This is our fourth month giving the behind-the-scenes look at how we grocery shop for our family of seven! (The little guy is just barely starting on solids, so I often say family of six when I talk about groceries.)
I don’t have any deep dark grocery secrets (at least I don’t think I do), but people are always asking, both here and in real life, how I keep my grocery budget so low. That’s why I started sharing the full list and prices of all the food that we buy in the month.
If you would rather watch and listen as I give you the full tour of our groceries, check out the video below!
Let’s start with some of the common questions I get about the way we shop for groceries and then I’ll tell you all the details about the groceries we bought in April.
What is your grocery budget?
Since we finished paying off our debt, we’ve actually bumped our grocery budget up a bit. When we were focused on paying off debt we aimed to keep our grocery budget at $300 per month. Now that we’re debt-free (besides our house) we aim for $350 or $400, depending on the month.
This month I set the grocery budget at $400 because I’m using it to cover our Sam’s Club membership renewal of $45. That leaves us with $355 to spend on food!
Do you include non-food items in your grocery budget?
Nope. We have a household budget that we use for toiletries, paper products, cleaning supplies, laundry detergent, diapers (though we usually use cloth), and other non-food items that you might find at a grocery store.
Do you meal plan?
If you mean do I assign a specific meal to each day and shop for those specific groceries, then no, not really.
This is a tricky question because it’s a case of “Do as I say, not as I do.” If you are trying to reduce your grocery budget then I definitely recommend meal planning. It prevents waste, relieves stress, and saves money. It’s especially helpful if you’re trying to make a big change in the way you shop or eat. I’ve been doing this long enough that I’m pretty comfortable with the cook-from-scratch and fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants methods.
I do, meal plan, I just do it mentally and not very far ahead of time. 🙂 We eat the same typical meals each month and we cook most everything from scratch. My grocery shopping doesn’t depend on the menu, but on what’s running low (or missing) in my pantry.
When my pantry is stocked with the normal things we use, I can essentially make any of the meals on my mental menu.
This might work for you, but it relies on some well-established habits. If you’re trying to rein in your food spending in a significant way, detailed meal planning is definitely the way to go!
Do you really only shop once a month?
Yes, some months.
Other months I make one big beginning-of-the-month trip and then make a few smaller trips during the month for milk, bread, and produce, or to stock up on great deals I come across. This month I will probably make a few other small trips.
We keep our pantry and long-term food storage pretty stocked, so even though it’s nice to go get fresh produce and dairy, we could survive for a while without going to the store (though it would get boring if we ate food storage for months).
Why didn’t you buy any meat?
We don’t eat meat at every meal. We don’t even eat meat every day. And when we do eat meat, it’s not the star of the show. It’s usually in a sauce or a casserole or a soup or as a topping on something else.
We get most of the meat we eat in bulk from Zaycon Fresh. A couple times a year I will buy a 40 lb box of boneless skinless chicken breasts and a 40 lb box of ground beef. I buy other meats as needed or when I find a great deal.
Since we have meat in our freezer right now, I didn’t buy any this month.
Isn’t all of that produce and dairy going to go bad?
I have a whole post and video dedicated to this topic, so I won’t get into all the details now, but rest assured that this food won’t go to waste.
I plan our meals (see I do plan!) around what needs to be eaten before it goes bad. And if something is going to go bad before we can eat it I freeze it or preserve it in some way.
But that’s not usually an issue because we eat a lot! Seriously! They are all thin, but my kids and hubby eat A LOT!
—> Okay, Now I’ll show you what we bought for April! <—
If you have any other burning grocery shopping questions, put them in the comments and I’ll be happy to address them there or in a future post!
