Now I'm discouraged again

I know I've been writing a lot about grocery budgeting lately.

The total for January was $536.78. Compare that to:
December: $757.50
November: $688.92
October: $654.91

So that's a savings of over $115 compared to our lowest previous month. I was really pleased to hit our goal of $550 monthly budget. We even stocked up on milk and bread to freeze that should last us at least 3 weeks into this month.

Then I watched another blogger's video series on getting a better grocery budget. She said with a little time and effort, you should be spending $20/person/week. Wow. We spent about $45 and I thought I used a lot of time and effort.

I know I should be happy about our savings. We are doing much better. It's just kind of a slap in the face when you think you are doing well and someone basically says you are not.

Anyways, here is the menu for this week:

Lunches:
Sandwiches
Pasta Pizza Leftovers (made on Sunday-menu is from Mon-Sun)
Cheese Quesadillas
Sandwiches
Chicken & Pasta Leftovers
Cheese Quesadillas
Sandwiches

Dinners:
Logan's Roadhouse (Dinner to celebrate friend's birthday)
Chicken Mozzarella
Chicken Mozarella Leftovers
Chicken & Pasta
Frozen Pizza (likely a Digiorno since they are $3.99 at Target this week!)
Pork Chops
Pork Chop Leftovers


I'm happy with our dinner recipes, but I'd like to get some more variety for lunch...

Weekly Grocery Budget

We did really well last week!

Meijer: $87.14 (Saved $15.66)
Meijer (Trip 2): $4.03 (Saved .55)-This was just to get some jello and pudding.

Total Spent This Week: $91.17
Total Saved This Week: $16.21


Still making progress! Cutting coupons and buying things on sale is really helping us. If we can get our budget to $550 this month, I'll be happy.

Weekly Grocery Budget

We did even better this week!

Here is what we spent:

Target: $17.39 (Saved $.59)
Meijer: $73.05 (Saved $16.55)
Walgreens: $9.66 (Saved $6.33)

Total Spent: $100.10
Total Saved: $23.47

Between tracking our budget, cooking, using coupons, and buying store brand/items on sale, I am so encouraged by this endeavor to save money on our grocery budget.

Next week we will have a budget of $125 which still keeps us with our $600 monthly goal for January.

Grocery Budget

Well we definitely went over our $150/week budget. However, we did stock up on a lot of items. This should mean that the next few weeks will be low enough to hit our monthly goal of $600. This is down from the $650-700 minimum we were doing before!

Here's what we spent at each store:

Aldi's: $48.25
Meijer: $75.11 (saved $20.95)
Rite Aid: $30.31 (saved $8.49)
Walgreens: $15.05 (saved $11.90)
L&L: $2.75 (saved $.60)

Total spent this week: $171.47
Total savings this week: $41.94

So we went over budget by $21.47, but we stocked up on meat, toiletries, and fruit.

The goal next week is to spend $100 or less. Considering we usually spend between $150-200, I'm not sure how this will go!