I’m currently challenging myself to stick with a $70 grocery 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 left on Thursday morning for a much-anticipated beach trip with two of my closest friends. So I didn’t do as much grocery shopping this week, as a result. We were pretty stocked up on food from the extras I had bought the past month and stuck in the pantry and freezer, so I didn’t need to buy much.
And I’ll just roll over the money I didn’t spend this week to next week’s grocery budget.
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 in these shopping trips that I used to make all of the meals we ate. And it also means we didn’t use all of these groceries up this week — because some of them will be saved for later weeks!
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. ?
Kroger Shopping Trip #1:
5 boxes of Quaker Oatmeal Packets — $0.99 each when you purchase 5 boxes
Total with tax: $5.31
Kroger Shopping Trip #2:
- Organic Lettuce — marked down to $1.79
- Buns — marked down to $0.59
- Artisan Bread — marked down to $1.49
- 2 Fage Yogurt — marked down to $0.49 each
- 4 yogurts — marked down to $0.39 each
- 1 bag of avocados — marked down to $0.99
- Raw sugar — $2.89
- Bananas — marked down to $0.39/lb. = $1.86 total
- Flour — $1.39
- 4 cottage cheese — marked down to $0.69
- Milk — $2.69
- 2 Oreo yogurts — $0.99 each when you buy 5 participating items
- 2 Danimals — $0.99 each when you buy 5 participating items
- Simply Lemonade — $0.99 each when you buy 5 participating items
- Total with tax: $25.46
What We Ate This Week
Breakfasts:
- Cereal, Oatmeal, Toast/Eggs, Turmeric Milk, Banana Bread with Peanut Butter (Everyone is on their own for breakfast!)
Lunches:
- Hard Boiled Eggs, Avocados, Salad, Cottage Cheese, Lasagna Casserole, Turkey Burgers, Apples, Pancakes (Jesse & Me)
- Turkey Sandwiches, Fruit, Veggies, Banana Bread, Granola Bars, Yogurt, Cookies, Capri Sun (For the kids — They are in charge of their own lunches.)
Snacks:
- Banana Bread, Yogurt, Cottage Cheese, Fruit/Veggies, Cookies, Hard Boiled Eggs
Dinners:
- Sunday: Leftovers/Fend For Yourself
- Monday: Lasagna Casserole, Peas, Grapes
- Tuesday: Turkey Burgers & Spaghetti (Fend For Yourself Night again since everyone had different things going on)
- Wednesday: Lasagna Casserole, Pumpkin Doughnut Muffins
- Thursday: French Toast
- Friday: Dinner Out
What I Spent This Week
Total spent: $30.77
Cashback Earned This Week: 75 points from Fetch Rewards for scanning my receipts
Love to see Kroger trips. Went today to get $1.49 6-pack sodas. Score! But when I picked up Mission tortillas,I forgot to use the $1 peelie. And I used self-checkout. Fail.
Since I primarily shop Aldi, I have forgotten many couponing skills. I did make a menu and pretty much stuck to it so I’m hoping to curb the food budget back to $100/wk for 2 adults 2 teens.
Thanks for sharing your trips and menu. I haven’t found friends interested in being frugal since moving to VA and you’re the closest to a frugal friend I have!
Aw, I will totally be your long distance virtual frugal friend!
Love this Crystal, reminds me of the old days of your blog! ❤️
Thanks so much! I’m glad you enjoyed it!
I wish we could eat like that
But everyone likes something different.