August Grocery Challenge-The Home Stretch

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Nine dollars until Friday is not much of a cushion, but I'm not in the red yet. As a reminder, my personal challenge was to keep my total grocery and household spending to $350 for the month of August, using up what we had in the refrigerator, freezer, and pantry. This was to include household cleaning and personal care items as well. With the need to buy school supplies, a few new clothes for my daughter, and increased costs due to helping support fundraising needs of friends and family dealing with medical crises, this was an area I knew I could find extra funds.


This time, I got DH sort of on board, and am counting all his little extra side purchases into the spending tallies. I'm not counting restaurant or takeout meals, though the point was to keep all food spending low. We took DH out for his birthday earlier in the month. I picked up a Papa Murphy's pizza, but I put that $6.00 into the grocery tally since we prepared it at home. We picked up Jimmy Johns a few weeks back for a Saturday night dinner at the lake, and the girls some Taco Bell for Saturday lunch on route to the lake. DH and DD2 got a deli chicken lunch on Thursday. He had bought a Papa Murphy's to the lake as well when he stayed a couple nights-counted in the take out since it wasn't at home. He ate out with a friend and his son who was in town last Wednesday from Boston, the son, not the friend. The son will be moving to India for a year so DH was happy to get to see him while in Minnesota. I picked up a salad at the Target deli on route to a working lunch meeting and had happy hour drinks and appetizers with work people.


All total, we spent $139 on restaurants and takeout meals, which is higher than I would have liked, but lower than average. It affirms how quickly eating out adds up, considering this totals more than 1/3 of the entire grocery budget, for a handful of individual meals. Let's face it, with our lifestyle, we still will have meals out and take out, but being aware and combining savings strategies in both areas will help the overall budget. The eating out budget is part of entertainment, and with this $139, plus a total of $27.50 spent on movie theater and red box, plus wine club, brings the entertainment spending to $212.50, so under budget there by a smidge ($50 per week/$215 month), but  takeout meals eat up unnecessarily in either budget, so perhaps a future challenge. During August, we hosted guests for dinner, had numerous extra ravenous teens at the house, and brought surplus food to the lake that served extra guests. We didn't live on PB and J and macaroni and cheese.


Below is what we have been eating and still will eat, based from my plan several weeks back, not quite at the beginning of the month, to maximize the food on hand and plan grocery stops. I did a careful Aldi's shop the other night when I bought the Turkey burgers for the lake, coming in at just under $30, which included items easily for another four meals. We will need milk and fruit, and that will use the remaining $9 in the budget. Besides the take and bake pizza, a late splurge was three more avocado's at a ridiculous price of $2.49 per. I clearly did not notice the price, as this was at a local grocery store, not Aldi’s. We were gifted a bunch of sweet corn, so have cooked and frozen much of it for future eating. I'm still hoping for cucumbers.

•     Vegetarian Chili
•     Country boneless ribs, roasted potatoes, corn.
•     Turkey meatloaf, mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables
•     Spaghetti and Meat  marinara (no meat)sauce, Italian vegetable blend garlic cheese bread from leftover buns
•     Meatless mock lasagna with extra vegetables-bringing to lake bringing to the lake
•     Goulash with hamburger, green beans
•     Baked chicken, rice pilaf, corn
•     Homemade chicken nuggets, cheesy potatoes, green beans
•     Chicken fried rice and mixed vegetables
•     Grilled Roasted chicken sandwiches and sweet potato wedges, pasta salad
•     Bean burritos, with cheese, black bean, corn, and tomato salsa/salad (not the ones DH bought!)
•     Chicken wraps with peppers, cucumbers
•     Pork loin, grilled vegetables, pasta salad
•     Italian sausage on buns, French fries, cheesy crockpot potatoes-bringing to the lake
•     Chicken Alfredo, mixed vegetables
•     Vegetable curry and basmati rice
•     Rice crust vegetable and cheese quiche
•     Tuna noodle hot dish and vegetables
•     Chicken Cordon Bleu, broccoli cheese rice
•     Use it up vegetable noodle soup, Homemade wheat bread(lot's of leftovers)-Became Corn Chowder due to three potatoes that were getting old and leftover corn on the cob
•     Hamburger, onion, veg, assorted cheese(whatever is left to use up)flat bread homemade pizza (since we had spaghetti meatless, I have an extra 1/2 pound of hamburger)
•     Hamburgers, tomatoes, shells and cheese, corn-bringing to lake
•     Frozen pizza and French fries
•     Turkey Burgers, tomato and cucumber salad, brownies
•     Chicken chunks, salad, and rice
•     Sausage and red beans and Rice
•     Vegetarian Chili (another pot)

Once school starts, we'll have the added cost of school lunches, though DD2 will pack her own some days. I'd like to keep to this budget for food and items used at home, intentionally planning leftover nights since one less person is eating leftovers for lunch. As she'll have many days when she'll stay after school and not come home before early evening rehearsals, the running to Chipotle or Jimmy Johns habit needs to be reined in immediately. I'm thinking ahead to easy keeping snacks for her backpack. Cheap Chick posted over the weekend a post titled Grocery Wars-In the Trenches. It sure feels like a battle, but I'm up to keep fighting the good fight.