I'm a little late in getting this posted today but for a good reason–I slept in until 9:30 a.m. this morning! And I went to bed before 10 p.m. last night so that's what you call one good night's sleep. Of course, since I have a nursing 7-week-old, I was up at least 4 times to nurse him during that stretch of sleep, but I still haven't gotten anywhere near that kind of sleep for at least a few months. Needless to say, I feel great! 🙂
I hit Aldi and Dillons last night for the weekly shopping trip. I had discovered when planning our shopping trip that I had quite a bit of wiggle room in our $40/week budget since I'd been under budget or we'd skipped shopping a few weeks in the last two months. So I decided to use a bit of that extra money to stock up on some of the good deals.
All in all, here's what I bought at the two stores:
I initially had gone to Aldi to pick up strawberries since they were on sale for $0.99, but they were all out. So I just got the blueberries (on sale for $1.49/pint!) and cantaloupe (on sale for $0.99 each!), plus cheese, apples, bananas, cucumbers, chocolate chips, tortillas, carrots, baking soda, tortilla chips, refried beans, and frozen veggies. All totaled, I spent $24.84 there. I'll likely freeze some of the blueberries and the apples and cantaloupe will last us two weeks, likely, since we still have quite a bit of fruit in our refrigerator from last week.
At Dillons, I mostly just hit the good deals. We bought more Santa Cruiz Strawberry Lemonade at $0.66/jar since it was still on sale and we found we really liked that kind. We also bought milk (on sale for $2.50/gallon), Kraft BBQ sauce ($0.08 after coupons), Kraft salad dressing ($0.19/bottle after coupons), Texas Toast croutons ($0.69/bag after coupons), Daisy sour cream ($0.65 after coupon), round steak (reduced to less than $2), Capri Sunrise Drinks ($1.11 after coupons–a splurge but my girls love these on a hot Summer day!), Barbara's cereal ($1.39/box after the clearance price and a coupon), Sara Lee bread ($0.99 after coupon), yogurt ($0.06 each after coupon), and Wheat Thins and Ritz crackers ($0.87/box after coupons).
In addition, I stocked up on quite a bit of shampoo and conditioner. I usually don't like to buy Suave, but our stock is running low and I've not found any exceptional deals on higher quality shampoo and conditioner, so I think Suave will just have to do for now. It was $0.50/bottle after the sale and coupons. Plus, I had a store catalina for $4/$20 any health and beauty items so I bought some free Suave deodorant, Skintimate and Edge shaving gel ($1 each after coupons–my target price for these), and hair gel which my husband needed. All of these items helped push my total spending (before coupons) to over $20 on health and beauty items, so I got an additional $4 off these already low prices!
One of my uncharacteristic expenditures of the shopping trip was buying the Shout. It was not on sale and I didn't even have a coupon for it. However, if you follow me on Facebook, you know that we had a few major catastrophes this week–including 4 bottles of finger paint spilled on our carpet (we found out that the "washable" label is a misnomer!) and neon orange silly putty running through with a load of laundry (it bedecked an entire load of laundry with permanent bright orange polka-dots!). Due to these mishaps, we managed to go through close to an entire bottle of Shout in a week. So, since we cannot seem to live without Shout–otherwise we have all sorts of ruined laundry–I decided it was worth paying full price for!
My total at Dillons was $27.42. Altogether I spent $52.26–and I still have quite a bit of extra grocery cash left. But seeing as our cupboards, refrigerator, and freezer are so well-stocked right now, I think I'm going to get to funnel some of that into savings. I'll wait until the end of the month to see how things pan out.
Stay tuned on Monday for our menu plan for this coming week!
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Did you snag any great deals or bargains this week or save money in other ways? If so, be sure to post about them on your blog and leave your link below. Please remember that this weekly round-up is to share deals you personally got and/or money you were able to save this week. In order to keep this weekly round-up focused on helping and inspiring others in their efforts to save money, links which have little-to-no content other than promoting affiliate links, etc. will be deleted. Also, to make it easy for everyone to navigate quickly through the links, your link must link directly to your Super Savings Saturday post.
