Okay with this wild upward swing in gas prices...the price of everything else goes up too....so I am searching for ways to be more thrifty. We spend WAY too much for groceries and so this is an area that I have been working on. So here is my little adventure in a nutshell ....reduce my weekly grocery bill by 25%....wow...quite a challenge! Can I do it? We shall see. Now you may find it outrageous to know that I spend about $175.00-$200.00 a week on groceries. This does however include everything from shampoo to laundry detergent...and of course the randon things that just seem to make it into the cart while at Walmart. It is also for 4 adults and sometimes 5 at a meal. So regardless of whether it is more or less than you spend...it is what it is...and I plan on cutting it by 25%
Action Plan:
1. Shop once a month at an Aldis or Save A Lot store to stock up on ALL things except...meat, milk, eggs, and fresh fruit and veggies and maybe the occassional bag of chips! LOL. Also not included will be laundry detergent, shampoo, paper products etc...more about those later. Once a month shopping budget $200.oo
2. Weekly: Go to which ever local store has the best weekly sales for above mentioned food products...with a weekly total of no more than $100.00 I actually would like to shoot for $75.00 because the other $25.00 can be used for paper products, laundry detergent etc...bought once a month at Walmart. This however will take some time to fine tune and see what is what!
So if this calculates out:
$200.00 once a month at a discount food place
$75.00 once a week at regular grocery store = $300 for the month
$100.00 once a month at Walmart or other store for laundry detergent, shampoo, paper products etc.
So that drops my monthly bill from $800.00 to $600...a savings of 25%
I am thinking I might even be able to do a little better over time but this is a work in process so there are a lot of unknowns and tracking to do for it to work. My husband is working with me on "the plan" and so getting those monthly menus in place are even more important than ever! I'll be back later to give you my menu plans for July.
1 comment:
This is such a struggle for our family as well! Right now I am using a combination of shopping at Aldi and couponing to save on groceries. For the time being I continue to use Sam's Club for paper products, dog food, diapers and wipes.
For two adults and 1 toddler we are budgeting $62 a week. Food, cleaning supplies and personal care items all come out of this total. I also budget up to $50 a month for paper goods and a $20 bag of dog food lasts a month although I may buy 2-3 bags at a time to save a trip (and gas!).
We also take a trip to a local butcher shop once every few months and buy about $100 worth of meat. We get a great price and this lets us keep the budget so low the rest of the time.
I still go over some now and then, it is still a challenge, but we are working hard at at. We are trying to eat healthy too - which is hard to do on a budget!
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