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$70 Grocery Budget (+ why I stopped posting my menu plans)

How to Teach Your Kids Great Money Skills (free class!)

$70 Grocery Budget (+ why I stopped posting my menu plans)

I’m currently challenging myself to stick with a $70 grocery budget for our family of five. This includes almost all of our breakfasts, lunches, snacks, and dinners + most household products (toiletries, laundry soap, etc.).

For live updates, be sure to follow my Instagram Stories. See all posts on my $70 Grocery Budget here.

Note: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links and we will be compensated if you click through and sign up. Read our disclosure policy here.

The last two weeks, I didn’t post our menu plan with my grocery posts. I did this intentionally — without saying anything — to see if people would notice and mention anything.

You see, it takes quite a bit of extra time to track what we eat and share it and it felt like the only comments I had been getting were pretty negative, nit-picky comments about our menu plan (most of these were coming in via email and on social media). I was feeling like a) people weren’t finding the menu plans helpful and b) it probably wasn’t worth my time to share the menu plans if they were only going to get critical comments.

But then… multiple people wrote in and last week and asked about the menu plans and told me you had found it so helpful. That was so encouraging to know that many of you actually do find the menu plans helpful. So, I’m happy to bring them back! 🙂

Here’s what we bought and ate this week:

Kroger Shopping Trip #1:

2 loaves of bread — marked down to $1.79
10 lb. bag of potatoes — $1.99
2 cantaloupe — $0.99 each
Kroger vitamin D milk — $2.59
Total with tax: $10.77

As you know, I eat a lot of salads every week. This one was one of my favorites from this past week. (Marked down greens, leftover roasted asparagus, leftover Italian chicken.)

Jesse and I went out for a lunch date on Wednesday to one of our favorite places: Frothy Monkey. I love their Gail Salad with whole grain toast and butter. (Except yikes, that avocado looks nasty — I cut that bad part out before eating the salad!)

We already had a lot of groceries in our pantry, fridge, and freezer and there weren’t any really fantastic coupon deals at Kroger, but since I still had $59 in our grocery budget to use, I went to Kroger on Friday to see what markdowns I could find.

I was not disappointed. In fact, I kind of hit the motherlode of markdowns!

Kroger Shopping Trip #2:

Family-Sized Nabisco Crackers & Cookies — $1.99 with Friday-Saturday Kroger Digital Coupon
3 boxes of Kroger cereal — $1.49 each
Frozen Turkey — $0.97/lb. with Friday-Saturday Kroger Digital Coupon = $6.43
Minute Rice — marked down to $0.69
2 Wasabi Peanuts — marked down to $0.25 each
Ghana chocolate — marked down to $0.69
Multigrain bread — marked down to $1.29
2 Whole-wheat Pita pockets — marked down $0.99 each
RX Bar — FREE with Free Friday coupon
2 packages Kroger Sausage Links — $1.99 each with 4 Day weekend sale
2 bags Salad Kits — marked down to $1.49 each
Simple Truth Eggs — marked down to $1.49
Quaker Oat Beverage — marked down to $1
2 big bottles French’s ketchup — marked down to $0.89 each
5 jars of Simple Truth Organic Corn & Bean Salsa — marked down to $0.79 each
2 Simple Truth Greek Yogurt — marked down to $0.49 each
Chi-Chi’s pineapple salsa — marked down to $0.79
Hot Salsa — marked down to $1.29
Tomato Juice — marked down to $0.89
Total with tax: $49.23

I thought you’d like to see how yummy that bagged salad looks like on a plate. Here’s half a bag of the salad. I love that buying these bagged salads makes for such quick and easy — and healthful and inexpensive! — lunches for me!

a photo of Crystal Paine and her daughter

Kaitlynn went to 7th and 8th grade camp in Kentucky with 33 other students from church on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I am not a student ministry leader, but they were short on leaders who were able to come so I volunteered to go. And I had a blast getting to hang out with the kids, have fun with them, listen to them, love on them, and encourage them.

