Tag Archives: Saving Money

Grocery Store Challenge Final October

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What is my challenge? Spend as close to $20 a week at Food Lion over the next 3 weeks while purchasing items we need or to add to the stockpile based on sales. I am also going to give myself $10 a week to spend at CVS to keep rolling ECB. So that is a total of $30 a week for the next 4 weeks to feed our family of 6.

This is the third and final week of the challenge this time. One of the most exciting parts of the challenge was going out to our building tonight to  shop in the freezers. We will be picking up our 80# of chicken breast in 3 weeks and are really trying to make space for it. So tonight we pull out 2 weeks worth of meat items, I think* that this will leave enough space for the chicken now.

Now on to the shopping. I have not been really impressed with CVS lately and for the first two weeks of the challenge was simply using a gift card to purchase some items. So for this week, I had $30 to use at CVS. This week the were running a P&G promotion which included my only brand loyal item “Tide”, so of course I decided to stock up. I spent $21 and saved $38 or 65%.  Harris Teeter has a couple of awesome sales this week on cereal, so instead of Food Lion, I placed an order there. I also had to go to CVS because Matt and the kids have been sick all week and the medicine cabinet was empty. I ended up spending $35 between the two stores, saved $98 or 74%!  This week I have spent a total of $56 on grocery items so a fail again with the challenge!

I seriously doubt I will attempt another challenge for the rest of the year. We are currently planning a trip to Michigan in November as well as travel at least one weekend a month between quizzing and cheerleading. But I am hoping to continue to lower the amount we are spending on groceries so that by January, I can reduce our budget for groceries overall.

Grocery Saving Part 2

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This has been one big shopping week at our house this week. We ended up with 3 trips to Harris Teeter during their Super Doubles event. We ended up spending $141, saving 57% or 190 in addition to $10 in gift cards remaining. The stock up items this week were mainly breakfast items which we use every day! So I was excited even after the trip that left us with the $10 in gift cards due to the POOR service we received.  I made a CVS free trip for 2 toothbrushes and 3 bottles of nail polish remover. Finally was the Food Lion trip, where I spent 20 and saved 23 or 53%.  In addition, the purchase of 80# of chicken breast is an added grocery expense this month. If you add up all that I have spent $675 on groceries already this month. So the first reason for doing a grocery challenge is that I need to keep the rest of the month spending as low as possible to stay in budget.  The next reason for the challenge is space related., in order to be able to freeze 80# of chicken breast in October, I need to clean out some space in the chest freezer. Finally, Food Lion has sent me 3 more $5 off $25 to use over the next several weeks. So I am again going to try this challenge

What is my challenge? Spend as close to $20 a week at Food Lion over the next 3 weeks while purchasing items we need or to add to the stockpile based on sales. I am also going to give myself $10 a week to spend at CVS to keep rolling ECB. So that is a total of $30 a week for the next 4 weeks to feed our family of 6.

I already have my shopping planned for tomorrow at Food Lion, hopefully with the iPhone I can get some pictures of what I am able to purchase!

Anyone joining me?

Groceries Savings Part 1

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If you follow much at all, you probably realize 2 things about groceries: 1. We tend to eat a lot! 2. I struggle each month to maintain a budget and groceries is probably the one area that I move and play with the most as well as the one area I overspend in as well.

One of the best/cheapest methods I have found is by buying in bulk. In March of this year, I learned about Zaycon Foods. I was able to purchase 80# of boneless skinless chicken breast for $1.99 a pound in March and $1.69 a pound this week. This is fresh chicken that has not been cut and needs some work before going into the freezer. The other downside to this purchase is that pick up is in a half hour slot and the closest “stops” to use are between 35 minutes and an hour. The good news is that in April (our last pick up) Matt took all three little kids with him,picked up the chicken came home and re-bagged all 80 in about 2 hours. We have been eating on that same 80# of chicken for 6 months now, at least once a week, sometimes sharing with friends or eating twice a week. When we pick up in October, the plan is to change only one thing. The size of the packages that we freeze, we have found that we can use 1 whole chicken breast for a meal for the 6 of us. We previously packaged 2 whole breast and end up with lots of left-overs.  I am not being compensated for writing about Zaycon foods but if you are interested and decided to order any of their products please either go directly through this link: http://www.zayconfoods.com/refer/zf71881  or simply fill in “Coffee Freak Designs” in the “Referred by” field. This will not cost you or penalize you at all however for each purchase you make, I will receive  a $1 credit for future use :)!

In the next post, I plan to tell you about my shopping deals this week as well as attempting the grocery challenge again and why?