Grocery shopping and maintaining a budget has become quite a
bit trickier. Along with the struggle to
find the items I want to purchase prices have been creeping up and sales are
not so good. I find myself shopping more
at Cash & Carry and the Grocery Outlet than I have before simply because
they usually seem to have what I want.
The problem, and it isn't a big problem, is that Cash & Carry sells items
in much larger quantities than what I usually buy, not unlike Costco, but without the membership fees.
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| In order to get what we need I'm shopping at a lot of different stores. |
Despite a small handful of challenges I've been able to feed my
family quite well and maintain our food stores in our pantry and freezer in the
process. I'm cooking larger meals on the
weekends with leftovers to keep us going throughout the week. That seems to be working pretty well for
everyone. I spent a total of $156.34 so
I am over budget by $6.34 which I will roll over to next month and begin the
month with that much less to spend.
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| Grocery outlet had dish soap and beans. Coconut oil for my prepper pantry too. |
The hardest thing for me to find this month was dish soap
and I noticed the laundry supplies were pretty picked over as well. We have plenty of laundry stuff, but I did
want to get some dish soap and our grocery stores were out. I did find plenty at Grocery Outlet and
picked up a two pack there so we should be fine for quite a while. Our $25 non food budget came in $26.19 with some
carryover from previous months so I still have $4.01 in that budget to
carryover to next month.
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| I find I am shopping more at stores I don't normally shop at all that often. |
This is what I bought for food in April:
Most of you know I've started a prepper pantry and I
literally have no budget to do this. I'm
getting creative in accumulating my supplies and food items and I will be going
over that in more detail in an upcoming post.
The prepper pantry is not at all part of my regular grocery budget right
now.
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| The prepper pantry has its own budget. It is coming right along. |
$156.34 ÷ 30 days ÷3
people = $1.74 per person per day!!
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| The grocery outlet has been great for finding things. I can't get at my regular grocery store and at low prices too. |
Not unhappy with that total to be quite honest. In fact, I'm quite relieved that it wasn't
worse or that we had to go without anything.
For that I am truly grateful. I
hope and pray that all of you are doing well and finding the groceries that you
need. I also hope that you are
weathering this storm and able to keep the roof over your heads and your
families fed. This is such a crazy time
for all of us right now. Let me know how
you are all doing at the grocery stores lately.
Groceries in the US have always been low compared to the rest of the world due to the subsidies the government has been paying producers. I think now is when you will see the actual cost. They're saying meat will become scarcer and what you do find, will be about 8-10 times the price you're paying now.
ReplyDeleteThings are definitely going to change. No doubt.
DeleteI'm not going into big grocery stores at all (my husband is especially vulnerable to respiratory illnesses). So, I've been improvising and doing curbside pickups for some foods while getting food from a no-contact food pantry as well. It's been challenging for sure, but I'm so thankful for what we have.
ReplyDeleteIt has been a challenge for a lot of us. I'm so happy you are doing well.
DeleteI have been trying to stay close to home, so no big stores, and, since school is cancelled, have not been stopping by stores on the way home from drop off to catch close outs/markdowns. (One of those stores is a Grocery Outlet.) My grocery spending has been markedly lower this month. The stockpile is somewhat reduced, and the freezer greatly reduced, but we will get by. The most difficult things to find here are paper towels, pump soap, and household cleansers, and pet food. Yesterday, we finally braved Costco, because we needed printer ink desperately. There was a sign saying they were out of paper towels, rice, dried beans and Pine Sol among other things I can't remember. I didn't enjoy my Costco experience yesterday, and as it's 25 miles away, I can tell you I won't be heading back anytime soon. Since we were in the neighborhood, I bolted in to Walmart, were I found their own brand "cream of" soups for $0.50/can, so picked up a dozen of chicken and mushroom. (No judgement, please, I know I could make my own, but it's cheap, it's easy, I use it for a variety of recipes the kids love.) Walmart was fairly well stocked, and surprisingly empty. Still, unless a loss leader comes up, and I don't think it will, I can't see heading out to a big store for a major shop anytime soon.
ReplyDeleteYou will get no judgment from me my dear. That is a great price on those soups. Good call!
Delete(It's so nice to be back and commenting! And Meg -- I buy these soups, as well, when I can get them on sale. Daughter #1 likes to eat mushroom soup cold, straight out of the can, so I buy extra for her, as well. No guilt needed!)
ReplyDeleteWe are still on quarantine, so I can't speak for all the stores in our part of Colorado -- but Sam's Club was downright scary, as far as meat goes, from our pickup yesterday. All the meat items were cancelled, so I ventured inside the store...only to find signs limiting 1 beef, pork and lamb each, and nearly empty refrigerated cases. I was able to get some beef stew pieces, and a pork butt package -- prices were still low on these, but it's obvious they're not going to stay that way.
While I was at it, I checked the freezer cases -- nearly all the convenience entrees were there (because people are cooking more now?), but the frozen chicken tenders were decimated...the 'cheap' ones ($2/pound) were empty -- the only thing left were a few packages of fancier stuff at $3.53 a pound.
This does not bode well.
I was told it was because of all the worries about closing meat packing plants around the U.S. At any rate, if you find a good meat sale...and they actually have some to buy... you might want to start getting that, instead of popcorn.
What?!! You can't live on popcorn?!
DeleteOur freezer is very full at the moment which is a huge relief with all the panic buying that is going on. It is going to be pretty interesting to see how things shake out in the coming months.