May Month End Budget Update

I have a monthly budget of $160 for my family of three to get all of our household items including groceries and all household goods.  I work very hard to stay under budget and get the most for my family to stretch the budget as far as possible.  In order to get the most out of our budget,  I make a lot of items from scratch including rolls, bread, cinnamon rolls, quick breads (this month was chocolate chip muffins and banana bread), lots of homemade cookies and of course lots of meals (many from scratch).  We eat leftovers for meals on the weekends usually or on a night that I am too exhausted to cook but I normally reinvent them with chicken panini, chinese fried rice, buffalo chicken fried rice and soup to make them seem like an all new meal.  I try to do my best to not have a lot of food waste so that I can make sure to stretch my budget as far as possible and use a menu plan to get the most out of everything.  If we aren't going to eat it right away then it goes in the freezer to use later.

I had a good month for shopping, meaning that I didn't do that much of it.  Both good and bad because we didn't have a lot of extra food around the house and that made me stick to the meal plan. I made cocoa pebbles treats with the cereal that my son wasn't eating and Pioneer Women Seasoned saltines with some extra saltines that we had to have a few more snacks on hand.  I also used some caramel corn powder that we had around to make some yummy caramel corn which was a good treat but my husband and I finished up at least a batch in one sitting....it was so good.  I tried to use up the milk before it went bad which seems to be a big challenge for me recently because my son isn't drinking as much but I used it in baking and lots of bread making.  I might actually have to start freezing some of it if we aren't going to be able to use it in time.

We have gone through most of the ground beef in the freezer as well as some other pantry staples.  We finally finished all of the red potatoes from the March purchase at Aldi with all the hash browns that I have been making and the funniest thing happened!!  I went to the store and they were on sale for $1.49 for 5 pounds again so I got 20 pounds which should last us another two or three months. 

I worked on using up all the flour and sugar in my storage containers so that I could clean them and start over.  It is something that I like to do every few months because if I just keep adding more flour over the flour that is already in there then the stuff at the bottom is getting older and older and not used (plus it is getting dirty from sitting on the dirty counter).  I emptied my sugar and flour container at the same time and washed them together.  My sugar container holds two 4 lb bags easily so I filled it right back up.  The flour container holds almost 15 lbs of flour.  After filling up both of those, I also decided to make the mason jar mixes to fill my pantry for easy use.  I used so much that I had to add a little more to both containers to have them filled.  I am still working on cleaning out my bread flour container but I am getting really close to the bottom so I feel like I could finish it any day now.  I am getting very low on the flour in the cupboard but I normally try to use it all up before it goes on sale again in November so it only has to last me 5 months.  After I fill the bread flour container, I will pull everything out of the cupboard and take an inventory.

My mom did come to town and bought some stuff at Aldi and some at Harris Teeter for us which totaled about $30 of groceries.  Most of the stuff was for her like yogurt, fruits and vegetables or things that she was buying for treats for my husband or son (the ones that she likes to spoil) like soda and ice cream.  I think that most of the things that she bought were gone before she left except the soda.

Aldi $8.88

Giant $0

Aldi $20.80

Harris Teeter $7.23

Wegman's $14.36

Aldi $6.32

Aldi $14.57

Aldi $7.74

Wegman's $9.27

I went to the store to get Children's Advil because we didn't bring any on our trip and my son hurt his neck.  I also grabbed a bottle of Wegman's suntan lotion and a bag of sugar for my cousin.  I didn't take a picture because everything went away when I walked in the door.

Total Retail $144.68
Total Savings $55.51
Total OOP $89.17

I think that I did really well because I used most of the things already at the house to make the meal plan and then stretched the things that we did already have.  Most of the months that end up shopping at Aldi's lots means that I really didn't need that much anyway.  We are almost out of tissues again because allergies and sickness have struck again!! We are also almost out of ground beef so I will probably head back to Wegman's to get some more but I am not sure what else is on the list.

I have two containers of bananas in the freezer already peeled and ready to go for banana bread so that will be a nice addition to the menu for June.  I also have enchilada sauce made and frozen so I look forward to using that.  I think that we have a few more things in the freezer that need to be used up or trashed so I have to investigate what we are going to use to start the menu planning process.

There are a few other things that we will need to get in June and over the summer months but normally the shopping takes a turn for the worse during the summer because my little helper is out of school and there isn't a lot of time for shopping deals so we will see how it works out this summer since he is whole year older then last summer.

How did you do this month with your shopping??

Take Out Total:

I have been tracking the amount spent on take out in addition and this month it was another pretty high month for us because of Mother's Day treat and trip to New York.   We spent $31.48 this month on restaurant food whether eaten at home, in the car or at the restaurant.