I'm so excited to be more back into the swing of coupon-shopping again; how I've missed it!
This week, we just hit Dillons. I'd planned to hit Aldi, too, but we didn't get out of the house in time. However, I was very happy with what we ended up with from our Dillons' shopping trip and we likely really wouldn't have saved much more to have taken the extra time to hit Aldi, too.
Here's what we bought:
My favorite score for this week was the six bottles of Santa Cruz Organic juice that I got for $0.66/bottle (they were on sale for $1.66 and I had coupons for $1/1 from organic coupon booklets I picked up at the health food store). {Edit: I just found out from Lorrie's blog that there is a PDF coupon available here, too! So if you have a Kroger store and your juice is on sale and you didn't get any of the organic coupon booklets, you can use that coupon to pick up some juice very inexpensively!}
All in all, we spent $41.40 for all the groceries pictured above. According to our receipt, we saved $76.92. However, I pretty much never pay full price for most anything, so those numbers aren't exactly accurate. But it's still fun to think how much using coupons and stocking up on the sales really does save us money compared to paying full price.
We're under budget for this month, even though I went a little over our $40/week grocery budget. We've spent less than $40 for the past four weeks, so I still have some surplus to work with.
And speaking of our grocery budget, as many of you know, we raised our grocery budget to $60/week while I was pregnant to accommodate for more splurging, quick foods, and buying extra protein. There are seasons of life when you just need to cut yourself some slack when it comes to couponing and budgeting and much of this past year (with moving, a big job change for my husband, pregnancy, and a number of other factors) was definitely one of those seasons.
But now that I'm almost recovered from pregnancy and the birth and am feeling much more energetic, we've decided to lower our grocery budget back down to $40/week–at least on an experimental basis. I wasn't sure if we'd be able to do it, since we've moved to a new town with fewer stores to choose from and no CVS at all, but I'm enjoying this new challenge! And so far, it's going a lot better than I anticipated!
I'll post this coming week's menu on Monday so stay tuned for that! And if you're new here and wondering how on earth we'll get a week's worth of meals from the groceries pictured above, be sure to read my post here which explains more how I grocery shop.
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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.
Note: 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!