French Bread
• Tuesday — Leftovers
• Wednesday — Dinner with our guests and some other friends: Barbecued Meatballs, Twice Baked Potatoes, Roasted Broccoli, Roasted Brussels, Fruit Salad, French Bread
• Thursday — Leftovers
• Friday — Dinner with our guests and some other friends: Brats/Hot Dogs, Squash Casserole, Salad, Fruit Salad, Homemade Mac & Cheese.
• Saturday — Leftovers

$70 Grocery Budget Totals

Total spent on groceries: $61.23

Cashback earned this week: 625 points for submitting my receipts to Fetch rewards + $0.10 for submitting my receipt to iBotta rewards.