Allison left the following comment on my picture of this week's $30 shopping trip:
I've
enjoyed reading this blog the past month or so since I've discovered
it, and you've really helped me snag some good deals. And I think it's
neat when you come home from the store with a pile of groceries for
only a few dollars.
But every time I see the picture of your groceries, I wonder
something like, "What is she going to cook for dinner with easy mac,
salad dressing, and jello?"
Is this all the grocery shopping you do? Do you have a garden? Or
raise your own beef? How do you round out your bargain purchases to get
a meal on the table?
One of my biggest secrets for grocery saving success is that I practice the Buy Ahead Principle. What's that, you ask?
Well, basically, other than dairy products and produce, I aim to never pay full price for anything. Instead, I stock up when an item is on sale to tide me over until the next sale.
For instance, in this shopping trip picture, you'll see that I mainly stocked up on cereal. In fact, I bought 16 boxes of cereal–enough to last us for at least 6 weeks, likely longer. Did we only eat cereal that week? No way! We ate a few boxes of cereal that week and the rest of what we ate mostly came from items I'd stocked up on during previous sales.
You see, because I stock up on items when they are on sale at my target price (providing I can afford it in our budget), my grocery shopping trips will usually look quite strange and will certainly not be the basis for a balanced menu. But you can check out some of our menus here to see that we do eat a fairly balanced diet. Well, at least we're certainly not subsisting on Easy Mac and Jell-O every meal!
How is it that we can eat a fairly balanced diet when I buy such an odd assortment of groceries each week? It's because the bulk of our meals are based upon what we already have in our refrigerator, pantry, and freezer.
To give you an idea of how this works, here's a rundown of our menu this week:
Breakfasts: Cereal or Kashi waffles and fruit (The cereal was from our big stock-up mentioned above, the waffles were purchased two weeks ago at Target for $0.29/box, and the fruit is from what we purchased this week and leftovers from last week.)
Lunches: Sandwiches or leftovers and carrots or fruit (I had lots of bread in the freezer I'd gotten for $0.50/loaf from Aldi last month and the peanut butter was from our pantry. My mom also gave us some extra lunch meat she had leftover from a lunch they served so we've used that, too. The carrots and fruit were purchased this week or leftover from last week's purchases.)
Dinners: We're eating meals from our After-The-Baby Freezer Stash paired with homemade bread from the freezer and frozen veggies from the freezer. All of the items in our After-The-Baby Freezer Stash were purchased within our usual grocery budget over the course of a few weeks' time as I had a little extra wiggle room in the budget or items were on sale.
Snacks: Fruit, cheese, crackers, granola bars, yogurt (The fruit, cheese, crackers, and yogurt were all purchased this week. The granola bars were from the pantry.)
When I plan the menu for the week, I first check out what we already have on hand. This gives me the inspiration for the majority of the menu. I then consult the sales fliers and my coupon box to decide what items are on sale and in-budget that I want (or need) to stock up on. I also add in any specific ingredients I need to round out a recipe or meal I've planned from the freezer and pantry ingredients.
For many people who are used to buying only what groceries you'll use in the next week, the concept of buying ahead can be mind-boggling. However, I highly recommend you at least give it a try as it can save you a great deal of money. In fact, I would estimate that we routinely save at least $30-$50 each week by doing so.
If this is a new concept for you, don't go out and spend $500 tomorrow trying to build up a stockpile. Instead, just designate a small percentage of your grocery budget each week to buying extra of those heavily-discounted items which you know you will use sometime in the next few months.
Slowly
start to build up a stockpile of items you regularly use as you find
them discounted by 50% or more with a sale and coupon. Over time, your
stockpile will grow until you come to a point where you can begin to
pretty much only buy items which are at rock-bottom prices, in addition to produce and perishable items.
Just by adopting the Buy Ahead Principle, you will see a significant savings in your grocery bill. And you'll likely be shopping less and eating better than ever before!