Winco = $122
- Frozen blueberries (32 oz) $3.48 x 2 = $6.96
- Frozen broccoli (32 oz) $2.07 x 2 = $4.14
- Frozen green beans (16 oz) $.99 x 2 = $1.98
- Roma tomatoes $.98/lb x 3.44 = $3.37
- Cucumbers $.48 x 4 = $1.92
- Green Beans $.48/lb x .5 = $.24
- Potatoes (10 lb) $2.48
- Carrots (10 lb) $3.98
- Yams $2.17/lb x 6.1 = $2.93
- Apples $.97/lb x 22.2 = $21.54
- Brown rice (2 lb) $1.39 x 3 = $4.14
- Flour tortillas $2.79 x 2 = $5.58
- Yogurt $.28 x 3 = $.84
- Quinoa $2.17/lb x 3.92 = $8.51
- Flour (10 lb) $2.84
- Sugar (10 lb) $4.77
- Tortilla chips $1.28 x 2 = $2.56
- Bakery bread $1.78 x 4 = $7.12
- Wheat bread $1.58 x 13 = $20.54
- English muffins $.98 x 3 = $2.94
- Raspberry jam (17 oz) $1.98 x 4 = $7.92
- Strawberry jam (17 oz) $2.48
- Marjoram $2.49
Sprouts = $25
- Strawberries (1 lb) $1.67 x 2 = $3.34
- Cara cara oranges $.98/lb x 4.5 lb = $4.41
- Avocados $.50 x 4 = $2.00
- Clementines (5 lb box) $3.88 x 4 = $15.52
Sam’s Club = $106
- Whole milk $2.20 x 5 = $11.00
- Sour cream (3 lb) $3.89
- Cottage cheese (3 lb) $4.89
- Block cheese (2 lb) $4.67
- Shredded cheese (5 lb) $10.98
- Spinach (16 oz) $3.79 x 3 = $11.37
- Spring mix (16 oz) $3.79 x 2 = $7.58
- Bananas (3 lb) $1.38 x 6 = $8.28
- String Cheese (48 ct) $7.67 x 2 =$15.34
- Cranberry juice (2 x 96 oz) $6.98 = $6.98
- Maple Syrup (32 oz) $10.28
- Brown Sugar (7 lb) $4.38
- Strawberry Jam (64 oz) $6.86
Well that’s it for our big April grocery shopping trip! I must say that I was pretty proud of getting the whole monthly haul to fit on our table at once!
In case you couldn’t hear him in the video, here’s my little co-star. 🙂
How about you?
- Do you shop monthly? Weekly? Daily!?
- Are you a meal planner?
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The Smucker’s Natural line is our go to when we don’t make enough jam/jelly at home to last the whole year. We’ve done a little of everything for the frequency of shopping. When we lived in a cabin in the woods 9 years ago we did once a month shopping with my husband picking up things we ran out of once a week on his way home from work. Three years ago we lived two blocks from a grocery store and walked over there every other day to pick up the fresh foods we’d be eating for the next few meals. Buying only what we could carry cut down on our grocery spending majorly.
Now we do one large order at the beginning of the month to replenish our staples. After that trip, we do two trips a week to the grocery store. On Friday we go for produce, eggs, and milk. On Tuesday we go for more produce. We go through a minimum of 300 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables a month for our family of 5. Our kitchen is only 49 square feet. We knew from the beginning that we’d be shopping a few times a week.
That’s pretty convenient to be able to walk to the grocery store! Especially if storage space is limited.
I’m really liking the smucker’s Natural jam. We usually make a lot of our own jam too, but we didn’t do much last year, so we’ve been buying jam lately.
I am loving your videos! I don’t get a big haul of groceries like most do. I have certain stores that I go to for certain items. For instance, I went to Kroger over the weekend for several packages of cheese, milk, and spaghetti sauce that were on sale. I go to a local grocery store on Sunday morning to get several packages super reduced ground beef to put in the freezer. When I pick up my kids at school, once every couple weeks I stop at a nearby Sav-a-lot that frequently has chicken thighs for less than anywhere. I always scour the reduced section of any store I go into for reduced fruits, veggies, sometimes flour, or breads. My local Walmart market usually has reduced packages of spinach, spring mix, or other veggies. I only go into stores that are on the way to work or school and pick up things when I see them significantly reduced. Like you, we keep a good bit on hand so I can always whip something up when I need to without running to a store.
That’s great that you know all the best places to get the best prices in your area! And so nice to have them be on your normal route so you don’t have to drive all over the place!
I’m interested to know the 5 most common meals you make from this grocery trip. I usually focus on the meat first when I come up with a dinner plan which means I’m spending double than you do on groceries. I’d like some ideas to help me rethink my dinner menus. Thank you for sharing this each month.
Hi Diane! Great question! In fact, you’ve inspired me with a post idea about meatless meals! There are a lot of things we eat that I adapt to be meatless. In fact I often make both the meat and meatless version in different pans so that my daughter can have hers without meat. Since meat isn’t usually the “star of the show” for us, it’s really easy to adapt.
I’ll tell you what we’ve eaten in the past week or so, though like I said, we keep a lot of staples on hand, so not all the ingredients were purchased in this particular grocery shopping trip.
-Mock Lasagna (can be meatless) + Salad
-Taco Soup (can be meatless)
-Baked Potato Bar + Salad
-Spaghetti + Salad
-English Muffin Pizzas (with leftover homemade sauce) + Green smoothies
-Brown Rice with Pork (I found it leftover in the freezer) + Sweet potatoes + salad
-Lasagna (that I froze a couple of weeks ago) + salad
-Pancakes + scrambled eggs + sausage + fruit salad (we love breakfast for dinner)
We shop weekly. But usually it’s a big trip one week, and then a quick trip the following week for milk and produce. Meal planning is the only way we can stick to a budget and it has saved us hundreds each month. Literally.
The red and the blue. Yep you match! 🙂 Keep up the fun.