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, Smart Source, Ibotta, and Fetch Rewards (use code GEOEG at sign-up for $2.00 in points!). 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: $2.21
Total Saved with Coupons: $18.45
Total Saved with Sales: $19.64
Total Saved: $38.09 + $68.48 in gas reward savings
CVS: $5.39
Saved with Coupons: $10.00
Saved with Sales: $10.25
Egg prices have jumped again like crazy and at Aldi, where prices are typically the lowest, they were $2.09 this week. (You probably have heard that there is an avian bird flu that is killing chickens, therefore creating higher egg prices) I had kind of just resigned myself to paying $2 for eggs right now, but then I was looking through the CVS flyer while shopping there and happened to see that they had them advertised for just $1.69. Most of the time, I’d think that was a high price. But right now, that sounds cheap and so I grabbed the 6 dozen that they had left and stocked up! I have kind of gotten out of the habit of skimming the store flyers, but this reminded me that it really is a good idea because often I do end up finding a few deals that I would miss otherwise. (I hope to soon do a post about how I typically plan my shopping trips, and then it might make more sense how I can get great deals without looking at the store flyer.)
There are several free printable coupons available for CVS brand snacks. The peanut butter filled pretzels were on sale and after the coupon savings, I got them for totally free! The kids thought they were a fun, different kind of pretzel.
The Starbucks Iced Coffee was free too- actually better than free. After combining a paper coupon with an Ibotta rebate, I was able to make $0.75 on it.
BOUGHT:
- 3 Gold Emblem (CVS brand) peanut butter filled pretzels $1.00 each
– used $1.00 Gold Emblem CVS printable coupon
– used $2/2 Gold Emblem CVS printable coupon - Starbucks iced coffee $1.25
– used $1.00 Starbucks printable coupon
– got back $1.00 via Ibotta - 6 eggs $1.69 each
OTHER COUPONS USED:
- $5.00 in Extra Bucks coupons earned by purchasing items previously at CVS
Giant: $9.21
Saved with Coupons: $8.20
Saved with Sales: $9.39
I love the quality of almost all of the things that I buy from Aldi. But I’ve always thought that their tortillas could be a bit softer and more flexible. I used to just put up with it because they were so much cheaper than any other tortillas that I had found. But I recently discovered that the Giant brand tortillas are about the same price and the awesome thing is that they are softer and more flexible too!
If you shop at Giant, be sure to log into your account on their website each week to see what e-coupons you can load to your card. Often they have at least one offer that I can use. This week I was able to load one for sugar and it allowed me to get the Giant brand brown sugar for $1.09. Actually, I think a lot of other grocery stores have similar programs too, so it’s definitely worth logging onto their site and checking for it.
I got my usual free banana after redeeming an Ibotta offer. It was also fun to get more coffee for the really great price of just $1.45 a bag.
I redeemed a rain check that I had for the Cerave soap. I honestly don’t remember what the original deal was anymore, but I know it ended up being a pretty decent moneymaker after coupons and gas rewards. I think that the original deal was that you’d get $12.50 in free gas when you purchased 4 Cerave soap, which means that it would be a moneymaker of about $9.50. I had purchased 2 soaps a long time ago and got a rain check for the other 2. I kept looking for it at Giant but wasn’t able to find it until now.
BOUGHT:
- 3 Giant brand flour tortillas $0.99 each
- Giant brand brown sugar $1.59
– used $0.50 Giant brand sugar e-coupon (coupon that I loaded to my Giant store card) - 2 Eight O’Clock coffee $5.39 total (on sale buy one, get one free)
– used $1.50 Eight O’Clock printable coupon
– used $1.00 Eight O’Clock coupon from Sunday newspaper coupon inserts - Banana $0.25
– got back $0.20 via Ibotta - Cerave soap $3.99 (bought with rain check)
– used two $3.00 Cerave coupons from Sunday newspaper coupon inserts
GOT BACK:
- $12.50 in gas reward savings for purchasing the Cerave soap
Aldi: $36.46
I wasn’t planning to go to Aldi this week, but I was making my Snickers Ice Cream Cake and went to use the heavy whipping cream that was in the fridge, only to find that it was spoiled. I’m still actually kind of puzzled about that because it hadn’t been opened that long, plus it wasn’t past its expiration date either. But regardless, I realized that I needed to make a run to Aldi and so of course I tried to stock up on other things while I was there too.
