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!
Some of you have wondered where I get my printable coupons. Here are the main coupon sites that I use: Coupons.com, Ibotta, and Fetch Rewards. Manufacturer websites and Facebook pages are also great sources.
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.
__________________________________________________________________________________
I did very little shopping this week simply because the deals were so slim. I always kind of enjoy weeks like this, because while I do enjoy grocery deal shopping, it does take time, too. So I find weeks like this that give me a bit of a breather are refreshing and get me geared up to go at it again.
Total Spent: -$32.96 (negative due to gas reward credit)
Aldi: $17.48
Did one of my typical Aldi runs. A few things to note…
Aldi dropped their price on butter and it’s now just $2.49/lb.! I try to not pay more than $2.00/lb. for butter since I can often find it for that price at local discount stores. But I am almost out of butter and since we don’t use Crisco or margarine, we go through a lot of butter! So I figured $2.49 was still a good price, especially considering the fact that it was about $1.00 more than that just a couple of weeks ago.
I was happy to find carrots on sale. I seem to use a lot of them in the winter, probably because I have a number of soup recipes that call for them, and we are big soup fanatics around here! And the oranges were a great price too. It was a 4 lb. bag, so I paid $0.87/lb. for them.
I typically buy canned beans, just because it is way more convenient. I used to cook up my own dried beans, since it is a bit of a money saver, but then somewhere along they way as life got busy, I stopped. I decided to give it a try again, and bought a bag of dried beans to cook up. If I remember correctly, I get the equivalent of 6 cans of beans from a 2 lb. bag, so that means I’ll save $1.25 by cooking my own. I’m still not sure it’s something I’ll do regularly. We’ll see once I cook these up! There are some things that I’m willing to pay a tiny bit more (if our budget allows) just to save myself time, and I have a feeling this will be one of them.
BOUGHT:
- saltines $0.79
- 3 corn chips $0.79 each
- 2 butter $2.49 each
- 2 carrots $0.59 each
- oranges $3.49
- canola oil $1.79
- black beans $0.59
- dried black beans $2.29
Walmart: $0
One of my favorite ways to use up leftover turkey (or just use turkey, for that matter!) is in Amish Turkey Stuffing, a recipe that my mom has made since I was a girl.
I was hoping to get the recipe up on the blog this fall anyway, so I was thrilled when Honeysuckle White contacted me and asked if I would be willing to partner with them to do a sponsored post and create a dish that featured turkey.
As part of the compensation for that post, I received a voucher from Honeysuckle White for a free turkey, which I bought at Walmart, since my local Giant grocery store didn’t carry them.
BOUGHT:
- Honeysuckle White turkey $23.76
– used free turkey coupon received from Honeysuckle White ($23.76)
Amazon: $0
Some of you probably saw the Amazon Huggies wipes deal that I posted about 10 days ago. I was excited to be able to snag a huge box of wipes for just $7.11 and have them delivered to my front door, too! Even better, I actually didn’t pay a thing for them, because I used an Amazon gift card that I had earned through Swagbucks to pay for my purchase. Have I mentioned that I love Swagbucks? 🙂
BOUGHT:
- Huggies wipes 648 ct. $7.11
Misc.: $3.52
* Bought some lettuce and celery from my favorite stand at our local farmer’s market. I used grocery cash to pay for my purchase, which is why you see a $0 total above.
* $7.04
Bought 2 gallons of milk at Giant and forgot to take a picture of them. 🙂
Credits: $57.48
The last couple of weeks I’ve been buying various items that are part of the Giant gas deals. Basically, you get points for purchasing the products and then you can redeem those points for gas. I was able to get $57.48 worth of gas for free as a result. And since I only buy the grocery items that are part of these deals because they either get me free gas or make me money, I put the savings back into my grocery budget. (To see the details of these purchases, look at my previous Giant purchases under my What I Spent & What I Saved posts.)
There are affiliate links in this post – please read my full disclosure policy.
Leave a Reply