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 was $0.99 over-budget this week… however, since I’ve been under-budget the past few weeks, I’m good with it! 😉
I went to two different Kroger stores on Tuesday morning while I was dropping the kids off at school.
Kroger Shopping Trip #1:
- Chocolate Milk — marked down to $1.49
- Carrots — $0.99
- Breakfast Sausage Links — marked down to $1.79
- 3 packages of breakfast sausage — marked down to $1.79 each
- Total with tax: $10.24
Kroger Shopping Trip #2:
- Kroger Half & Half — $1.79
- 3 boxes of Shrimp Potstickers — marked down to $1.49 each
- 2 packages of King’s Hawaiian Hot Dog Buns — marked down to $1.79 each
- 2 bars of Lindt chocolate — $0.99 each
- 1 box of Matzo Ball soup — marked down to $0.50 each
- 1 box of Stuffed Clams — marked down to $2.99
- 2 packages of salmon — marked down to $1.99 each
- Hunt’s Tomato Sauce — marked down to $0.25
- Hormel Chili — marked down to $0.49
- Mint — marked down to $0.25
- Simple Truth Eggs — $2.99
- Diced Ham — $1.59
- Dove PB Eggs — $0.09
- 2 packages of Bran Muffin Mix — marked down to $0.25 each
- 2 Salad Kits — marked down to $1.99 each
- 1 bag of apples — marked down to $0.99
- 2 boxes of Kroger cereal — $1.49 each
- Kroger baking mix — marked down to $0.79
- Barlean’s Forti-Flax — marked down to $1.50
- Lemon juice — $2.49
- Milk — $2.69
- Total with tax: $43.59
I was excited to get this printout offer to take a survey and get $5 off my next shopping order. I wrote more about it here.
We invited friends over for dinner on Saturday, so Jesse ran to the store on Friday to pick up a few things we needed for that.
Kroger Shopping Trip #3:
- 2 bunches of Lettuce — $1.79
- Ragu Pasta Sauce — $1.50
- Kroger Butter — $3.19
- Breyer’s Ice Cream — $3.99
- Cottage Cheese — $3.89
- Total with tax: $17.16
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 — Dinner at TopGolf for Silas’ birthday
- Tuesday — Meatballs, Twice Baked Potatoes, Fruit
- Wednesday — Leftover Meatballs, Potstickers, Fruit
- Thursday — Homemade Pizza, Sweet Potato Fries, Fruit
- Friday — Kaitlynn went out to dinner with her class for school formal, Jesse and I met friends for Panera, and Silas and Kathrynne had hot dogs
- Saturday — We had friends over for dinner and we made Ziti, Peas, Homemade Rolls, Salad, Apple Crisp/Ice Cream.
Grocery Budget Totals
Total spent on groceries: $70.99
Cashback earned this week: 350 points for submitting my receipts to Fetch rewards + $0.45 for submitting my receipt to iBotta rewards.
Now if you had bought your lemon juice at Dollar Tree you would have been under budget again.! LOL
I know! If only I had been driving by a Dollar Tree. It’s kind of out of the way and would likely cost me more in gas to get there than I’d be saving! 🙂
We don’t have Kroger here but have a Frys (Kroger chain) but I can never seem to find markdowns.
Any tips for how and when you find markdowns?
Have you asked your produce manager/meat manager when they do markdowns?