Lately, I’ve been tinkering with our grocery budget. Since our grocery budget includes food as well as our toiletries, household product, and diapers, it can sometimes get a little tricky. I’m not ready to divide the categories up at this point, but I may give that a try at some point to see if that method works better.
Long story short, when I looked at the calendar and our grocery envelope, I realized we only had $20 left to last us until payday (I think it was due to some bigger splurges at the deli meat counter). Luckily, payday is a week away, but still. That’s not much money to get us through.
So, I got busy working up a feasible menu to get us through until then. We always do better with our grocery budget when I work from a weekly menu. I looked at what we had in our stockpile and scaled our grocery list back as much as possible to make sure I didn’t go over that $20.
I figured I’d think of this as a challenge and blog about how we do along the way!
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MENU
We keep it simple for breakfasts (cereal/fruit/oatmeal) and lunches (sandwiches/fruit/veggies), so I mainly plan out dinners. I just keep the basic breakfast and lunch staples on hand anyway.
Thursday: chicken & rice, steamed broccoli, fruit
Friday: homemade pizza, carrots
Saturday: LEFTOVERS, skillet meal if needed *we will be at a wedding but my parents will be eating with the kids
Sunday: eggs, toast, fruit
Monday: cheeseburgers, corn on the cob, steamed carrots
Tuesday: BBQ chicken on the grill, green veggie
Wednesday: spaghetti, green veggie
Thursday: LEFTOVERS
Friday: homemade pizza, carrots
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Since we were running low on some items and I knew I needed to stick to this menu going into the weekend, we headed out to shop at Kroger. Luckily, our fridge/freezer and pantry are stocked fairly well so I didn’t need too much. Here’s the rundown of our trip.
bananas – $1.90
American cheese – $1.27 (used $.40 off coupon)
yellow corn (6) – $1.98
strawberries (2) – $4.00
jam – $1.89
bread – $1.00
skim milk – $2.98
whole milk – $3.50
Total w/ taxes: $18.98
I did return 2 cake mixes that Kev bought on a whim earlier in the week because I knew we needed any extra money we could squeeze out. That gave me an extra $2.03 to put towards the groceries.
Grocery envelope (start): $20.00
Purchase: 18.98
Return: ($2.03)
Grocery envelope (as of now): $3.05
Before y’all go and think we are crazy, don’t worry, I have no intention of letting our children starve. We have a some wiggle room (we didn’t spend as much on gas so we can use some of that overage if needed) if it turns out we need to spend more than the $3.05 we have left in the envelope, so I’m not worried. I’m just excited to give this a shot and I thought it would be fun to bring y’all along as well!
Linking up with:
Ruth for Thrify Thursday
