See the details of my $200 a month grocery shopping trips and learn the things that I do to save and live well on a low budget with my family of five!
There are affiliate links in this post – please read my full disclosure policy.
Some of you have wondered where I get my printable coupons. Here are the main coupon sites that I use:
Coupons.com, Smart Source, Red Plum, Ibotta and Checkout 51. Manufacturer websites and Facebook pages are another great source.
If you are new here and unfamiliar with my weekly What I Spent & Saved posts, it probably is helpful to understand a bit about how I shop. I do something called stockpile shopping. This simply means that when I see an item at rock bottom prices that I regularly use or know that I can use, I’ll buy several of it. This might seem kind of crazy, but it honestly saves me hundreds of dollars a year! Simply put, by buying 6 bags of frozen veggies when I can get them for $0.50/bag with a coupon and sale instead of paying the full price of $1.50, I save $6.00. This savings adds up pretty quickly! Want to know more about this kind of shopping? Check out my post on How to Start Building a Grocery Stockpile.
I also buy meats and veggies in bulk. The meat I either can or freeze and then obviously have it on hand whenever I need it. I purchase large quantities of fruits and veggies when they are in season and I can get them at really great prices. By canning or freezing them, I save a lot and we are able to enjoy great produce for less cost all year long. I do still buy some fresh fruits and veggies too. In fact, every 7 to 10 days I go to our local farmer’s market and get several heads of lettuce so that we can enjoy salads at least 4 times a week.
I hope that helps you make sense of some of this. I realize at first glance it can look like we eat rather strangely but I think we really eat quite well! Of course, if you have any questions feel free to ask them in the comments! I’ll be more than happy to try to answer them.
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It was kind of an unusual week. I didn’t do any regular shopping other than a run to Aldi. The deals weren’t that great and I didn’t really need anything, so I stayed put. I did do some online shopping though as you’ll see, which is why my total spent is still rather high.
Total Spent: $88.80
Total Saved: $14.48 (online shopping discounts)
Rite Aid: $3.52
I forgot to take a picture of my purchase. Oops! 🙁
BOUGHT:
- milk, 1 gallon $3.52
Aldi: $34.24
So annoyed that I didn’t buy butter last week at Aldi when it was $2.49/lb. I just assumed that since it wasn’t a weekly special that they would leave the price dropped, but they didn’t. I bought some anyway because I am very nearly out and we use it quite a lot around here.
I was happy to be able to get a bottle of peppermint extract- one of Aldi’s seasonal items. I love using it to make Peppermint Mocha Frappes as well as another peppermint drink that I’m working at perfecting.
The rest of the items were just things that I needed and I don’t really have anything special to say bout them.
BOUGHT:
- pretzels $1.29
- cream cheese $0.89
- corn chips $0.79
- almonds $5.99
- yellow onions $0.99
- 2 coconut flakes $1.29
- bananas ($0.22/lb.) $0.39
- peppermint extract $1.99
- 4 butter $2.69 each
- milk $3.50
Target: $31.86 (used gift cards too)
Before I forget, I should mention that my actual order total was higher than this. I had $14.96 worth of Target gift cards that I had earned in a variety of ways (Swagbucks and previous Target promotions) that I used to pay for part of my expense.
This deal felt like a huge lifesaver! The diaper deals have been really scant lately, especially at CVS which is where I typically get them for my diaper buy price of $5.00/pack or less, and we were getting awfully low on diapers. So when I saw this awesome deal at Target, I jumped on it! Plus I could get it from the comfort of my own home, which I always love.
After a 15% off promo code, 5% savings thanks to my REDCard, and a $10 Target gift card that I received for purchasing the diapers, my cost comes to $0.13/diaper or the same as $3.64 for a small pack of diapers. An amazing price and I have always been happy with the quality of Target brand diapers in the past, so it was an easy way to save!
If you are interested in getting a similar deal this week, check out this deal that my friend Coupon Cutting Mom posted. It does require visiting an actual Target store though.
BOUGHT:
- 2 boxes Target brand diapers $28.99 each
OTHER DISCOUNTS:
- $8.70 saved with 15% off promo code
- $2.46 saved thanks to 5% off for paying with my Target REDCard
GOT BACK:
- $10 Target gift card for purchasing 2 packages of diapers
Vitacost: $19.18
I had fun taking advantage of a Cyber Monday sale at Vitacost, an online store that sells lots of healthy, more natural products. I had been wanting to place an order for a while and just hadn’t gotten it done so the chance to get 15% plus a few sale prices were good incentive.
I have been looking for a new facial moisturizer and have had several people recommend Marula oil to me. So far I’m really liking it! The Bragg nutritional yeast is a new product for me, but I’m super excited about it. It’s supposed to be very good for you and I’ve heard that it’s a good, healthy way to give popcorn a nice cheesy flavor. Can’t wait to try it!
I was almost out of honey and haven’t had a chance to get over to the local bulk food store that I typically buy it from to get more. So I decided to just go ahead and get it from Vitacost since it was on sale buy one, get one free. It was a tad more than I pay locally, but sometimes the convenience is worth the extra cost!
