I decided this month not to track every single item I purchased on my spreadsheet as I have been doing for ages. It is a time consuming process, but definitely a good one when you are trying to curb spending and stick to a budget, especially a really tight one like ours. Instead I cut back on my shopping trips, same as I did last month, and in typical fashion I did my best to purchase the vast majority of items on sale or marked down. I did just fine and still had money leftover when all was said and done.
Our monthly grocery budget is a whopping $150.00 per month and I still had $53 dollars left after my final trip which was to go to Winco to stock up on fresh produce, a few dairy items, frozen veggies and a handful of pantry items. A trip to Cash & Carry and Fred Meyer earlier in the month netted me some sales items to keep our freezer and pantry topped off.
We are fully stocked and winter ready so that is a huge relief for us. I have started meal planning again which will enable me to make wise use of what we have on hand. As we head into winter I expect to only need fresh produce and dairy items. I will likely pick up a few loss leaders and take advantage of any great sales or markdowns I come across to bolster our supplies, but for the most part we are good to go. I expect to keep our grocery spending even lower each month as a result.
As far as our non food items went I didn't buy much in the way of that either as we are completely stocked up. I did pick up two of the four packs of canned cat food for the kitties and added that to their winter stock pile. They were on sale for $1.58 each which is a super good deal on those.
$97.00 ÷ 31 days ÷3
people = $1.07 per person per day!! Way under budget!!!
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| I got a really good buy on butter - $1.88 a pound! |
I'm not sure at the moment if I will continue to track my spending like I did before or not. Right now, since we are pretty much running in debt free mode it is kind of nice to know I don't have to if I don't want to and that we can afford to spend more on groceries now if we want to. The flip side of that, however, is that some habits are just hard to break.
My big trip to the grocery outlet store
How did you do with your grocery spending this month? Any difficulties finding what you wanted? Any really great sales?
I was looking for sales on jars of spaghetti and found none.
ReplyDeleteTomato products have been a challenge
DeleteI hit the same FM sale you did: butter $1.88-bought 8# and ground turkey BOGO-bought 10#.
ReplyDeleteI just got home from Winco and got chicken quarters for $0.24/#-3 packages, a small brisket 30% markdown. Yea! We'll smoke that.
My garden has given up 48 pints of salsa and 14 quarts of ratatouille for the freezer. My freezer is STUFFED! Not even sure where I can tuck away those meats I purchased this morning.
You're right about tracking. I've done it since 2000 and although we've been debt-free for 10 years, I still do it. It just feels good to know exactly where our money is going and it keeps us mindful of our choices even though counting pennies isn't critical anymore. I'll probably do it forever!
Happy Wednesday :-)
Great work Elle!
DeleteYour grocery spending is always an inspiration! We are spending much less in COVID, and I added to my goals for October to figure out what a reasonable (but attainable) goal is for us
ReplyDeleteThe pandemic has curbed a lot of spending and expense for us as well. Good luck with your goals.
DeleteThat was a typo, sadly. We are spending less overall during COVID, but much more on groceries! We are a work in progress in that area
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