My $40 weekly grocery budget shopping trip

Between being out of town, being sick, and having sick kids, I have not been good about posting my weekly grocery trip pictures. This week, I actually had to talk myself into going to the grocery store. There wasn’t anything I really “needed” but I finally convinced myself to go out last night knowing that this would be a hectic week with no time for grocery trips.

When I got to Randalls, I decided to just peek in the water aisle and saw that the Aqua Pod water was fully stocked! I have been trying to do this deal for a couple of weeks now and every time I went to the store, the shelves were empty. I called my husband and made him get on HCW to see if people were reporting that the catalina deal was still working and people were still reporting that it is! So, I did three back to back transactions (at the self check-out).

Here’s the breakdown of my transactions:

#1: Bought 10 AquaPod waters (used $1/2 coupon and got the $5 off instantly for the Mix and Match promo….sadly, I didn’t have my card and had to use my parent’s phone # since I don’t have my phone # registered to my card, so I didn’t get my 10% off) – paid $14 OOP (received 5 $2 off OYNO catalinas)

#2: Bought 3 Digiorno pizzas, 2 Dreyers ice cream (they were BOGO free), 1 Ore Ida Steam & Mash (I normally wouldn’t buy all of this stuff without coupons, but it’s stuff we like/use, and I used the $10 in catalinas from transaction #1) – paid $15.32 OOP (received $10 Chill out at Home catalina)

#3: Bought canned pineapple, cider vinegar, 2 cans 98% FF cream of mushroom soup, 2 cans 98% FF cream of chicken soup (I used to buy the Kroger brand of these, but recently discovered that Randalls is cheaper!), Sara Lee bread, Hormel turkey, beef stew meat (I paid $1.75 for the package because it was marked down!), bananas, green peppers, carrots – used .55/1 Hormel lunch meat coupon and the $10 Chill Out at Home catalina, paid $5.21 OOP

You can find more details on the Randalls (Safeway if you have it) promotion here and here. These deals should be active through 3/31.

Not pictured: We had a coupon for a free rental at Hollywood Video, so I had my husband stop at get some grapes at Kroger when he went to get our free movie. Total OOP = $2.16

My total OOP for the week was $36.69. I plan to go buy 4 boxes of the Quaker cereal at Kroger (on sale 4/$6 through 3/31 at my stores) and use three .50/1 coupons for Quaker oatmeal squares(which will double) and one $1/1 Life Coupon, so I will pay $2 OOP for 4 boxes of cereal and still come in $1.31 under my budget for the week.

Please vote on my poll in the upper right hand corner of the blog to help me decide what to do about my $40 weekly grocery budget and my freezer swap group. I have been doing the freezer swap for the past two months. Typically, I end up spending about $45-50 out of pocket and I get 8 meals. I’m trying to decide how to figure that into my budget. Here are my choices:

*Cut my grocery budget to $30/week and use the extra $10 to pay for the freezer swap
*Skip out on grocery shopping one week and use that money to pay for the freezer swap
*Skip out on the freezer swap

Be sure to vote!