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.
Our $70 Budget
This week we didn’t eat at home as much as we usually do since we traveled to Kansas for Easter Friday through Sunday. But we did get some great deals at the grocery store — and we used our extra money from the past number of weeks that we’ve been under budget to pay for our extra dinner out this week!
Sprouts Shopping Trip
Sprouts had some good weekend deals last weekend and Jesse ran by to pick up a few of them. He got 4 mangoes for $1 and 4 grapefruit for $1.
Total with tax: $2.14
Jesse also ran by Kroger for me after he dropped the kids off at school. I asked him if he could pick up any marked down lettuce/salads he saw. Well, went around and looked at markdowns throughout the entire store! And he found some great deals!
Kroger Shopping Trip #1:
I got some great freebies in the mail this week, including MyKroger magazine (which has great coupons in it!), a free copy of Real Simple magazine, free issues of Health magazine, plus some other great freebies!
Kroger was having some fantastic weekend deals this week. We were supposed to leave on our trip to Kansas at 9:30 a.m. and we weren’t going to be getting back until Sunday night. Of course, the sale only ran Friday through Sunday!
I really didn’t want to miss it, so I got packed and ready early on Friday morning and then ran to the store early. I’m so glad I did, because I got some great deals!
Kroger Shopping Trip #2:
- 5 boxes (family size) Kellogg’s cereal — $1.49 each with Friday-Sunday Digital Coupon deal
- 5 tubs ice cream — $1.99 each with Friday-Sunday Digital Coupon deal
- 1 10-lb bag of potatoes — $1.88
- 4 bags of fruit — $0.99
- 1 gallon milk — $2.69
- Miracle Maize Corn Muffin Mix — $1.89, used $1.50/1 Kroger Digital Coupon = $0.39 (we bought this one other time when it was on sale and it was SO good)
- Total with tax: $27.92
Walgreens Shopping Trip
Walgreens had bags on sale Buy 1, Get 2 free — which made each box less than $1.
For some reason, we also got an additional 25% off at checkout (does anyone have any idea why? It said E25% next to the price). At any rate, they only charged us $2.09 per box and then we got 2 boxes for free!
So that meant we got six boxes for just $4.18 + tax!!
Total with tax: $4.59
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
Lunches:
- Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwiches, Carrots, Oranges, Salads, Leftovers, Cookies, Protein Bars, Popchips
Snacks:
- Grapefruit, Cookies, Popcorn, Ice Cream, Crackers & Cheese, Peach Cobbler, Carrots & Hummus, Popchips
Dinners:
- Sunday — Cheese quesadillas/snack-y dinner
- Monday — Taco Casserole/Peas/Blackberries/Peach Cobbler
- Tuesday — Dinner at Cracker Barrel (we had a gift card)
- Wednesday — Leftover Taco Casserole
- Thursday — Pork Roast/Twice Baked Potatoes/Fruit
- Friday — Dinner out (we decided to use the extra grocery money from the last few weeks to go to this place in Wichita we love that offers really healthy meals all pre-made for you)
- Saturday — Dinner with Jesse’s family
Total spent on groceries: $60.34
Cashback earned this week: 100 points for submitting my receipts to Fetch rewards+ $1.10 for submitting my receipt to iBotta rewards.
