Real Food on a Budget–The Final Tally
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So I just got our final “haul” of groceries today after work at Target! I’m happy to say I came in a few cents under on our food budget! Sadly I went over on our personal and other items budget.
Want to know what I bought? It’s nothing too glamorous, because as you may remember, I only had $14.59 to spend on groceries this week! Luckily, I still have enough to carry us through these last few days.
I bought yogurt, tortillas, bread, strawberries, cheese, and granola. These are staples in my house. Normal people’s staples probably include eggs and milk, but I am the only milk drinker, and we still have 1/2 dozen eggs. Totally lucked out.
Target food total–$13.57
It was $14.07 before a $0.50 coupon on the strawberries. I used the Cartwheel app to save on my bread and tortillas, the yogurt was on sale, so the only thing I paid full price for was the granola.
Target other total–$10.51
Darn expensive cats–that’s all I’m gonna say.
We have 2 chicken breasts, and one package of ground beef left for meat to use this week. Needless to say, we are eating a few vegetarian meals.
What are we eating?
Monday– Vegetarian burrito bowls
Tuesday–Grilled chicken breasts, quinoa, mixed veggies
Wednesday– Chilli
Thursday– Salad
So here’s my final totals for July:
Food- $198.98
Other-$101.90
Grand Total-$300.88
The categories ALMOST evened each other out, but I still went over by $0.88
In all of this, what did I learn?
I either need to be more strict with buying food items that aren’t on sale, or I need to dumb down our meals even more to stick with that budget. Also, I only bought one package of chicken breasts through the whole month! We used up the meat in our deep freeze mostly. If I was buying meat every week there is no way I would have stuck on budget. Not even close! I will be continuing to budget each week, but I will have to expand our monthly budget by at least $50. I think that should be able to buy us the meat we need, as well as have a little but more breathing room. Now if I could just convince the cats to eat less…
To cut down on out meat consumption I usually opt for a vegetarian option my for myself. For example, I’ll make chicken fajitas but only with enough meat for Lee and I just eat the veggies. For protein I slather on Greek yogurt as sour cream. I do the same with pasta dishes, meet for Lee and a mixture of fun veggies for me. Lately I’ve found when I am eating “meat” it’s usually fish or shrimp.