Speaking of heavy cream, Aldi just lowered their price on it by $0.20. I love using it to make my own homemade Real Whipped Cream which is not only way healthier than Cool Whip, it’s also yummier and doesn’t really cost more either! Plus, it’s super easy to make too.
I’m tired of running out of tissues, so I decided to remedy the situation and bought 3 boxes! I often only buy a box at a time because I kind of hope that I’ll be able to get them cheaper with a deal somewhere else. But really, Aldi’s price is very good and this time of year, Kleenex sales are pretty non-existent.
My kids love grapes, but I don’t often get them unless they are on sale. So of course they were pretty thrilled that I bought 4 lbs. this week! I’m actually planning to use some of them to make Fruit Slush, a sort of frozen fruit salad.
BOUGHT:
- tortilla chips $1.19
- pita chips $1.99
- graham crackers $1.35
- 3 tissues $1.19 each
- 2 heavy whipping cream $1.69 each
- Ranch dressing $1.29
- 2 cinnamon $0.99 each
- 3 black beans $0.59 each
- 4 Great Northern beans $0.59 each
- carrots $1.29
- corn chips $0.89
- peanuts $2.19
- spinach $1.79
- 2 red grapes (2 lb.) $1.98 each
- bananas $0.39/lb.
– got back $0.25 via Checkout 51
Walmart: $4.63
First of all, yes, I’m aware that the sour cream in the picture is not Walmart brand sour cream. Here’s what happened. I totally forgot that I needed to take a picture of my purchase and threw the Walmart brand container away. So I grabbed an Aldi one from the fridge so you’d at least have a visual.
My husband’s family is in the process of fixing up a house to move into and have been working on it non-stop. I can’t really go help with the fix-up very easily thanks to our 17 mo. old, but I figured I could at least help out by taking dinner to them. So one night this past week we loaded up a bunch of food and all went over to eat with them at their new house. Unfortunately, on the way there I realized I forgot the sour cream. We were already planning to stop and get plastic spoons since we didn’t have any in the house, so I just grabbed sour cream too.
If you’re a Walmart shopper and have been unsure that shopping at Aldi would actually save you money, I just have to point out the difference in sour cream prices. Aldi’s regular price for sour cream is $1.29. I paid $1.62 for this sour cream at Walmart, meaning I paid $0.33 more than I would typically pay at Aldi. No, it’s not huge savings, nevertheless, it is a saving. And like I often say, those little savings add up to create big savings over time!
- Walmart brand sour cream $1.62
- Walmart brand spoons $2.84
Misc.: $15.00
* $15.00
I got a bushel of green beans from a local produce farm for $15. Just in case you are curious, that comes to about $0.81 a quart. We ate a bunch of the beans fresh, and then I froze the rest of them. (Here’s my tutorial on how to freeze green beans. It’s super simple to do!)
* $1.00 (used grocery cash)
A local farm had a big box of cantaloupe sitting out by the road with a sign that said $0.50. Of course, I couldn’t resist that price, so we stopped and I grabbed 2 of them. My hubby is the only one that likes them, but he is more than happy to eat as many as I buy.
* $0
My sister-in-law was generous and shared more of their zucchini with us. I’m loving all the zucchini that we’ve received this summer! The tomatoes were also shared with us by some friends. We obviously are blessed to know lots of generous people. 🙂
Credit: $68.48
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 $68.48 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.)
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