I’m currently challenging myself to stick with a $70 grocery budget for our family of five. This includes almost all of our breakfasts, lunches, snacks, and dinners + most household products (toiletries, laundry soap, etc.).
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We went shopping twice this week. Jesse ran by Aldi to pick up a few staple items and then I went and did a BIG shopping trip at Kroger today.
ALDI Shopping Trip:
- Olive Oil Spray — $1.49
- 24-oz bag of Chocolate Chips — $2.79
- Oil — $1.85
- Salt — $0.39
- Brown Sugar — $0.95
- Cheddar Cheese — $1.69
- Shredded Wheat Cereal — $1.39
- Hamburger Buns — $0.85
- Ramen (my kids love Ramen and have been begging me to buy it!) — $1.94
- Total with tax: $14.32
Jesse and I leave on Monday for Rome and India. We’re so excited that all of the details of this trip worked out and I’ll be sure to share lots of pictures and videos on Instagram.
We’re going with another couple we are really close friends with and will be gone for 10 days. My mom is coming to watch our kids and I didn’t want her to have to worry about doing much grocery shopping while we’re gone, so I went ahead and did a big stock up trip at Kroger today.
Check your Kroger account or app to see if this $10 off $50 digital coupon is available for you. It was for me, but some people told me they didn’t have it offered in their account.
I am LOVING the Friday-Saturday deals available at Kroger this week + the buy 10, Get $5 off deals. There were SO many great deals that I had a hard time choosing which ones I was going to stick with!
My LOADED up cart! I ended up saving $100 after coupons and deals!! Here’s what I bought…
Kroger Shopping Trip
- 5 Solero — $1.99 each on Friday and Saturday with the Kroger Digital Coupon
- 3 Handi-Foil Pans — $1 each on Friday and Saturday with the Kroger Digital Coupon
- 7 BirdsEye Steamfresh — $0.75 each when you buy 10 participating items
- 5 BirdsEye Frozen veggies — $0.75 each when you buy 10 participating items
- 2 boxes of Cousin Willie’s popcorn — $1 each when you buy 10 participating items
- 2 cans of Campbell’s Cream of Chicken soup — $0.49 each when you buy 10 participating items
- 3 cans of RedGold Tomatoes — $0.39 each when you buy 10 participating items, submit for $0.90 Ibotta rebate = $0.09 each
- 1 Lays Stax — $0.69 when you buy 10 participating items
- 1 Pringles — $0.99 when you buy 10 participating items
- 1 Palmolive — $1.49 when you buy 10 participating items, used $0.50 Kroger Digital Coupon = $0.99
- Jef-Puffed Marshmallows — $1.25 (I thought my $1/1 Digital Coupon was going to come off since it was still showing in my account even though I used it last week, but looking on my receipt, it looks like it didn’t come off.), submit for $0.25 Ibotta rebate
- 3 boxes Creamette Pasta — $0.49 each when you buy 10 participating items
- 1 ALL Laundry detergent — $2.49 each when you buy 10 participating items, used $1/1 Kroger digital coupon, $1.49 after coupon
- 2 boxes of Betty Crocker Brownie Mix — $0.75 each when you buy 10 participating items
- 1 box Betty Crocker Cake Mix — $0.75 each when you buy 10 participating items
- 1 Capri Sun — $1.79 each when you buy 10 participating items
- 5 Halo Top — $1.99 each when you buy 10 participating items
- Milk — $1.99
- 5 Kroger Yogurts — marked down to $0.39 each
- Private Selection Hot Cocoa — $0.67, used $0.50/1 Kroger Digital coupon = $0.17 after coupon
- Chobani — free with Free Friday coupon
- 2 pounds of ground beef — marked down to $3.79 and $3.29
- 2 pounds of Ground Turkey — marked down to $3.19 each
- Bagged Salads — marked down to $1.29 and $1.99
- Kroger Eggs — marked down $1.29, submit for $0.25 Ibotta rebate
- 5 packages of Smithfield Bacon — $2.99 each on Friday and Saturday with the Kroger Digital Coupon
- 5 Post Honey Bunches of Oats — $0.99 each on Friday and Saturday with the Kroger Digital Coupon
- Used $10 off $50 Digital coupon
- Used $3 On Your Next Order coupon
- Total with tax: $82.82 (saved $100.54!)
What I Spent This Week
Total spent: $97.14 (and yes, it’s technically “over” our $70 budget, but since I was buying ahead for the next two weeks (see above), I’m okay with that!)
Cashback Earned This Week: 75 points from Fetch Rewards for scanning my receipts + $1.50 for scanning my receipt on iBotta
Note: When you see the meals below, please remember this: I buy ahead often. Which means that when I find a great deal on something I know we’ll use, I buy as much as I can afford in our budget to have on hand.
This means that you aren’t going to see all of the groceries my shopping trip that I used to make all of the meals we ate.
Please also remember that I’m putting this out there and it’s not a perfectly balanced menu. This is just really what we ate — and I hope that it encourages you to see the real-ness and lack of perfection here. ?
