Our $200/mo. Grocery Budget: What I Spent & Saved This Week (4/19-4/25)

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, Smart Source, Red Plum, Ibotta, Checkout 51 and Saving Star.  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?  

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 buy 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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I didn’t do much shopping at all this week.  We had a busy week and I had little time to shop.  Since the deals weren’t amazing, it made shopping an easy thing to cut to free up some time for other things this week!

Total Spent: $45.07
Total Saved: $15.38

Darrenkamps: $20.50
Saved with Sales: $15.38

We recently were asked to host the youth from our church next Sunday evening and we agreed to do it.  There are about 25 of them and I’m planning to make something with chicken for the main dish for our dinner.   But since I don’t have a lot of chicken in my freezer because I’m planning to get some for $1.69/lb. in June, I was a little worried about finding it for a decent price.  Thankfully, a local family owned grocery store had it on sale this week for $1.99/lb., which is still not too bad of a price for boneless, skinless chicken breast!

They also had bananas for less than Giant does and since I hadn’t used the Checkout 51 weekly offer for bananas yet, I grabbed two of them and paid just $0.03 after the rebate!

BOUGHT:

• boneless, skinless chicken breast for $1.99 (bought approx. 10 lb.) $20.22
• bananas ($0.38/lb.) $0.28
  – got back $0.25 via Checkout 51

Sharp Shopper: $4.77

I was driving by this local grocery discount store and had a bit of extra time so I stopped to see what bargains I could find.  I didn’t do as well as I often do, but  since we were getting low on lunch meat, I did grab some of that.  And when I see cottage cheese for under $1.00/lb. I typically buy it because I don’t often find it for that price!  Since cottage cheese can be a bit pricey otherwise, when I find it inexpensively priced, I take that as my sign that it’s time to make No Boil Oven Ready Lasagna and a few other favorite recipes that use cottage cheese.

I mentioned in my last Menu Plan that I really don’t do well at the traditional way of menu planning.  And I think part of the reason is this whole thing of how I stock up on things when I see them for a great price.  Because I do that all the time and have slowly built up a stockpile as a result, I can pretty easily make a lot of different dishes at any given time by simply using ingredients that I already have on hand.  In fact, I could probably go for a good month or two without shopping for anything other than milk and maybe one or two other things, just because I have that much of a stockpile of food in my cupboards, fridge and freezers.  Obviously, it would take a bit of creativity, but it would easily be possible.

BOUGHT:

• lunch meat 1 lb. 12 oz. $2.99
• 2 cottage cheese $0.89 each

Misc.: $19.80

* $9.80
My sister-in-law and I split a 40 lb. case of chicken legs that we got for $0.49/lb.  (Each of us took 20 lb.)  You had to buy a 40 lb. box to get that price and since neither of us wanted a full box, this worked out really well!  I often buy boneless, skinless chicken thighs or breasts just because I prefer not having to deal with the bones and it works better in most recipes that I use chicken for.  Plus, I’m often able to get it at a great price.  But I do have several recipes that I really like to use bone-in chicken for as well, so since I didn’t think I could pass up this deal.  I have to confess though, I was kind of wondering if it was worth it as I worked at taking the skin off the chicken before I froze it.  Ugh!  I hate that job!  🙂

* $10.00
I withdrew $10 cash to use for buying produce at our local farmer’s market over the next several weeks.  I mainly buy lettuce there and can often get 3 good size head of beautiful leaf lettuce for $5.00 total.

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