Grocery Spending/Menu Plan | I give up.
On Saturdays, I share my menu plan for the upcoming week along with a photo of my groceries and a tally of my spending. My goal is to spend $100/week for our food, toiletries, and cleaning products. I'm currently in the midst of trying to buy more local, sustainably-produced food while sticking to my budget. Can it be done? I don't know, but I'm going to try, and I'll share what I learn as I go along.
I did finally make it to the grocery store this week. I spent $48.01 at Weis, and $64.08 at Aldi. At his point, I'd spent $112, so I was already over the $100 I had left to spend.
(I had $150 for two weeks and spent $50 last week).
And I still needed chicken. So, I decided that I'm going to give up on my goal of spending $75/week thru the end of the year (I'd set that goal to make up for my bulk beef expenditure). I managed it for a few weeks, but if I try to keep it up, I'll probably end up sacrificing the quality of food we buy to do it.
So, newly freed from my $75/week goal, I marched myself to the local organic store and plopped down $18.99 for local (from a neighboring state), no-packaging chicken. I bring my own glass container to carry it home in, and that makes me very happy...there's no yucky meat trash to dispose of this way!
My total is $131.08 for the week, which means that for this two-week period, I spent $181.08. That's $31.08 over my original $75/week goal, but $20 under my usual $100/week goal, so I feel pretty happy about that.
I didn't get a photo of my groceries, but just so that this post won't be all sad and picture-less, here's a food-related photo from my busy day of shooting yesterday.
Saturday
- Frozen pizzas! Wondering why? I'll tell you later this week. 😉
Sunday
- Chicken Noodle Soup
- Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
- grapefruit
Monday
- Shrimp Veiness (a shrimp and rice dish)
- Mandarin Orange Salad (a green salad)
Tuesday
- Sloppy Joes on buns
- steamed broccoli
Wednesday
- Shrimp and Fish Creole
- Braided Cheese Bread
- whatever produce needs using by then
Thursday
- Thanksgiving! We're sharing a meal with my in-laws and I am contributing rolls (duh!), pie, and jello.
Friday
- Takeout date night for Mr. FG and me, something easy for the kids
That's all from me today, but do check back tomorrow because I want to share a few more pictures of my sweet little niece (and my sister has given me permission to share her first name with you as well.).
Today's 365 post: Tagging Along
Expect I'll miss my spending plan a little this week too, buying a little extra because of Thanksgiving, though hopefully leftovers will help stretch things at least a few extra meals from it. Kids have been enjoying spaghetti tacos lately thanks to iCarly, maybe I can get them to give Turkey Tacos a try.
Need to get on my grocery list before I have to head out for a Scout event plus trash dump run, which I want to combine with my Grocery run if I can get my head together on a meal plan. Not that I'm getting my groceries from the dump, just saving gas by doing all my errands while I'm out of the house and off the farm. 🙂
I absolutly love living in rural ND but when I see what you spend on groceries I do long to live in a place where we could get away with spending that little! I am always trying to find ways to save but when your closet Walmart or Chain Grocery store is 90-150 miles away it get tough!!
I still find encouragement in your grocery posts, it gets me shooting for our goal. We are blessed that as a perk of my husbands job and my parents cattle ranch we always have FRESH home grown beef!!! How many people can say they get meat as a provided benefit to their job!!!
I understand that inflation is beginning to be felt in groceries. Kristin, I wonder if your increase in cost for groceries is a reflection of inflation. I have been noticing a steady increase in prices lately here in North Carolina. I would be interested in other's experience with price increases or even decreases.
I am $80.00 over budget this month on my grocery spending. I have been stocking up on great sales for baking items I will be using during the holidays. I can't pass up $1.94 pound butter, $.99 5 pound bags of Gold Medal flour, and $.66 cream cheese. Hopefully I'll make up for it next month.
I feel like I have been overspending too and I even shopped at Aldi last week (still overspent!).
Love the pic!
Since you brought it up and if you feel like answering, where is the money for the bulk beef coming from?
