February Grocery Budget- $100.00!

Peggy left a comment about my 100.00 grocery budget for February. This has inspired my next post. In my coupon days past, friends and family have been in disbelief to my grocery savings...(actually disbelief might be an understatement...I think they really thought I was bending the truth)

Well, I am here to set the record straight once and for all!

It really started in the end of January. Safeway was running a Breakfast promo. buy 10 participating products, get $10.00 off instantly. I carefully chose to purchase 10 products priced at $2.00 each, so instantly it brought the total to 1.00 each after the instant savings. Then I used manufacturer's coupons, which double at Vons.

After it was all said and done here is what I ended up with...

my comment from Money Saving Mom's Blog:

Anonymous said...
I don't know if this is in the right spot, but I couldn't
keep silent. I went to Vons today, and got out with 14 boxes of Life cereal, 12
boxes of Oatmeal to Go, 10 boxes of granola bars, 10 boxes of oatmeal packets, 6
boxes of Natures Harvest, and a jar of Miracle Whip...In case you lost count,
that was 52 boxes of cereal type food for $3.25 TOTAL!!!! Why doesn't everyone
coupon?!?!?
January 22, 2008 7:16 PM

In January, I also stocked up on (15)Pasta,(15) Pasta sauce, (12)peanut butter and (8)Jelly.

The newspaper from 1/6/08 had like 7 inserts. It was really amazing. I "bought" 10 of those newspapers...(paid ith ECB's at CVS of course!) With all of these coupons I purchased the above pasta, sauce PB&J for free after double coupons. I had to do separate transactions, as Vons will only double 1 like coupon. This was a small sacrifice to pay to get these thing for free. I try to be respectful of the store cashier, so I would usually do only 2 transactions per visit, and would go to the store on separate days on my way home from work. We also have a Von's and Pavillions within close proximity, so I would sometimes hit both stores in a day.

We also have about 15 chicken quarters in the freezer and 3 pounds of ground beef. So we are pretty set for meats for February.

With breakfast out of the way, my February budget's focus was on lunch and dinner.

So, here we go. Here is the tally of my February Purchases

And if you are really curious, here are all of my receipts. You will have to Zoom in to see the actual purchases and totals.

I also purchased 2 gallons of milk and 2 dozen eggs from CVS. I sent in the receipts for rebates, so I don't have them here. But those were purchased with ECB's so I didn't pay anything.

Lastly, my Pavillions meat trip was taken out of March's budget...so I guess I cheated a little. This trip cost me $20.86

Now with the Groceries purchased, my trusty menu plan keeps me on track. It is pretty boring, but it works for our family. Of course it is not set in stone, but it gives us a good foundation.

Sunday: Chicken

Monday: Tacos ($1.94)

Tuesday: Pizza ($1.04)

Wednesday: Quesadilla (with or without chicken, depending on the budget) (1.73-2.30)

Thursday: Spaghetti FREE

Friday: Chicken

Saturday: Leftovers FREE

_______________________________________

Lettuce -1.00

Red Onion-.60

Tomato- 2.00

Homemade Bread- .50

Chicken nights are a wild card. Sometimes its a rotisserie chicken from Costco, or a chicken and rice casserole, or maybe fried chicken.

This month we varied from the menu quite a bit. We had lots of hamburger buns that we didn't have room for in the freezer, so we made hot ham & cheese sammy's, sloppy joes, and pizza burger for lunches and dinner.

Thanks for encouraging me to put this together. I am praying that this info will bless someone else who thinks that it is impossible to cut your grocery budget.