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!
There are affiliate links in this post – 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, 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.
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Favorite buys:
* better than free KidFresh chicken nuggets
* mustard for $0.30/bottle
* free Colgate toothpaste
* Huggies diapers for $2.66/pack
Total Spent: $27.90
Total Saved with Coupons: $36.00
Total Saved with Sales: $17.44
Total Saved: $53.44
Giant: $9.44
Saved with Coupons: $6.00
Saved with Sales: $9.44
Plus 2 bananas, not pictured.
I had some coupons for the Kidfresh meals and they were going to expire this week so I redeemed the rain check that I had for them. After coupons, sales and gas rewards, I actually made $2.50 on these chicken nuggets! I actually got them with the intent of all of us enjoying them, not only the kids. We tried them when I got some a couple of weeks ago during the original sale and thought they were actually pretty good, so I’ll use them on busy days when I need a quick meat for dinner or lunch.
(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 $10.00 worth of free gas for purchasing the Kidfresh meals.)
Giant has been running these sales where you buy the name brand product and then get the Giant brand equivalent free. This week one of those sales was for French’s mustard and Giant brand mustard- you’d get both for $1.79. That price was pretty decent by itself, but I realized that I could combine an Ibotta offer and a manufacturer coupon and end up paying just $0.79 total or $0.30 each! The only bummer is that I forgot to use the manufacturer coupon, however, the Giant I go-to is typically really awesome about giving me credit for missed coupons if I take the receipt and the coupon the next time I visit, so I plan to do that.
As usual, I got 2 free bananas thanks to Ibotta and Checkout 51 offers. The last couple of weeks both apps have had savings on bananas and so I’ve enjoyed getting fruit for totally free!
BOUGHT:
- 5 Kidfresh meals $2.50 each
– bought with rain check
– used five $1.00 Kidfresh printable coupons - French’s mustard $1.79
– $0.50 French’s printable coupon (doubled to $1.00)
(actually forgot to use coupon–see note above) - Giant brand mustard $0
– If you bought French’s mustard, you got the Giant brand-free!
– got back $0.20 via Ibotta (good on any mustard) - bananas $0.45
– got back $0.20 via Ibotta
– got back $0.25 via Checkout 51
GOT BACK:
- $10.00 in gas reward savings for purchasing the Kidfresh meals
CVS: $3.84
Saved with Coupons: $30.00
Saved with Sales: $8.00
This week I got the best deal on diapers that I’ve gotten in a long time. After coupons and sales I paid just $2.66 a pack for these Huggies diapers! Definitely well under my diaper stockpile buy price of $5.00! One of the coupons that I used was only good on the Little Snugglers and CVS only carries size Newborn, 1 & 2 of them. Our youngest is in size 3 diapers, but I went ahead and bought a pack of newborn diapers figuring I’ll either gift them or save them for our next baby since we hope to have more kiddos eventually. At this price, it only seemed to make sense to go ahead and buy them.
I used to frequently be able to get toothpaste for free, but the last several months the deals have been a bit lacking. So I made sure to take advantage of the free toothpaste this week when I saw it!
BOUGHT:
- 2 Huggies diapers $11.99 each
- Huggies diaper $5.99
(on sale buy 1, get one 50% off)
– used $3/2 Huggies diapers CVS printable coupon
– used three $3.00 Huggies diapers printable coupons - 2 Colgate Total toothpaste $2.99 each
– used two $1.00 Colgate printable coupons
OTHER COUPONS USED:
- $13.00 in Extra Bucks coupons earned by purchasing items previously at CVS
GOT BACK:
- $10.00 Extra Bucks coupon for purchasing the Huggies (can be used on next purchase of any item)
- Two $2.00 Extra Bucks coupon for purchasing the Colgate (can be used on next purchase of any item)
Aldi: $14.62
Plus 6 hamburger buns, not pictured.
We spent a long weekend with my husband’s family at a large cabin/vacation home and I needed a few things for the meal that I took. I also told my mom-in-law I’d grab hamburger buns for her too while I was there. So even though they weren’t for me and she reimbursed me for them, I’m including the cost here because the cash she gave me in payment will get used for groceries.
You may be curious about the seltzer water. I bought it to use in a recipe I’m experimenting with for the blog. If I can get it perfected, you’ll see it here later this summer!
BOUGHT:
- saltines $0.85
- pretzel sticks $1.29
- seltzer water $0.59
- Ranch dressing $1.29
- 2 eggs $1.45 each
- 4 black beans $0.59 each
- 6 hamburger buns $0.89 each
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