Nina's Soap

We spent $175.89 in groceries during the first two weeks of November ($44.06 in week 1 and $131.83 in week 2). Our week 2 groceries expenses include:

Food: $34.98 with a saving of $10.84

Welchs Fruit Snacks for Halloween candy: (Walmart): $6.72

3-2 lbs. Frozen Peas (Walmart was $2.22 each, now $1.94 each): $5.82 saved $0.84

20 5-lbs. Potatoes (Hy-Vee was $1.49/bag, on sale for $0.99/bag): $19.80 saved $10

6 Avocados (Hy-Vee on sale 2 for $0.88): $2.64

Non-Foods: $38.17

Non-food items (Walmart): $7.67

Library fine: $5.50

Public library book sale: $25

Kids: $0.45

Sharpener (Walmart): $0.45

Fruit: $12.37

12.14 Lbs. Grapes (Hy-Vee, on sale for $0.88/lb.): $10.69

2.18 lbs. Grapes (Hy-Vee, on sale for $0.77/lb.):$1.68

Meat: $45.86 saved $54.39

6-18 ct. Eggs (Walmart @ $0.81/18ct): $4.86

18-12 oz. Sausage rolls (Hy-Vee was $2.29, on sale 3 for $3.00): $18 saved $23.22

3 16 oz. JD Hot Sausage (Hy-Vee was $4.79/each roll): $3.00 saved $11.37

20-8oz Sausage Links (Hy-Vee was $1.19, on sale 3 for $3.00): $20 saved $19.80

We have two dozens of eggs in the fridge and purchased equivalent of 9 dozens to replenish our stock. The 18 eggs box was cheaper ($0.81) at Walmart than the dozen ($0.55).

The sausage sale has a limit of 3. I plan of purchasing about $20. My husband went to a store that was out of it and they gave him Jimmy brand for the same price. He later went to the same store in another location and found the brand that was on sale. He made multiple transactions.

Sausage rolls were among the first type of meat I started to stock up on, back when we lived in an apartment and only had the freezer part of the fridge for our frozen food. We used to purchase the original and spicy ones. They were the main ground meat we have in our freezer for our cooking.

My husband purchased sausage links as well. Although they were on sale, they were not the best deal compared to the rolls. The links are 8 oz. while the rolls are 12oz. So if you are low on budget, the rolls would be the best deal. The links are convenient. You can put them frozen in a pan and cook them in the oven. Both the links and the rolls have quite a bit of fat. I drain when I cook them and save the fat in the freezer to cook other dishes. I use all part of meat when cooking. I collect the bones for broth and fat for cooking.

I have remarked in our area, pork based meat goes on sale in fall and sometimes winter.

Chicken is at its lowest price in summer

Eggs are their lowest price in summer

I have not purchased beef at the grocery stores much to track their price. Beef is more expensive in general. We purchase them for my in-laws farm. They have milk cow and don’t like to eat their cows so they give us the meat and we only pay the butcher fee and get a lot of ground beef for $1/lb. When they butcher a calf for their own meat, we pay a little bit more and get few steaks and roasts we can afford.

In the food category, we purchased fruit snack for Halloween candy.

I don’t send my kids out for Halloween candy collection. They stay at the door to give out candy and eat the rest when they are done. Therefore, I like to purchase fruit snacks for the purpose. I stopped purchasing Halloween costume as well. They wear their dress clothes and shoes.

Potato is on sale this week. We purchased 20 bags. I have about 15 lbs.

remaining from a previous sale a while ago. I have vegetables boxes I use to lay my potatoes in.

They keep well in my basement in the utility area. Potato goes on sale in fall. I noticed that potatoes purchased in fall tend to sprout but potatoes purchased in spring keep well into summer without sprouting. I wonder why.

In the non-food section, we paid fine for not returning books and movies to the public library on time. The library has a book sale event this month. We went and purchased 25 books for $25. That included:

Kids Fiction Books: 5 for $5– The original price for these books are $29.25. That was a saving of $24.95.

Kids Non-Fiction Books: 8 for $8. They would cost $174.80 brand new. That was a saving of $168.80.

Adult Non-Fiction Business Books: 12 for $12. Brand new, they would have cost $319.68. That was a saving of $307.68

We spent $25 on 25 books instead of $524.43. We saved $499.43.

Our public library sell books donated and books pulled off the library shelves about twice a year. The first one was early summer this year.

We purchased a lot of books during these sales over the years including books for our Businesses, recipes books, few gardening books, kids’ books, and personal wellness books.

As I read them, I donate books that I didn’t feel keeping in my books collection back to the library. I have limited space for books. Therefore, periodically I read books I have not read yet to see if they are worth keeping. I like non-fiction books for myself and like to have a stock at home in addiction to books I check out of the library on a regular basis. I like to use the library to check out books for my kids as well. I purchased a lot of kids’ books there in the past. My kids are young and can be rough with books. Therefore, it was a good idea I purchased their books $1 or less. My school age kids like to read kids novel. I don’t like to purchase many of those. We could check them out. But during books sales, I let them pick few. This time, I included non-fiction books including history of the world, kids’ dictionary, our world, and more. I feel like they would use the non-fictions books many times while they would only read the fiction chapter books only once or few times.

I organized my kids’ closet to have space for some of their books.

We spent 3 hours at the book sale event this time. The books are laid on tables under different categories. We spent a lot of time at the Business area, kids’ fiction, and kids’ non-fictions areas. We put books we liked in our bags and later we sat in a corner of the room and went through all the books multiple times to narrow them to 25 books total. I originally set my budget at $10 for business books and $5 for kids’ books. But I glad I spent more than $15 and purchased many non-fiction books for the kids. During the previous book sales event at the library, we purchased “National Geographic Kids Almanac 2018”. I have seen my 6 years old going through that book few times and I thought it would be a good idea to purchase more of non-fiction book to pick their interest toward these types of books.

If your public library has book sales events, that is a good way of purchasing books at a fraction of their costs. Our public library has a newsletter where events are published:

Program Type: Book Sale

Age Group: All Ages

Program Details

Find great deals on thousands of used items, including books, movies, music, and more!

• Thursday, November 7 – 5:30 to 8:30pm Admission $2; Free admission and early entry starting at 5 p.m. for donors to the Public Library Friends Foundation at the $20 level and above
• Friday, November 8 – 9am to 6pm Free admission
• Saturday, November 9 – 9am to 6pm  Free admission
• Sunday, November 10 – 12 to 5pm  Last day! Admission $1, and everything is free! (Auditorium only)

We spend $175.89 in groceries during the first two weeks of November:

Food: $75.48

Non-Food: $41.73

Garden: $0

Kids: $0.45

Meat: $45.86

Fruit: $12.37

Grocery Budget Less than $375 a month for a family of 5: November Week 1