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!
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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.
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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Total Spent: $114.13
Total Saved with Coupons: $26.54
Total Saved with Sales: $20.85
Total Saved: $47.39
Giant: $50.21
Saved with Coupons: $26.54
Saved with Sales: $20.85
It was a fun week at Giant, thanks mostly to gas reward deals! The Ken’s dressings ended up being a moneymaker of $11.75, which is pretty crazy! There was also actually a $0.50 Ken’s dressing Giant load-to-card offer that I should have gotten as well, but unfortunately, the cashier forgot to scan my Giant Bonus card. I was close to a smaller Giant store that I rarely shop at and decided to stop by and do my deals there so I wouldn’t need to run out again. It ended up kind of being a big mistake because I ended up having plenty of issues and they were understaffed, so I spent way more time there than I should have needed to. Then when I got home I realized the cashier never scanned my Bonus card, which of course meant I didn’t get any gas points earned or any load-to-card offer that were added to it redeemed either. My local Giant kindly added the gas points for me, but I decided to just skip asking about the load-to-card offer since I was already getting such a good deal and I felt like I was just being annoying after a bit!
I used a rain check to buy the Nature’s Harvest bread, it was also a gas points deal. Our gas tank was getting close to empty, so I was trying to think ahead and make sure we’d have plenty of points to redeem for another free tank of gas whenever we needed it. Whenever that happens and there aren’t enough current gas reward deals to buy to get enough points, I always start digging through my stack of rain checks looking for ones to redeem to earn more gas points. After all coupons, sales and gas reward savings I made $2.80 on it too! I don’t typically buy bread and prefer to make 100% whole wheat bread instead. But when I can make money on a bread that is relatively healthy, I’ll do it! What I love about this bread is that it uses sugar (not high fructose corn syrup) and has only very basic ingredients- mostly the same ingredients that I use in my own homemade bread.
The Musselman’s applesauce was another gas points deal that was a money maker of $4.82! Applesauce is another thing that I typically don’t buy because I make my own. But again, when I can make money on it, it becomes worth buying. I went for the unsweetened kind though because I discovered that the sweetened versions use high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar, which is something I try to avoid as much as I can. I figure if this isn’t sweet enough for our liking, I can always add a tiny bit of my own sweetener to it!
I always try to watch for the buy one, get one free Eight O’ Clock coffee deals that Giant runs every several weeks because it means that I can typically get good coffee for less than $2.00 a bag. This time my cost came to $1.70 a bag. The trick is to combine coupons with the sale price to get maximum savings. Eight O’ Clock often has a printable coupon available on their website and then sometimes they have coupons in the Sunday newspaper coupon inserts or available to print from sites like Coupons.com too. Basically, any time I see a coupon for Eight O’ Clock coffee, I print it or cut it out, because I know I’ll be able to use it!
I like to use the self checkouts at Giant so that I can make sure my items ring up properly and that all my coupons get scanned. The other advantage is that occasionally I’ll find coupons lying there that other people left behind. This week, one of my finds was a coupon for a FREE World Menu freezer meal. I couldn’t pass that one up! And I was excited to see that they had Tikki Masala, one of my favorite Indian cuisine items.
The tortillas were supposed to actually be free, because I had a $1.00 Giant load-to-card coupon for them. But for some reason it only took off $0.29. I didn’t notice until I was home and decided it wasn’t worth bothering about. It was still a good price for a product that I regularly buy.
The bananas cost me $0.01 after savings from Checkout 51 and Ibotta.
BOUGHT:
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- 12 Ken’s dressings $1.50 each
– got back $4.00 viaSaving Star(earned for purchasing $12 worth of Ken’s dressings)
– got back $0.75 via Fetch Rewards - 5 Nature’s Harvest bread $2.50 each (purchased with rain check)
– used four $0.55 Nature’s Harvest printable coupons (doubled to $1.00 each)
– got back $0.55 via Checkout 51
– use $0.75 Nature’s Harvest Giant load-to-card offer - 6 Musselman unsweetened applesauce $2.64 each
– used three $0.75/2 Musselman printable coupons (doubled to $1.00 each)
– got back $4.00 via Saving Star(earned for purchasing $12 worth of Musselman’s)
– used $1.16 Musselman’s Giant load-to-card offer - 6 Eight O’ Clock coffee $2.70 each (buy one get one free)
– purchased with rain check
– used six $1.00 Eight O’ Clock printable coupons (often can find them on manufacturer’s website) - Giant brand tortilla $0.99
– used $0.29 Giant load-to-card coupon - World Menu frozen meal $3.49
– used World Market free product coupon received at register - bananas $0.46
– got back $0.25 via Checkout 51
– got back $0.20 via Ibotta
- 12 Ken’s dressings $1.50 each
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GOT BACK:
- $25.00 in gas reward savings for purchasing the Ken’s dressings
- $10.00 in gas reward savings for purchasing the Nature’s Harvest
- $12.50 in gas reward savings for purchasing the Musselman’s
Rite Aid: $0
Please excuse the lousy picture. I forgot that I needed to take a picture of these until my husband was needing cotton swabs to clean the kids ears after their baths. Oops! So I quickly tried to get a picture, but for some reason I couldn’t get the camera to focus correctly. I finally gave up and figured you would still be able to see what it is! 🙂
I have a bunch of Plenti Points that are linked to my Rite Aid card that I earned on previous purchases. I was able to use those points to pay for the full amount of this purchase, which is why you see a $0 balance above.
