Monday, September 11, 2023

Crystal's $137 Aldi Shopping Trip (+ full menu plan)

If you saw my grocery shopping trip post last week, you know that I'm testing out/contemplating a grocery budget increase again as our younger kids are getting older and our older kids are doing more sports, so everyone is eating more, which is ...
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Intentional finance. Intentional family. Intentional business.

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Crystal’s $137 Aldi Shopping Trip (+ full menu plan)

If you saw my grocery shopping trip post last week, you know that I’m testing out/contemplating a grocery budget increase again as our younger kids are getting older and our older kids are doing more sports, so everyone is eating more, which is fantastic!

This week, I tried something I’ve never done before: I went to Aldi and I didn’t calculate my running total as I put things in my cart. Instead, I just bought what I thought would be enough food to last us for the week. Yes, I looked at deals and sales but I wanted to see what it would cost to buy what I thought would actually last us well for the entire week without focusing on sticking to the budget to help me determine what a realistic budget is.

I’m honestly thinking we’ll go with $150/week after this experiment — just to give plenty of breathing room — but I want to try one more week and see if I think that’s the amount that I feel like will work for us for at least the next year or so!

Here’s what I bought for $137:

Here were some of the best deals I found…

Mandarins are $2.49 for a 3-lb bag. We love these for quick snacks or they are great to pack in lunches.

Grapes are $0.99/lb!

And this was crazy and I had to look three times to make sure it was actually correct — 10 pound bags of potatoes for $0.99!!!! They did look like they would need to be used up in the next few weeks, but I bought three bags and am excited to get creative over the next few weeks to use them up!

Here’s our menu plan for the week:

Breakfasts: Granola over yogurt, Baked Oatmeal, Smoothies, Fried Eggs/Avocados, Scrambled Eggs with Cheese and Toast, Oatmeal, Cereal

Lunches: Snack-y lunch, PB&Jelly, Turkey & Cheese, Leftovers, Salad (Kaitlynn and Silas have lunch at school some of the days)

Snacks: Ice cream & snacks I bought, Apples with Peanut Butter & Chocolate Chips, Cheese, Mandarins, Homemade Energy Bites, Pumpkin Bread, Chocolate Cake for Jesse’s birthday

Dinner: Potato Soup, Breakfast for Dinner, Meat Potato Quiche, Chicken Salsa Pizza, Sausage/Potatoes/Peppers/Onions, Dinner out, Leftover/Fend-For-Yourself

   
 
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