What We Ate This Week
Breakfasts:
- Cereal, Oatmeal, Pumpkin Pancakes, Scrambled Eggs, Yogurt, English Muffins (from the freezer), Bagels (from the freezer)
Lunches:
- Hard Boiled Eggs, Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins, Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins, Avocados, Salad, Grapefruit, Apples, Sourdough Bread (for Jesse and me)
- Turkey Sandwiches, Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins, Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins, Fruit, Veggies, Yogurt, Cookies, Hard Boiled Eggs (For the kids — They are in charge of their own lunches.)
Snacks:
- Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins, Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars, Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins, Sourdough Bread, Yogurt, Fruit/Veggies, Goldfish, Hard Boiled Eggs, Turmeric Milk
Dinners:
- Saturday: Dinner out
- Sunday: Fend For Yourself — snack-y food and leftovers
- Monday: Pumpkin Pancakes, Eggs, Fruit
- Tuesday: Jesse and I went out with friends to celebrate my birthday (finally! We’d been planning to do it earlier in the month but it didn’t work out. We went to a Virtual Reality place in Murfreesboro and then had planned to eat dinner at The Green Dragon, but when we got there, they weren’t serving food anymore so we got pretzels — the only food they had! — and drinks and then ordered from McDonald’s on the way home because we were so hungry and basically everywhere was closed because it was late!) and the kids had turkey sandwiches
- Wednesday: Turkey, Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins, Fruit
- Thursday: Frozen Pizza, Fruit
- Friday: Chicken Broccoli Rice Casserole, Muffins, Salad
Linda says
Wow! Can I just say congrats on an awesome shopping trip? You inspire me me to be more frugal when I see all that you can do with coupons and sales. Awesome job!
Susan says
I’m curious how long it takes you to plan a grocery trip like that. One time I went to a coupon seminar sponsored by our local newspaper, to get people to subscribe to multiple copies of the paper for the coupons. The speaker was someone who appeared on the Extreme Couponers show. It was a fun event and I learned a couple of new tips, however she did say that the show she appeared on took 2 whole days to tape and the preparation time for the extreme savings for television purposes was not feasible to implement for every day. I realize you are not doing “extreme couponing”, but I was just wondering what you felt was a reasonable amount of time to invest in planning the savings for a large grocery haul like the one in this post. And I’m with the other person who commented that she wished she had a Kroger! I live near New Orleans, Louisiana and there are no Krogers. Go figure! I guess I will have to be happy that I have a Wal-Mart Super Store
Crystal Paine says
Great question! I think I spent 15 minutes planning this trip and then I was at the store for a little under an hour including the time it took me to check out (which took about 15 minutes at self-checkout). I get most of my deal tip-offs from KrogerKrazy.com, so I just go there and add digital coupons to my account before going to the store.
Ashley says
I went to Kroger and did the Mega last night. There was a great buy on full sized bottles of men’s Vaseline lotion at my store (Cookeville, TN). They were tagged as .80, .30 after the Mega pricing. I assumed it was a mistake, but they rang up that way! That was great for the toiletry baskets our church gives away during the holidays.
Crystal Paine says
Whoa!!! That is such a great deal — thank you for sharing! And now I feel like I need to run out and check my store!
Lana says
LOL! McDonald’s is a standby for late nights out when we go to live music concerts. And now kind of a tradition. I have no idea why it tastes so good late at night when we would never choose it other times of the day!
Crystal Paine says
I love that!
Amber says
What kind of snack-y foods do you allow for dinner? I need a night like this on Sundays with church in the morning and bible study at 5:30.
Crystal Paine says
Cheese, crackers, fruit, veggies, eggs, ramen… or pretty much anything the kids want to make on their own! 🙂
Jennifer says
My goodness, you’ve traveled so much this year I get tired just reading about it! ?
Mary Clapp says
I was thinking the same! Crystal could branch off and have a vacation blog. I look forward to reading more about this trip!
Crystal Paine says
We decided to make travel a big priority in our lives/budget the last few years and we have not regretted this decision one single bit!
Valerie says
The Jet Puffed Marshmallow coupon is for bags that are 12 0z or more and the mini marshmallows are only 10 oz. So it probably didn’t come off last week either. Because that happened to me.
Crystal Paine says
Hmmm… I thought it came off last week. But maybe I just thought it did! Thanks for mentioning that!
Akaya says
Wow! Thanks for posting about the $10 off $50, I had it and would never have known about it!
Beth Riker says
Wow…wish I had a Kroger near me!
Crystal Paine says
Where do you live? Do you happen to have a Kroger affiliate store? You can check to see if you do at KrogerKrazy.com: https://www.krogerkrazy.com/kroger-map/
Guest says
We don’t have one either – we live in Walmart country! I’ve recently started using the Walmart app more and there are some cool features such as if you pay using Walmart Pay, you can automatically upload your electronic receipt to Savings Catcher and they’ll apply the savings to a “gift card” on Walmart Pay that you can use. I bought some groceries last night and paid for them with my Savings Catcher money! Remember Walmart also price matches so if you have the paper from Aldi, you can price match if you go through a traditional cashier line.
Crystal Paine says
Thanks so much for sharing these great tips!