I love drinking the Bragg raw apple cider vinegar in water with a little bit of stevia or honey. Sometimes I add ginger too for some extra oomph. It’s super healthy and I find that I drink more water too when I do this.
The natural liquid smoke is an item that I’ve never used before, but I have a couple of recipes that I’ve been eyeing that use it and so I decided to grab a bottle. And I’m excited about the Better than Bouillon beef base. Most bouillons have plenty of ingredients in them that aren’t that good for you, plus I’ve had a hard time finding a beef bouillon that actually tastes great. I’ve been told that this one is really good, so I thought I’d give it a try.
BOUGHT:
- Marula oil $9.65 (was on sale)
- Bragg nutritional yeast $5.59
- 3 Bragg organic raw apple cider vinegar 32 oz. $5.49 each
- Colgin liquid natural smoke 4 oz. $1.89
- 4 Vitacost organic raw & unfiltered honey 16 oz. $11.98 total (buy one, get one free)
- Better than Bouillon organic beef base 8 oz. $5.89
OTHER DISCOUNTS:
- $30 credit earned for referring other people to shop at Vitacost
- $3.32 from promo code that was to give me 15% off
– The weird thing with Vitacost is that their refer-a-friend promo codes mess up other discount promo codes. 15% off my full order should have been $8.62, but somehow because of the $30 off promo, it skewed it and ended up only being $3.32. Still a good deal, just not as good as I had thought it would be.
Rhonda
Just found your blog and really enjoying it. Do you have a grocery spending spreadsheet that you could share? I wanted to try to start tracking. Thank you.
ThriftyFrugalMom
Welcome, Rhonda! Unfortunately, I don’t have a spreadsheet since we use an online system. But if you search on Pinterest (or Google) you should be able to come up with something. I did a quick search and found a whole slew of them…but wasn’t totally sure what you were wanting, so I didn’t link to any.
kc
Just wanted to say I stopped at my local Aldi’s yesterday and their butter rang up at $1.89. Shelf price was $2.69. I don’t know if this is all stores or also how long it will last.
ThriftyFrugalMom
Oh wow! I definitely could handle that. 🙂 Thanks so much for the tip. I hope to do an Aldi run later this week, so I’ll have to check it out.
Kristen @ Joyfully Thriving
I did the Target diaper deal too, and thanks to gift cards and the 5% cartwheel coupon, I ended up paying only $2.90 out of pocket for 2 boxes of size 4 diapers! Like you, what a blessing, because I have noticed slimmer diaper deals this past year as well.
ThriftyFrugalMom
I often pass on deals like this that give you a gift card as part of the savings because I don’t often buy grocery stuff at Target and then it becomes confusing for budgeting to have this $10 gift card that I end up using for something else. But I was desperate enough for diapers and the price was too good to pass up! I haven’t gotten the gift card yet, which is a bummer, but if I get it today or tomorrow, I may end up heading to Target and doing this weeks diaper deal, using my $10 gift card as part of my payment for this weeks purchase.
sara
Have you heard of ebates? Since you seem to know so many “earning cash” resources, you may have already. The way ebates works is that before you do online shopping, you visit their website and link to the site you want to shop at through them and you get a percentage of your purchase price back for doing so. I always do my vitacost shopping through ebates. On cyber Monday, vitacost was giving 6% cash back on your purchase along with the 15% off. Ebates writes you a check every few months and mails it to you. I think it is an easy way to earn a few bucks.
ThriftyFrugalMom
Yes, I love Ebates and other similar sites and use them regularly when I do online shopping. They are definitely an awesome way to save!
Rebecca
So this past week Kroger had the eight o’clock coffee on sale for $4.99 a bag (I have never bought this coffee but since you seem to love it I thought I’d give it a try). They also had a digital coupon for $1 off plus Ibotta was running a $1 off so I got my bag for $2.99. I thought that was a good price for Colombian coffee and I made my first pot on Sunday (I only drink it on the weekends) and I LOVED IT!!
ThriftyFrugalMom
What a good deal, Rebecca! And for whatever reason I had missed the Eight O’Clock Ibotta offer, so I was glad to know about that. Hoping Giant will put it on sale before the offer expires. And so glad that you loved the coffee too! Definitely a favorite of ours and the fact that we can get it so inexpensively, is obviously an added bonus. 🙂
Rebecca
The offer is back out there again for me…only it’s not on sale but the everyday price at walmart is $4.88 so I’m going to check it out again. This week Kroger has the Seattle’s Best coffee. Have you ever drank that one? If so, what do you think about it?
ThriftyFrugalMom
Yes, I activated it too! And it looks like there is a printable coupon for the Eight O Clock as well. Yes, the Seattle’s Best coffee is good too. It’s been a while since we bought any, simply because of getting the Eight O Clock so cheap, but we liked it when we’ve had it.
For whatever it’s worth, I like to search the coupon database at Hot Coupon World to check for coupons on things like this. Occasionally they miss listing a coupon, but overall, it’s a good place to look and helps me out a lot.