Our goal this month is to spend less than $250 in groceries for our family of 5. That includes $150 for food and non-food, $50 for fruit, and $50 for meat.

I did our grocery list and we spent on November 2nd, $44.06 on groceries. I purchased my staples right at the start of the month but every week I would check the grocery ads to see if there is a staple on sale I could stock up on. I am still waiting for butter, cheese, and cream cheese to go on sale to purchase. I am down to 1 lb. of butter. I ran out of cheese recently and purchased 2 lbs. of cheese last month.

Food and non-food: $44.06

8-Unbleached Flour: (Walmart @ $1.22/5lbs): $9.76

6-16 oz. Dry Roasted Unsalted Peanut (Walmart @ $1.84): $11.04

1-300 Snack bags (Walmart): $5.22

4-½ gal. Milk (Hy-Vee on sale for $0.98/half gal.): $3.92

1-25lbs. Rice (Sam’s Club): $9.48

6-Cereals (Hy-Vee was on sale for $0.99):$5.94

After tax and employee discount our grocery totaled to $44.06.

I have cereals for the kids but my husband is low in cereals he likes. He purchased the cereals on sale for his stock. I don’t serve cereals to the kids often any longer but I like to have few cereals on hand for them. Most cereals we use for breakfast are more close to cookies as they contain a lot of sugar. It is recommended to purchase cereals with dietary fiber of 5 grams or more per serving. If a cereal’s box mention “oat” or “wheat” it doesn’t necessary mean it is healthy. Cereals with “bran” or whole grain” in the label are generally high in fiber as the outer shell of the grain is high in fiber compared to the inner part of the grain. (Doctors’ Book of Food remedies by Selene Yeager, 2007, Pg159-162).

We purchased peanut. I like to add some to whole grain porridge. Whole grain porridge with apples and peanut is filling than cereals.

I have food in my pantry and freezers. Therefore, we only purchased what we need.

Meat Freezer

 

I went through my 3 chest freezers and organized them. I usually do that at the end of the season. Spring and summer, I purchased meat and vegetables on sale and froze them. I grew a lot of vegetables and froze them as well. I rely on my freezer for our meat consumption year around but in spring and summer, I rely on my garden for our vegetables. I use my frozen vegetables throughout winter.

It snowed 3 times at the end of October. This marked the end of my growing season for 2019.

We are trying to pay off credit card debts. We stopped saving$350 a month for our irregular expenses like before.  To be able to save something for our irregular expenses, I decreased our grocery budget from $375 to $250. The kids’ bible study registration is $90. That is an irregular expense we save for. Since we don’t have enough in our saving to afford it, it would come out of what I saved from groceries budget. I put $125 aside in October and didn’t use it. When my husband took $375 for grocery this month, I put $125 away as well.

You can found more posts on how to build your food supply on budget on our page “How to Build Your Food Supply on Budget“.