$50 Grocery Challenge for March 15th

I’m bringing back my weekly shopping challenge, but am setting it at $50 because my frequent visitors have me feeding 4 and 1/2 people instead of 4 people. I also have a hamster, 3 dogs and 2 cats. I bought milk and bread earlier in the week for $7.49, which leaves me a total of $42.51 for the rest of the week.

I went to Martins. The trip was supposed to happen tomorrow, but I was right there, so I decided to go today. Luckily, I hit the clearance mother lode and only spent $34.29. I got:

5 containers of juice (apple, V-8 Splash, etc.)

4 Gatorades

4 packages of cookies

Brownie mix

3 packs of gum

Granola bars

3 packages of natural fruit snacks

2 packages of cat treats

2 loaves of bread to freeze so I don’t end up rushing out to buy un-reduced bread again. (I didn’t even have time to use my bread machine to make a loaf, because my brother had meatballs hot and ready to eat and wanted a sandwich.)

A dozen donuts for tomorrow’s family breakfast (Very unthrifty. $5.99. I think next time I will bake a breakfast bread of some sort.)

So, I could have spent more time planning my trip and my menu to save even more, but this kind of trip shows how you can be somewhat thrifty even if you do everything wrong before you head to the store. Just look for bargains, compare weight and pricing info and take advantage of deals like the buy 6 items get $3 off instantly Gatorade/cookie deal I bought today.

Keep in mind that my list may seem a bit quirky, but I have a stockpile, I have a big basket of fresh fruit on the counter and my freezer is stuffed with meat.  Once you begin to build up a stockpile of your own, you can really spend less on your weekly trips.

Also, I will write more on this later, but you’ll notice I bought a lot of juice and sports drinks today. That is because the prices were good and my stockpile was low. I have enough juice to last at least a month now and will buy a lot of something else that is really on sale next week. When you shop this way, you’ll spend $10 or so for juice for a month all at once. It is probably more than you usually spend on juice in one grocery trip, but keep in mind that this is instead of paying $3.79 a jug each week because you need it whether it is on sale or not.