My grocery shopping / menu planning strategy

Since some of you have asked, today I'm going to share my basic strategy for how I approach our grocery shopping and meal planning. At least for this month, I'm trying to keep our grocery spending to about $30 per week. For those of you that do the grocery shopping in your family, you know $30 doesn't go very far so this takes a little planning before I hit the stores.

Step 1:

I gather the paper ads or look them up online and make a list of the best deals and also any staples that I know we need that week. I will usually look at Rainbow, Cub and Target for sure. Sometimes also Walmart and Aldi. I know that's a lot of stores, but I like to know what the best deals are and then I can always shorten my list later.

Step 2:

Next I scan my fridge for anything that needs to be used up that week before it spoils. It's always a bummer to throw money away because you let something go bad and had to throw it out.

Step 3:

Then I sit down with my calendar and plan our meals for the week, focusing on using what's in our fridge as well as whatever is on a great sale that week. For weekdays I just plan our dinners. For weekends I plan lunches and dinners. (I'm planning another post with more tips on choosing your meals.)

Step 4:

Next I search my coupon file and www.hotcouponworld.com for any coupons that I want to use that week. You'll see in the picture above that I bought a newspaper this week with our grocery money. They always put a flier in there for a discounted subscription so we're going to try it out and see if we like having it delivered. It is only going to cost us $.99 per week so I'm sure it will be worth it because I'll save more than that using coupons that come in the paper. I also like www.hotcouponworld.com because they keep a database of all the coupons that are available online, so each week I take my shopping list and search for the items on their website and often I find some coupons that I can print off.

Step 5:

This is probably the hardest part of the process. My final step is to take my shopping list and start trimming it down until it's within my budget for the week. It's pretty much inevitable that there will be things I will have to pass on, but I try to remind myself that there will always be good deals again in future weeks. And God is good - we have never even come close to going hungry!

Sunday is when I usually do all my planning because that's when the new ads come out for the week. This past Sunday I think the above process took me an hour or less. Sometimes it takes longer than that, depending on how focused I am and whether or not Clara is wanting my attention. That might seem like a lot of time, but I guess it's worth it to me because we just have to stick to our budget. Maybe I'll get faster over time!

After I was finished with all the planning, I left Jeremy and Clara at home and I ventured out to do the shopping. It took me an hour and 15 minutes to hit up Walgreens (for a great diaper deal), the bank, Rainbow and Cub. They are all within probably two miles of our house so I do think it's worth it sometimes to visit multiple stores in order to snag great deals. I don't do that every week though. Sometimes I'm just not up for all that running around so I decide to spend slightly more on something for the convenience of only making one stop. It's all about weighing things out and deciding what works best for our family that particular week.

And what did I get for my $30?

Cantaloupe $1.98

Green pepper $.50

Red pepper $.98

Tomato $1.67

2 1/2 lbs bananas $1.24

2 1/4 lbs grapes $2.94 (a savings of $3.88)

2 lbs sweet potatoes $1.85

3 lbs Chicken breasts $4.98

10 lbs Chicken leg quarters $3.90 (a savings of $8.09!)

cottage cheese $1.25 (50% savings)

2 packs of cheese slices $3.09 (50% savings)

Can pineapple $1.35

2 loaves of bread $3

Sunday newspaper $1.75

I spent a total of $30.38 and saved over $18 (Cub doesn't show savings very well on their receipts). I was able to get us a bunch of fresh produce and 13 pounds of chicken!

Now you want to know what we're eating for dinners this week?

M- Steak, baked potatoes, fresh steamed broccoli

T- Sweet & sour chicken skewers, brown rice, frozen veggie

W- Leftovers or sandwiches (Wednesdays we bring dinner to church and eat w/Jeremy)

Th- Pork chops, sweet potatoes, frozen mixed veggie

F- Spicy black bean burgers, tator tots, apple slices

Sa lunch- Homemade sausage pizza, orange slices

Sa dinner- Burritos (using tortillas I got for free last week on double coupon day), chips and salsa, applesauce

Sunday- Not sure yet what our plans are...it's Valentine's Day!

So Monday's broccoli and Saturday's burritos were chosen because they were items that I already had and needed to use before they spoil. I chose sweet potatoes for Thursday because there are on sale this week. And I chose the chicken skewers for Tuesday because it's a new recipe I've been wanting to try and it uses red bell pepper, which is on sale this week.

Now that this post has become quite long I'll wrap it up, but more tips to come soon.