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Cut Your Grocery Bill Challenge (week 6)

We’re kicking off the year with an 8-week Cut Your Grocery Bill Challenge. I’ll be sharing a weekly post here every Thursday with a task or challenge for you to complete/focus on to help you tweak, improve, or overhaul your grocery budget.

My hope is that we can all work together to crowd-source new ideas and fresh inspiration to be more thoughtful and intentional in our grocery budgets + hopefully save some money and instill some practices and principles and habits that will continue to save us money throughout the rest of the year.

It’s February and that means we’re starting week 6 of the Cut Your Grocery Bill Challenge. How is it going for you? Here’s what we’ve covered in this challenge so far…

In week #1, we talked about setting up a grocery budget. That’s the most important first step in cutting your grocery bill.

In week #2, we discussed why you need to recognize potential roadblocks. Be sure to read through the comments here to hear about others’ roadblocks. I think it will encourage you to know you’re not alone.

In week #3, I challenged you to commit to change one thing for three weeks. You can see the comments on the post for ideas of what others picked.

In week #4, I encouraged you to check in on your progress to see how you are doing, what you are learning, what’s working, and what’s not working.

Last week, we talked about evaluating your options when it comes to stores in your area.

Week #6: Check In On Your Commitment

Remember in week #3 when I challenged you to commit to change one thing for three weeks? Well, guess what? It’s been three weeks and it’s time for us to circle back to that commitment and evaluate how it’s going.

First off, are you sticking with it? If so, that’s amazing? Has it been harder or easier than you thought? What have you learned from it? Are you ready to add another new thing to implement or change?

Take some time this week to really think through these questions and leave a comment below letting us know what you discovered, learned, or have been contemplating!

In the spirit of last week’s post on evaluating the stores you have available to shop at, I decided to go back to my roots and shop at more than one store this week. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I felt like it stretched our grocery budget to do this. It also may have just been a really good week for markdowns, too.

But, based upon this week’s success, I’m going to try to shopping at both Kroger and Aldi each week for the next few weeks and then re-evaluate. (I can easily go to Kroger right after Kierstyn’s swimming lessons and then David has therapy right by Aldi and he has two back-to-back sessions, so Micah and I are usually hanging out and I could swing by Aldi during this time.)

I found an amazing deal on pumpkin at Kroger this week — these big cans were marked down to just $0.60 each!!

I used to shop at Aldi almost primarily for all our groceries. It’s so weird that it feels foreign to me now — but it’s also all redone, so it has a much different feel, too!

Aldi had avocados for just $0.65/each.

Here are the current egg and milk prices — a little lower than Kroger.

Mac & Cheese from Aldi is still one of our favorite buys!

Here were all the groceries we bought at both Aldi and Kroger combined (I also bought a dozen eggs and forgot to get them in the picture!) Our total was a little under $100!

Week #6 Project: Check In On Your Commitment

Are joining us for the Cut Your Grocery Bill Challenge? If so, I’d love for you to leave a comment and tell us how you are doing on what you committed to change in week #3. It’s okay if you need to be brutally honest and say that it’s not going well for you at all. Or, we’d love to celebrate with you if things are going really well!