So Kaitlynn and I ate camp food for 2 days this week… and it wasn’t that bad! I was especially happy that they had a salad bar for lunch and dinner!

What We Ate This Past Week

Note: When you see the meals below, please remember this: I buy ahead often. Which means that when I find a great deal on something I know we’ll use, I buy as much as I can afford in our budget to have on hand.

This means that you aren’t going to see all of the groceries my shopping trip that I used to make all of the meals we ate.

Please also remember that I’m putting this out there and it’s not a perfectly balanced menu. This is just really what we ate — and I hope that it encourages you to see the real-ness and lack of perfection here.

Breakfasts:

Cereal, Oatmeal, Scrambled Eggs, Peanut Butter/Banana Toast

Lunches:

Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwiches, Salads, Leftovers, Blackberries, Cookies, Protein Bars (Jesse and I went out to lunch on Wednesday)

Snacks:

Cantaloupe, Cookies, Popcorn, Ice Cream, Crackers & Cheese, Refrigerator Pickles

Dinners:

Sunday — Frozen Pizza
Monday —Italian Chicken, Pineapple, Roasted Asparagus, Homemade Biscuits, Cantaloupe
Tuesday — Beef, Twice Baked Potatoes, Cantaloupe
Wednesday — Leftovers (The girls had pizza at church because they went to an activity night.)
Thursday — Meatballs, Mashed Potatoes, Pineapple, Refrigerator Pickles
Friday — Roasted Turkey in the Instant Pot, Fruit (Kathrynne was at a birthday party. Kaitlynn and I ate a quick dinner and then left to go to church to take the bus to camp in Kentucky!)
Saturday — Jesse and Silas and Kathrynne went out to eat. Kaitlynn and I were at camp.

Total spent on groceries: $60 — I have no idea how I managed to have a perfectly even number!!

Cashback earned this week: 50 points for submitting my receipts to Fetch rewards + submitting my receipt to iBotta rewards.

How to Teach Your Kids Great Money Skills (free class!)

I’m excited to invite you to join me for a free class on Thursday all about How to Teach Your Kids Great Money Skills. You don’t want to miss this!

Do you want to raise financially responsible kids? Do you wish you could have some advice and step-by-step help to teach your kids great money skills? If so, you’re not alone!

I hear from so many parents who feel like they want to set great examples for their kids when it comes to money but they just don’t even know how to do that since they never had good money role models.

Matt Matheson is a dad of two kids who has spent 15 years as a teacher. His heart is to help equip the next generation to win with money. It started in his home with teaching his daughter and son the basics about money, but quickly expanded to include teaching a personal finance class to 5th and 6th graders in his school.

As a nationally published personal finance writer with articles and insights appearing in places like the Huffington Post, Matt was able to combine his financial knowledge, educational expertise, classroom experience, and parenting insights to build a series of highly engaging lessons designed to bring the joy back to parents struggling to raise money rockstars.

Sign Up for the Free Class!

Matt and I are teaming up on April 11, 2019 to offer you a free live class designed to help you raise your own financially-savvy kids. It’s called 5 Ways To Inspire Your Kids To Thrive With Money.

The class will be at 7 p.m. CT/8 p.m. EST on Thursday, April 11, 2019 and you’ll learn:

How to know WHEN you should start teaching your kids about money. In the class, Matt will show you why it’s too late if you wait until they start learning about money in school.
WHAT exactly you should be teaching your kids. You’ll learn how everything your child needs to know about money can be boiled down to five major concepts known as the 5 Pillars. If your child masters these, you’ll be ahead of the game and you won’t get lost (or lose them) teaching the details of 401k’s, credit utilization rates, and FAFSA’s (not sure what these are? Don’t worry, you don’t need to speak Money-ese to raise a money rockstar!)
The #1 trick for HOW to teach these concepts. Many parents go about teaching their children about money all wrong. Matt will show you a few simple teaching tips and tricks to have your kids soaking up money knowledge like a sponge.

