Our $200/mo. Grocery Budget: What I Spent & Saved This Week (5/3-5/9)

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 and Ibotta.  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 spent more money this week than I have in a long time, but that was totally fine because it was on things that I needed and good deals.  And the fact that I made $13.12 kind of was fun too.  🙂

Speaking of making money, one of the ways that I do that on groceries is through apps like Ibotta.  Unfortunately, it can only be used if you have a smartphone, but if you have one and aren’t currently using Ibotta, right now is a great time to start.  They have a whole bunch of offers that are good on any brand item- things like eggs, cereal, milk, ice cream, frozen veggies and more.  I have no idea how long these rebates will be available, but I’m excited about them and love being able to save on any brand of products that I use and buy anyway.

Total Spent: $95.45
Total Saved with Coupons: $15.00
Total Saved with Sales: $18.82
Total Saved: $33.82

Giant: $40.36
Total Saved with Coupons: $1.00
Total Saved with Sales: $13.63

I suddenly realized towards the end of the week that we were going to be needing more gas soon and so I redeemed a bunch of rebates that I had for gas reward deals at Giant.

Basically after gas reward credits and coupon savings, I made a total of $11.10 on these items!  The Hanover peas made me $3.40- I love getting healthy food for better than free!  I typically make and can my own salsa, but if I can make money on store bought salsa, I definitely will!  This Newman’s Own deal made me $3.70.  And the Keebler cups?  Not something I typically buy because we try to avoid most processed foods.  But I’m not a stickler about it and since I could make $4.00 on them, I did the deal and we’ll enjoy them for the occasional snack or dessert.

(If you aren’t familiar with how the gas deals work, basically you earn so much off a gallon of gas when you purchase a certain number of specific items.  This time I earned $46.50 worth of free gas for purchasing the Hanover peas, Newman’s Own Salsa and Keebler products.)

I noticed that there was an $1.00 Ibotta offer for Ragu products and I was suspicious that I might be able to use it to get a good deal.  I forgot to look ahead of time to see if there were any paper coupons that I could have used on the Ragu to save even more, but I still was able to get a great deal because Giant just happened to have Ragu spaghetti sauce on sale for $1.50.  That means I only paid $0.50 for it!

The banana was only $0.02 after a Checkout 51 offer.  They have a “pick-your-own” offer pretty much every week that is good on bananas and other fruits and veggies.  Most of the time I just do it for the bananas and use it to get one free or very nearly so.  The tortillas were just an item that I needed.  I typically buy them at Aldi because I thought they were cheaper there.  But Aldi has upped their price in the last several months and Giant apparently has dropped theirs so they actually pretty much cost the same.

BOUGHT:

• Giant brand tortillas $0.99
• Banana $0.27
  – got back $0.25 via Checkout 51
• Ragu tomato sauce $1.50
  – got back $1.00 Ibotta
• 10 Hanover peas $1.66 each
  – bought with raincheck
• 6 Newman’s Own salsa $2.00 each
  – bought with raincheck
  – got back $0.20 via Ibotta (offer was good on any salsa)
  – used $1/2 Newman’s Own coupon from Sunday newspaper coupon inserts
• 10 Keebler cups $1.00 each
  – bought with raincheck

GOT BACK:

• $20.00 in gas reward savings for purchasing the Hanover peas
• $12.50 in gas reward savings for purchasing the Newman’s Own salsa
• $14.00 in gas reward savings for purchasing the Keebler

CVS: $1.47
Saved with Coupons: $14.00
Saved with Sales: $5.19

I had a $10 Extra Bucks coupon that was expiring so I stopped by CVS to use it up.  Since I was trying to find ways to use the $10 up, it was the perfect time to pull out the rain check that I had for Tena pads.  After coupons and sales, they were a moneymaker of $2.02!  Yay!  🙂

The greeting cards were totally free after coupons and sales.  I got 2 Congratulation cards since we have two graduations coming up and also a wedding card since I only have a couple of them on hand and I know that we have a couple of weddings coming up in the next year.

I bought the nail polish because I thought it was going to be a $0.49 moneymaker after an Ibotta rebate.  Unfortunately, the rebate didn’t include nail polish like I had thought and only was good on other nail care items like strengthener.  So I’m going to be returning it next time I shop there since I really don’t need it.

I just ran out of masking tape and since I use it all the time to label my leftovers in the fridge and things that I put in the freezer, it was kind of a problem.  So I used the rest of my Extra Bucks to buy that!

BOUGHT:

• 2 Tena pads $2.99 each
  – bought with a rain check
  – used two $2.00 Tena printable coupons
• 3 Hallmark greeting cards $0.99 each
• Scotch masking tape $4.49
• Sally Hansen nail polish $1.99

OTHER COUPONS USED:

• $10.00  in Extra Bucks coupons earned by purchasing items previously at CVS

GOT BACK:

• $4.00 Extra Bucks coupon for purchasing the Tena (can be used on next purchase of any item)
• $3.00 Extra Bucks coupon for purchasing the Hallmark cards (can be used on next purchase of any item)
• $0.99 Extra Bucks coupon for purchasing the Sally Hansen (can be used on next purchase of any item)

Aldi: $24.37

 

Remember a couple of months ago when I was saying that I can rarely find cheap eggs anymore?  Well, it’s been kind of funny because ever since then I’ve been able to almost always get them for $0.99!  The key has been to stock up really well when I see them for that price and then that has so far been holding me over until the next sale.  Right now Aldi has eggs on sale for $0.99 (through at least tomorrow 5/12/15), so I got 8 dozen.  I don’t typically do as much baking when the weather is warm, but we eat more eggs in things like salad, egg salad and breakfast foods for dinner, so in some ways we go through more eggs than usual in the summer months.  Plus, school will be out soon and then our son will be home and eating lunch with us each day too, and that child can eat.  Like eat more than me sometimes….and he’s only 6 ½ (and I eat more than a lot of ladies)!

I realized that I had no disposable cups on hand and with warm weather here, I wanted to have some for when we go on picnics and have people over.  I think Aldi’s price of $2.49 is very reasonable!

The rest of the items are all just things that were either on sale for a good price (oranges and onions) or simply things that I needed.

BOUGHT:

• 3 corn chips $0.89 each
• canned salmon $2.29
• cups 50 ct. $2.49
• 8 eggs $0.99 each
• 4 lb. oranges $2.99
• 3 lb. onions $0.99
• 2 potato chips $1.79 each
• Ranch dressing $1.29

Misc.: $24.90

* $20.00
I withdrew cash to use to buy milk from a local dairy.  We pay $2.00 a gallon and typically go through two to three gallons a week.

* $4.90
I bought 2 tomato plants and a pepper plant for $0.95 each and a 6 pack of lettuce for $2.05 from a local family owned green house.

We live in the city so I don’t have much room to garden, but over the last couple of years I’ve slowly figured out ways that I can actually squeeze in a decent amount of things.  No, it doesn’t provide us product to can or freeze, but it gives us a nice little amount of fresh produce to enjoy and it’s fun to dabble in gardening just a bit.  Truth is, even if we had the room for a huge garden, I’m not sure I’d do it just because I don’t think I’d enjoy it at that level.  But a few plants here and there?  Well, that I find fun and it’s educational for our children too!

Credits: $8.18
I cashed out my Saving Star balance.  Since I only earn credit for things that I purchase using grocery money, I figure anythings I earn through Saving Star should just go right back into our grocery budget.

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