As part of our journey to becoming debt free, one of the things our family has implemented is a fairly strict grocery budget (among other budgets). Unlike utilities and mortgage, the grocery budget is something that I feel we have much more control of. We are in charge of the meals we cook, the ingredients we pick, the stores we choose to shop at, and whether or not to use coupons, store discounts or take advantage of the promotions that are being offered.In our household (for a family of 6), the grocery budget is set for $150 per week. To maximize our budget and still choose mostly healthy options, I take advantage of store offers for the week and shop at a variety of stores, all of which are in my daily commute (because if you have to drive 10 miles to get to a store and pick up just an item or 2, the savings may not be worth it).
Every Friday (or most of) I will be posting my receipts and sharing with you all how I managed to stay within my budget.
I plan out my weekly menu and the kids lunch menu. Using that as a guide, I make my grocery list using the iPhone app “list ease”. Although there are several apps for grocery list, I prefer using “list ease”, because once you make the purchase, it allows you to move the items into a “pantry” section and store them for future use. Once I have made my grocery list, I scroll through the pantry section to make sure there aren’t any items that I may have forgotten. Recurring grocery items such as milk, eggs, and bread are usually stored in the “pantry” section. After making my initial grocery list, I move these items from the “pantry” section in to the “grocery” section. These are the items I HAVE to buy that week. In addition to these items, I keep a lookout for deals on items I can stock up on for future use.
Also, we have a mostly organic policy. This means that I try to purchase ALL milk and produce from the organic section of the market. In addition to that, there are times when organic options are just as affordable as non organic. In those in instances, I prefer to purchase the organic items.
∇ = items purchased on sale, promotion or coupon
This week I went to Trader Joe’s, Target, Costco, Publix and the Halal Store:
Total spent: $150.62
Here’s what I bought:
MEATS-
Whole Chicken (Halal Store)
Boneless chicken cubes (Halal Store)
Ground Beef (Halal Store)
Beef Cubes (Halal Store)
DAIRY-
Milk (1) (Trader Joe’s)
Milk (Target)
Coffee mate Creamer (Target)
Homogenized Milk Carton (3) (Target)
Homogenized Milk Carton (4) (Publix)
PRODUCE-
Banana (Trader Joe’s)
Bell Pepper (Publix)
Carrots (Trader Joe’s)
Cilantro (Target)
Serrano Pepper (Target)
Strawberries (Trader Joe’s)
BREAD/BAKING-
Bread (3) (Target) ∇
Chocolate Chips (Target)
Flour Tortilla (Publix) ∇
CANNED/ DRY GOODS–
Canned corn (Trader Joe’s)
Knorr Spanish Rice (Publix)
DRINKS–
Lemonade (Target) ∇
Water Bottle Case (4) (Costco)
HOUSEHOLD–
Persil (Publix) ∇
Vinegar (Costco)
Method Toilet Bowl Cleaner (Target)
Promotions, Coupons and Deals:
There weren’t too many deals this week. The Persil laundry detergent was on a promotion but due to coupon restrictions, I was only able to pick up one bottle. I intended to go back before the sale ended to stock up on laundry detergent, but it just didn’t work out .
Bread and lemonade were on sale at Target. Flour tortilla was on B1G1 sale at Publix so we purchased that and used it for dinner this week. It will be used again next week for dinner but for a different recipe as well as in the kids school lunch.
In light of the recently hurricane activities, we decided to start building our hurricane pantry stock. Since we live in a hurricane prone area, every year we try to stock up before the hurricane shopping rush. This did however cause us to go slightly above budget this week. For our hurricane pantry items, we stocked up on a few cartons of the Horizon homogenized organic whole milk and 4 cases of water bottles.