Well, aren't we feeling nosy! 😉
(I really don't mind...just had to tease you.)
We are currently operating with a surplus in our budget each month. This is because Mr. FG's income has grown in the last year or two and we haven't really adjusted our standard of living very much (we have a little bit, and there's more to come about that in a future post). So, we just used that surplus to pay for the beef.
If we hadn't had that surplus, we wouldn't have bought the beef in the first place. So, I didn't really HAVE to make up that money...I just thought I'd try. But I decided this week that it wasn't really worth it.
We buy beef in bulk every year too, and I try to spread the difference throughout several months. A bulk beef purchase is a large expense; I would recommend spreading the cost over at least 6 months in your grocery budget.
I am intrigued by the chicken. I have never heard of it being purchased this way. Do you think most organic grocery stores do this or is it particular to the one near you.
I've never seen it this way anywhere except at my little local store. They do offer bags to put the chicken in, but I'd so much rather bring my own container.
I went over my budget too. Gas prices have gone up and the cost of everything it seems. I just wish wages would too. $12 is not that bad. I did worse. I hope next week will be better.
At least you're still well under your usual spending. That's good. If you take into account what your beef expenditure saves you over the long run, I bet you're ahead. (or have you already done that?)
Kristen, can you please tell us how much chicken $18.99 bought? I'm sure it's more expensive than normal grocery store chicken, but it would be interesting to know how much of a difference in price there is.
Thanks 🙂
This chicken costs $5.99/pound. If I buy regular chicken on a good sale, I usually can get it for less than $1.99/pound, so this is definitely way more expensive. It is really good chicken, though!
I can often get whole chix for uder $1/lb. Over the summer bought local, pastured chix for the sale price of $4/lb. And you know what? They are at least 4x as tasty.
I have killed my grocery budget for this month. Sad. Between buying some food to take to my parents' Thanksgiving, buying a Thanksgiving meal for a family in need through my church, and stocking up on baking stuffs for the holidays, and just sheer "oops!" factor... yeah. I think by the time the month is over I will be over-budget for $100. Yes, one hundred. I feel really bad about it, but there's not much I can do about it except be more organized for next month.
(To be clear, I haven't given up on this month, I just have already figured out what a no-frill's rest of November will cost me and added that to how much I'm over by already to get my estimate).
This is only my second week trying to feed 7 people (3 adults and 4 kids) on 150.00 a week. It is a little bit of a struggle mostly because my kids pack lunch for school. This week I spent 89.57 total but after the 25.00 gift card we had..I only spent 64.57. This sounds great but I was way over last week since I bought bulk meats from Sam's Club. I think I am most proud of the 4 boxes of GM cereal, 5 cans of Swanson chicken broth, 4 boxes of pasta, 2 jars of name band mayo and 4 packages of breakfast sausage that cost me $19.80. Yay!!! for store coupons plus manufacturer coupons.
I know you post everything here weekly, but do you also keep track of the grocery spending in a spreadsheet, or other software? So frequently you are a little under, Just curious how close to your $100/week budget you've managed to stay for the entire year even with the beef purchase.
Kristen, how's the 2 week shopping going? Did you mention that elsewhere and I missed it?
Way over this week, too. Holiday extras, plus stocking up on some expensive things we'd run out of (like maple syrup and balsamic vinegar), plus my husband went along on the shopping trip. And we have a bulk beef purchase coming up at the end of this month. Ouch.
Time to rein in and plan some pantry based meals for the next few weeks.
You mentioned here that you were going to post more pics of your baby niece and tell us her name, but I didn't see that--or did I miss it somehow?
How do you and Mr FG do date night and not ha ve it get expensive?
I know you can get pretty inexpensive sushi takeout around here in the grocery stores, which I think is what you guys do, right? But Kristen, have you ever considered making your own sushi since it seems like that's something you guys really enjoy? It's really not that hard to make. My personal favorite? Raw scallops. All you really need is 1 large sea scallop per person. Sooo yummy and much easier to butcher and put together than even the cucumber rolls!