I've had a few people ask me about my grocery budget, $50\week for food and $50\month on meat. To most people this has seemed near impossible or even laughable. First, this is for a family of two adults with a two year old and five month old. Second, this only includes food; not toiletries, paper products, soaps, clothes or anything else. And finally the big secret, I don't always manage to keep it within this budget. In fact, I rarely do.
The fact of the matter is that I just got tired of going to the grocery with no game plan and spending over a hundred dollars and then having to return every couple days to get things that I needed for meals I decided I wanted to cook... Or even more expensive, just going out to eat since I hadn't gotten what I needed to make a complete meal at the grocery. I was spending close to or over two hundred dollars in food per week (if you include eating out). This was just too much. So we decided to make some changes.
The first was to plan meals for the week then make a grocery list... It's not rocket science. This made a big difference since we were much more likely to eat at home if I already had what I needed to cook a meal.
Second, I saw what a big difference this made and decided to challenge myself with this budget. If you don't have a goal then you tend to spend more. I started looking at what was on sale and making my menu based on sale items. Just these two steps made an incredible difference in our bank account. Even though I go over the $50 all the time, being $5-$20 over budget is still a tremendous improvement.
The last thing that I've started recently is using coupons. We used to just buy the Kroger brand of everything, but after reading a few blogs and paying more attention to ads I realized you can get name brand things even cheaper sometimes. I'll give you an example of a great deal I got at Kroger this morning on Horizon Mac and Cheese. These are normally about $2/box...Far too much in my opinion for a box of Mac and cheese. The Kroger brand is about $1 or less and the Kraft brand you can occasionally find on sale for $1. I normally just stock up on Kraft when it's on sale because this is one thing where I don't like the Kroger brand. Anyway, Horizon was on sale for $1/box which is good, but then I printed off coupons for 55¢/1 box making them 45¢ each! Another deal I got was Chex Mix for 75¢. They are on sale for $1/bag and I had a coupon for 50¢\2 bags.
Another tip that I've also found for getting some amazing deals is getting out early on Saturday morning. This is when my Kroger store knocks down prices with managers special. Things like milk that will expire in a week...I don't know about you but a gallon doesn't begin to last a week in our house. Today they were marking down packages of bacon to $1 each! I got plenty of bacon in the freezer now! Here's the damage from my morning Kroger trip...the savings does not even reflect my managers special deals. This week I was within budget with about $28 of this being meat and $40 being groceries!
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