BOUGHT:
- Rite Aid cotton swabs $2.99
Sharp Shopper: $54.54
Okay, so I kind of bought a lot of stuff this week at Sharp Shopper. I actually stopped by on Tuesday after going to the local MOMS group that I attend and then later in the week I was driving by the store again on my way to a Dr. appointment and decided to stop again to grab a few more cheese, pretzels and potatoes because I realized I was going to be needing them soon.
I use the pretzels to make a Seasoned Ranch Pretzel recipe that is super good. My mom always made them for Christmas vacation and so, of course, my mind always goes to them too when we start getting close to the holidays. I wanted to make some to give to our neighbors as a little Christmas gift. And then I decided to get more to make to take to family functions in both my family and my husband’s family. The price was amazing too. The cheapest I’ve seen them at Giant in the past has been $2.00 a bag, so this price of $1.65 was quite good!
I wonder if I maybe got a little excited about the cheese and bought too much? I’m out of cheddar cheese and only have mozzarella on hand right now. So I knew I wanted to buy a decent amount to use in recipes that mozzarella doesn’t really work well for. Then I discovered that I need to make some breakfast casseroles for an extended family event over Thanksgiving and would need several pounds of cheese for that, so I got more. But I think maybe I kind of didn’t think through it very well and got more than I should have. The good thing is that I can always shred it and freeze it that way if I need too! And it’s hard to pass up a good price on cheese, especially when it’s organic cheese.
The Feta cheese was a fun find! I have been really hungry for a cranberry, almond, feta lettuce salad that we love, but I did;t like the idea of having to spend money on the feta cheese for it. At this price, it wasn’t hard to do though and I already made the salad twice. So yummy!
The breakfast casserole that I’m going to make for the extended family gathering also takes potatoes, which is why I bought such a big amount! I also am planning to have large number of guests soon for a Sunday lunch and plan to make something with potatoes then too. Again, organic potatoes for $0.33/lb. is hard to beat!
You may remember that I bought some of the hamburger patties last week too. I only bought one box then because I was a little worried that we would try them and they wouldn’t be that great. But I made some of them last week and they were really good! So I grabbed a couple of more boxes this week to have on hand for easy, quick meals over the busy holiday season.
The 100% grapefruit juice was a splurge of sorts for my husband. I don’t buy juices a lot since they tend to be expensive and there are better-for-you ways to consume fruit. But my husband really enjoys juice and he really loves grapefruit juice! So it’s always an easy way to say “I love you”!
BOUGHT:
- 4 hamburger patties (2 lb.) $3.99 each
- 6 feta cheese $0.99 each
- 17 organic cheddar cheese (7 oz.) $0.99 each
- 4 Wege broken sourdough pretzels $1.65 total (on sale buy one, get one free)
- 5 organic red potatoes (3 lb.) $0.99 each
- 100% grapefruit juice $0.99
Westfield Egg Farm: $9.38
A friend of mine, who also reads my blog, told me several months ago about this local egg farm that has eggs for really cheap. The only thing is, you have to buy 15 dozen of eggs at a time! The egg farm is about 20 to 25 minutes away from me and isn’t in an area that I typically am in, so that, combined with the fact that I would need to buy 15 dozen of eggs in order to get the cheap price, kind of kept me from doing it!
This week though, I realized I was going to be minutes away from the egg farm while running another errand. And since I’m going to be needing quite a few eggs for the breakfast casserole that I keep talking about, I decided to see if a few local friends would want to split a case with me and we could all benefit from the great price! It ended up working quite well- they were more than happy to enjoy the savings and I of course was too. So I may try to do it some more when I know I’ll be in that area.
I actually kept 3 full flats for myself, even though it doesn’t look that way. I had already used some of them to make breakfast for dinner and a few more went into an almost empty carton in the fridge, before I realized that I never had gotten a picture of them yet.
BOUGHT:
- 7½ dozen eggs $1.25/dozen
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