Grocery Store Victory

This is the story of how I fed my family of 4 for 3 weeks on $271.

You read that right.

4 people.

3 weeks.

No repeated meals.

$271.

AND we're eating real food - not just Ramen.

This morning on my FB page, I posted that I was going to try to tackle this challenge, and I got a few friends who gave me an encouraging thumbs-up.  Getting our grocery budget down to a manageable size has been a game that we have been playing for a few years now.  The kids like to take a calculator and total everything up as we are putting it in the cart.  We do meal plans and shopping lists, and try not to eat out too often (this, we fail at to an embarrassing extent, but we try).

BUT, with our current freeze on our spending - until our Etsy business (SHOP HERE PLEASE!) takes off we have about half of the income that we had previously - now it really isn't just for fun anymore.  We got our paycheck today and knew that we needed to really make this one count.

I spent a few hours on the computer this morning researching some meal plans that would go further.  I checked sales online, I loaded coupons to my card, and I made my grocery list.  Jasen and I met the kids at school to eat lunch with them, and then we bravely headed into the grocery store.  We knew that we had a goal of staying under $500 to get ALL of our groceries for the month - but I had this secret hope that I could keep it at $300.  J was getting a little nervous as we hauled 2 VERY full grocery carts through the store, but when we totaled it up - he was THRILLED!

I posted my victory as a reply to my original FB post and several friends were surprised as well, so I thought "hey, I need a new blog post, and people are asking me how I did this - ta da!".

Now that you've read through all of that - I will actually post my meal plan for the rest of January, AND my shopping list. The shopping list has the main ingredients that I needed for my meal plan.  Of course there are things that are needed like spices, sugar, flour, etc. that I had in my pantry already.  Yes, I see that eggs are on there.  My chickens are free-loading good-for-nothings.  I had to buy eggs.  There is also a column for things for the kids - that is what we needed to make lunches & snacks for the rest of the month.  I didn't have too many coupons - I had one for $.30 off when you buy 2 15 oz. cans of tomato sauce, so I bought 6 of those, instead of 3 of the larger cans.  They were $.49 each, so it would have been $2.94, but with the coupon I paid $2.04.  The large cans were $1.29, so it would have been $3.87 to get 3 of those.  I had one coupon for $1 off 2 boxes of Jolly Time popcorn, which were on sale 2/$4.  I had a $3 off coupon for the meat department.  I can post recipes for what I'm making if you would like them - just shout out in the comments.  If you're enjoying reading the escapades of mine - please subscribe to my blog.  It makes my heart happy :)

Meal Plan - January 2017
1/10 - Crock pot Beef & Broccoli, Rice
1/11 - Spaghetti & Meatballs, Salad
1/12 - Egg Fried Rice
1/13 - Black Bean & Corn Quesadillas
1/14 - Mini Corn dog Bites, French Fries
1/15 - Meatball Subs, Salad
1/16 - Spinach 3-cheese Stuffed Shells
1/17 - Split Pea Soup & Grilled Cheese
1/18 - Pasta with bacon & peas
1/19 - Asian Stir Fry, Rice
1/20 - BBQ Pulled Pork, French Fries
1/21 - Roasted Chicken, Mixed Veggies, Baked Potatoes
1/22 - Macaroni & Cheese, Peas
1/23 - Chicken Enchilada Bake, Corn
1/24 - Breakfast Burritos
1/25 - Teriyaki Chicken Meatballs, Rice, Broccoli
1/26 - Eggplant Parmesan
1/27 - Chicken Pot Pie Soup
1/28 - Pierogies with Caramelized Onions and Bacon
1/29 - BBQ Chicken Thighs
1/30 - Meatloaf, Mixed Veggies
1/31 - DIY Pizzas

Grocery List