OUR $225/MO. GROCERY BUDGET: MY WEEKLY GROCERY HAUL (FAMILY OF 6)

Our family of 6 has a $225 monthly grocery budget, but using coupons and shopping strategically help us eat and live quite well!  Get all the details of my weekly grocery haul on a budget as well as ideas for how you can save money too!

 There are affiliate links in this post for your convenience.  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, Ibotta, Fetch Rewards and Checkout 51 .  Manufacturer websites and Facebook pages are also great sources.

Before I dive into the actual details of this week’s budget grocery shopping trip, I feel like there a few things that I should clarify about the way that I grocery shop, just so this post makes more sense.

A FEW DETAILS ABOUT USING COUPONS and HOW I SHOP:

* It’s pretty important 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.  These savings add up pretty quickly! Want to know more about this kind of shopping? Check out my post on How to Start Building a Grocery Stockpile.

This is also why just by looking at the things I purchase here it might look a little strange and hard to imagine how I actually create decent, balanced meals.  But remember, I have a small stockpile of lots of pantry, freezer and even fridge items that I purchased previously when they were a great price and I’m pulling from them to create our frugal menus too!

* I also buy a lot of 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.

This definitely helps me get better deals, although I have to say that even before we moved to Philadelphia and I shopped at stores that didn’t fully double, I still often got very similar deals.  So getting great deals still is possible even without fully doubled coupons!

* The Load to Card coupons that you see mentioned below can be found on the grocery store’s website when you create an account with your store card.  I think most major grocery stores have this option any more and it’s a great way to save a little extra.

I typically just go into my account and clip all the coupons, that way if I happen to buy something that I hadn’t planned on buying and it had a Load to Card coupon available, I’ll get the savings.  And that has happened quite a few times!

* The best way to maximize your savings is to combine sales with coupons and to combine multiple coupons on the same product.  But I want to be clear- you can only use one manufacturer coupon per item.  In other words, say you have two printable coupons for Butterball ground turkey, you can only use one.

(You can easily tell if it’s a manufacturer’s coupon by looking at the top of the coupon for that wording.  Almost all coupons are manufacturer coupons.)

* Under no circumstances is it legal to photocopy a coupon.  For printable coupons, most manufacturer’s let you print two coupons per computer and then your limit will be capped.

* Coupon availability changes all the time, so the links that I share below will soon be out of date and not take you to the exact coupon that I linked too.  I’m sorry about that, but it’s just how coupons work!

Now on to the specifics…

Basically, I got ALL the groceries that you see below for just $75.19 total, after all coupons and savings!  That’s more than $213 worth of groceries for just a little over $75!

This week was a bit different than most weeks because my shopping trip included a lot more stocking up than normal.  Over time this saves me so much money, but it does mean that I spent a significant amount of my monthly grocery budget this week.

I have about $50 left over from last month’s grocery budget so that does give me more wiggle room this month.  And if I do happen to go over a bit for the month of April, I’ll just cut back on my spending in May.

I’ve done this long enough to kind of know the ebb and flow that my budget experiences and somehow it all always balances out.

Also, I stopped at Aldi later in the week and got some more fresh produce, but I didn’t get a picture of it, so I didn’t include it here. I think I spent around $6 there.

Total Spent: $104.05
Total Saved with Coupons: $42.66
Total Saved with Sales: $72.32
Total Saved: $114.98 + an additional $20.00 in gas savings

Giant: $41.96
Saved with Coupons: $11.99
Saved with Sales: $15.68 + an additional $20.00 in gas savings

These Giant deals will be good through 4/11/19, so if you shop before that, you should be able to these same deals yourself.

I got the Stroehmann bread, Lays chips and Turkey Hill ice cream for just $0.83 each after coupons, sales and gas savings!  We love the Turkey Hill All Natural ice cream.  It’s so good and has only simple ingredients in it, unlike a lot of ice cream.  And if you call Turkey Hill and ask for coupons, they will happily send you some, which is super nice!  The only restriction is that you can’t request them more than once every 30 days.

You might remember that we used to always use only homemade bread.  That still would be my preference, but we’re in a very full season of life right now and I’ve chosen to cut a few things like making my own bread in order to free up time to do things that felt more important or necessary.

I’ve typically been able to find decent bread for free or less than a $1.00 by watching Giant’s gas reward deals, so it hasn’t really made much of a difference in our grocery budget.  I hope to eventually get back into making my own, but for now, this works!  And since bread freezes well, I can easily stock up when I find a great price and just freeze whatever we won’t use right away.

The Sargento cheese was a great buy at $1.00 a bag!  My buy price for cheese is $2.00/lb., although occasionally I struggle to find deals that get me that price and need to spend a little more.

The Chobani yogurt was totally free thanks to a Giant digital load to card offer.  We typically eat my super easy homemade yogurt, but hey, if I can get yogurt free, I won’t pass it up!

