Simple & Thrifty

Menu Plan Monday 
and 
Results for our First Week with a New Grocery Budget

Our family consists of 5 people, 2 adults and 3 children ages 8, 5, and 2. (Although, I feel like the 8 and 2-year-old eat like adults most days) Last year, we tried to stick to $120 a week but it always seemed like we were running out of food half way through the week. I was always going to the store to buy more food and would end up totally blowing our grocery budget. It became so stressful trying to shop with that budget. Not to mention the times I was making food for a function at church, our small group dinners or making a meal for someone who was ill or just had a baby. All of those things never fit in our grocery budget.

This year, we decided to try for $150 a week to be more practical and to compensate for the growing appetites of our kids. At the moment, I technically only have $130 to actually spend because we have ordered some snacks on Amazon Prime so that cost has been divided among the four weeks this month, leaving me with only $130 per week. I went shopping today and actually did great finding some good deals and feel like this could actually work for our family. 

We have also decided to use only cash for groceries, so I have to be careful to not go over. It's so easy to allow myself to overspend when I just use a debit card so we thought this would be the best way to make sure I kept my grocery budget in check. 

My first stop today was Aldi. I had to grab a couple frozen pizza because my husband had some friends coming over to watch football and I love how cheap, yet how big an Aldi frozen pizza is. I also love when I see money off stickers on their meat. I grabbed everything I needed for the week that I knew I wouldn't get cheaper at another store.

 Next stop was Shop-rite to grab the rest of the groceries we needed for my meal plan. I found some great deals since it's their preview to "Can-Can Week" Some of the great deals included:

6 packs of applesauce for .50 (great for the boy's lunches)

GM Cereal for .32 a box

26 ounce canned tomatoes for .26 each

and fries for $1

(all of these prices were with coupons)

My husband made one stop to Stop & Shop to grab another frozen pizza because we were afraid we wouldn't have enough for our company so that total was $5.79

So my total spent on groceries this week is $96.35

Leaving me with $33.65 extra this week. This will be helpful if we run out of milk but hopefully we can just roll it over into the next week.

Here is what we plan on using these groceries to make:

Breakfast:

 Smoothies & Toast, Cereal & Milk, Eggs or Oatmeal

 Lunch:

The boys usually take sandwiches for lunch. I'll add a granola bar, some pretzels, banana and the applesauce I just bought. The Juicy Juice works out perfectly because there is enough for them both for the whole week. Abigail will have nuggets and carrots or a PB & J.

Daniel usually just takes leftovers from dinner which makes my life very easy. :)

Dinner:

Monday: Spaghetti & Meatballs with sauteed green beans & bacon (I'll use the canned tomatoes I bought today to make homemade pasta sauce)

Tuesday: Crock-pot Ranch Chicken dinner (includes potatoes and green beans )

Wednesday: Re-fried Beans and Cheese Enchilada's with our Small Group (the re-fried beans will be  made in the crock-pot during the day)

Thursday: Chicken Broccoli Casserole

Friday: Homemade Pizza with Salad and Fries

Saturday: Black Bean quesadillas with corn and tortilla chips

Sunday: Breakfast for dinner (usually pancakes or french toast on homemade cinnamon swirl bread)

I'll update my grocery envelope total next week so we can see if we made it without having to use the extra grocery money left over from this week.