Click here to sign up and reserve your spot for Thursday, April 11th, at 8:00 pm EST!

Our hope is that each parent who attends will leave inspired with steps and advice to build a strong financial foundation for their kids. I hope to see you there!

P.S. Can’t make the live webinar? Be sure to register anyway to watch the replay!

Bloggers: Read this!

I have gotten a LOT of emails from you all recently telling me that you wish you could have more customized help as a blogger…

Some of you would like help getting your blog up and launched.
Some of you want to know how to get more people to ready your blog.
Some of you would like to feel more confident when it comes to the technical aspects of blogging.
A number of you want to learn how to take better photos for your blog.
Many of you would love to be more successful on social media.
And pretty much all of you would like to figure out how to make more money as a blogger!

I wish I could offer customized coaching for each and every one of you… and we’re actually working on some projects for the future to allow me to do more of that. (We’ll be opening up my Blogging Mastermind program to new members in just a few weeks! Stay tuned!)

I Want to Help You TODAY!

But many of you aren’t wanting to wait around for that — you’d like help TODAY! And you don’t have to wait, because guess what?

Through tomorrow evening at midnight (April 9, 2019), you have one last opportunity to get an amazing bundle of fantastic blogging resources is available that offers courses on just about every single aspect related to blogging.

It’s FLASH SALE for the The Genius Blogger’s Toolkit and it boasts 77 different products and is worth $5,867.88!!

This toolkit was available for a few days in 2018 and I’m so excited that it’s back again through tomorrow evening.

No matter whether you need help with writing better blog posts, setting up your email list, becoming proficient at marketing, creating products that sell, managing your time better, or making more money as a blogger, this toolkit has you covered.

Wait, For REAL??

Yes, when you purchase The Genius Blogger’s Toolkit, you’ll get access to 41 eCourses, 15 eBooks, 9 printable packs & workbooks, 5 templates, 5 stock photo packs, and 2 membership sites.

Basically, it’s an entire blogging education from a number of blogging professionals to help you confidently tackle whatever blogging struggles you are facing.

All of the courses and ebooks can be downloaded and gone through at your own pace. You can start them today or, if it’s a topic you don’t need right now, you can download it and save it for later.

Or, if it’s not a topic you need at all, you can just skip it and move on to the courses that you really need to focus on. Why? Because you are paying a fraction of the price that each of these would cost if you bought them individually.

You Won’t Believe This Price!

That’s right! If you went to the different influencer’s and blogger’s sites and bought each of these courses separately, you’d pay $5867.88! But for the next few days, you can get all of these courses in one big bundle for just $97 total!

Many of these courses are very comprehensive and they individually sell for more than $97 for just one course! So this is a STEAL of a price!

There is a Catch, Though…

I know you’ve likely been waiting for me to tell you what the catch is and it’s actually two-fold:

1) This is only a great deal if you’ll actually USE these courses. Please don’t buy this bundle with great intentions and then not actually go through the courses. Otherwise, you wasted your money. I only want you to invest in this toolkit of resources if you promise me that you are going to go through at least 3-4 of them. They have the power to change the trajectory of your business — but only if you will take the first step to purchase and then go through and learn and implement what you learn!

2) This offer is very limited time only. Most of the people who sell these courses cannot afford to have their course discounted deeply like this on a longterm basis. So this toolkit is only available at this price through April 9, 2019. After that, the toolkit won’t be available and the only way to get these resources will be to buy them individually at the much higher prices.

This is your chance to get the help you need to grow as a blogger — and to get it at a crazy low price!

Click here to purchase The Genius Blogger’s Toolkit for just $97!

P.S. I’ve downloaded my own copy of the toolkit and will be telling you about which courses I’m most excited about tomorrow. If you have any questions or aren’t sure if this is for you, leave a comment and ask. I’m happy to help you out!