BOUGHT:

• 4 Stroehmann bread $2.49 each
• 2 Lays Kettle chips $2.50 each
• 6 Turkey Hill All Natural ice cream $3.50 each
  – used (4) $0.50 Turkey Hill coupons (doubled to $1.00 each) –requested from manufacturer
  – used (2) $1.00 Turkey Hill coupons –requested from manufacturer
• 4 Sargento shredded cheese $2.00 each
  – used (2) $1.00/2 Sargento Giant load to card digital coupons
  – used (2) $1.00/2 Sargento printable coupons (no longer available)
• Chobani non-dairy yogurt $1.99
  – used FREE Chobani Giant Load to Card digital coupon ($1.99)

GOT BACK:

• $10.00 in gas reward savings for purchasing the Stroehmann and Lays
• $10.00 in gas reward savings for purchasing the Turkey Hill ice cream

Shoprite: $62.09
Saved with Coupons: $30.67
Saved with Sales: $56.64

These Shoprite deals will be good through 4/13/19, so if you shop before that, you should be able to these same deals yourself.

I got a great deal on meat this week at Shoprite!  I hadn’t actually planned to buy any meat because I already have a nice amount in my freezer.  But while I was at the store I realized that by combining a $5/$20 catalina coupon with sales, digital coupons and Super Saver coupons, that I could actually get over 11 lbs. of chicken and ham steaks for just $1.39/lb.!

The Galbani cheese was $1.99/lb., the butter was $1.99/lb. and the eggs ended up being were $0.99/dozen for 6 of the dozen and $0.66/dozen for the other 1 ½ dozen.  That’s a lot of eggs, but if I make scrambled or fried eggs for our family, we easily go through a dozen in one meal.  Also, I know for many of you this isn’t a great price on eggs, but for our area it is.  Aldi’s lowest price is $1.29/dozen and most times it’s higher than that.

The Lindsay olives ended up being totally free after coupons and sales- my husband was excited about these and already ate half a jar!  The DeCecco pasta was free after coupons and sales as well.

Shoprite always has such great diaper deals!  This week I was able to get the Huggies diapers, Goodnights and Huggies wipes for just $6.46 total!  That’s less than you typically pay for just one pack of diapers!

The 5 lb. bag of carrots is just an everyday great price at Giant, the bananas I just wanted for lunches and the grapes were a great buy at $0.97/lb.

BOUGHT:

• 8 Galbani mozzarella cheese (1 lb.) $1.99 each
• 4 Shoprite eggs (1 ½ dozen each) $1.49 each
• 1 Shoprite egg (1 ½ dozen) $0.99
  – used $0.49 Shoprite egg load to card digital coupon
• Shoprite butter $2.99
  – used $1.00 Shoprite butter Super Saver coupon in the Shoprite ad
• 4 Smithfield ham steaks $1.25 each
  – used $1.00/4 Smithfield ham steak Shoprite load to card digital coupon
• 3 packs Tyson boneless skinless chicken breast (9.47 lb. total) $1.99/lb each
  – used $5/$20 any fresh meat Shoprite catalina coupon that printed at the register during a previous shopping trip
  – used $1.49/lb. Tyson chicken breast Super Saver coupon in the Shoprite ad ($1.69)- was only good on one package
  – submitted for $0.25 Checkout 51 fresh chicken offer
• 2 Lindsay olives $0.99 each
  – submitted for (2) $1.oo Ibotta Lindsay offers
• DeCecco pasta $1.49
  – used $0.75 DeCecco coupon from Sunday newspaper coupon inserts (doubled to $1.50)
• Huggies Snug and Dry $7.99
  – used $2.00 Huggies diapers printable coupon
  – used $2.00 Huggies diapers Shoprite load to card digital coupon
• Goodnights $8.99
  – used $2.00 Goodnights printable coupon
  – used $2.00 Goodnights Shoprite load to card digital coupon
• 3 Huggies wipes $1.66 each
  – used (2) $0.50 Huggies wipes printable coupons
  – used $0.50 Huggies wipes Shoprite load to card digital coupons
  – submitted for $1.00 Huggies wipes Fetch Rewards offer 
• 5 lb. carrots $2.99
• 1.82 lb. bananas $1.07
  – submitted for $0.25 Checkout 51 bananas offer
• 3.14 lb. grapes $4.68
  – used $0.97/lb. grapes Super Saver coupon in the Shoprite ad ($1.63)

GOT BACK:

• $0.10 Ibotta any receipt offer
• 257 pts. (the equivalent of $0.26) via Fetch Rewards for purchasing the Huggies and Goodnights items
• $5.00 Catalina coupon for purchasing the Goodnights and Huggies (coupon that prints at the register and can be used on any future purchase)