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.
Roberta says
Now if you had bought your lemon juice at Dollar Tree you would have been under budget again.! LOL
Crystal Paine says
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! 🙂
Swapna Krishnan says
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?
Crystal Paine says
Have you asked your produce manager/meat manager when they do markdowns?