March Madness is Finally Over (I Mean My Shopping, Not the Basketball)!!

I have a budget of $160 for groceries and household goods for every month set for our family of three.  This month was a little tight and I can tell you that this has been a crazy month.  When I look at the pictures from the beginning of the month, it seems that was way longer ago then just the beginning of the month!!  I got a lot of things which have come in handy like the frozen rice and the yummy bacon which I enjoyed. I also enjoyed using the free butter and eggs to make some yummy treats and breads.  Super doubles was a great adventure and I am glad that I saved so much and got a large variety of foods.


Below is a picture of everything that I got in the month.  The deals that I got at the beginning of the month were broken down in my other post (if you want to see those details, go here).  Sadly the beginning of my month left me with very little budget for the rest of the month which was fine because I was thinking that we were going to be out of town for part/most of Spring Break but plans changed after a horribly long sickness so we needed more food in the house for the end of the month adding to the purchases at the store and into the budget.  I spent a lot of money on medicine because our stockpile dwindled and because I didn't think that we were going to need to being away but neither thing was actually true.

After careful consideration, I decided to remove the Huggies from my overall grocery budget because they are for a gift and not something in our normal budget ever so you will see them in the pictures and the savings and then subtracted below out of the budget.  I used the transaction where I just purchased diapers to figure out the price for each package and multiplied by the 7 packages that I purchased.


Harris Teeter $4.99

Harris Teeter $16.36

Harris Teeter - $2.64

Harris Teeter $2.79

Harris Teeter $3.76

Harris Teeter $0.42

Harris Teeter $1.72

Harris Teeter $0.36

Harris Teeter $4.42

Harris Teeter $0.77

Harris Teeter $7.27

Harris Teeter $0.19

Harris Teeter $0.14

Harris Teeter $0.60

Harris Teeter $25.90- $2.00= $23.90

Harris Teeter $9.86

Harris Teeter $4.46  

 

Giant $0.10

Harris Teeter $9.69- $6.00= $3.69  

Target $0

Harris Teeter $3.21

Harris Teeter $1.61

Harris Teeter $ 4.32

Aldi $4.99

Harris Teeter $0.05

Harris Teeter $8.96

Harris Teeter $3.63

Aldi $19.13

Giant $0.86

I ran into the store to get the free Godiva bar and it rang up with $0.19 overage while I was at self checkout so I gave up and asked someone to cancel the order.  I went looking for something else to buy with my overage and decided on this cute bunny for the Easter basket.  I think that both will go in there nicely and my son will enjoy them.

Harris Teeter $24.80

The whole family was sick and we used up all the kids medicine so I looked online and Harris Teeter was the cheapest so I grabbed the free Good Karma milk, two sodas for $0.89 and my son's granola bars which were on sale for $1.49 each.

Target $1.95

My son only likes this flavor toothpaste which they don't carry at the grocery store so I went with my two coupons on the day that they were expiring to pick up two of his toothpaste since we ran out of all the samples from the dentist.  I was super glad that my friend Ann told me that she saw this one at Target because I don't think that I would have looked there other wise.  Great price for two toothpaste and even better because my son won't use any of the other flavors!!

Aldi $1.54

My husband decided that eating crackers was the only thing getting him through the sickness because his appetite was gone, I had to go grab more crackers.  He ate through a whole box so I guess it is good that I bought two!!

Target $0 (used Pay Pal)

I bought two of these huge containers because we were totally out of cranberry juice again because someone is drinking them and not telling anyone that they are finishing them so the person shopping doesn't know to get anymore until the budget is already gone for the month..insert eye roll.  I used pay pal and sent to the a close Target for my husband to pick up since he was sick.  He picked up the order and they put regular ones in the bag instead of Cran Grape but luckily he noticed before coming home.  Of course the whole reason to order online is to make sure that they have it in store and so that you don't have to wait but at least he didn't have to go coughing through the store to check to see if they had them.  They are going through them quickly so I know that these won't last even until the end of the month.

Harris Teeter $0

There were two freebies on my Harris Teeter card so I went to grab them. The Oreo candy bar went into the easter basket.

Giant $1.98 

I went to Giant to get the freebies on my card including the Dannon Greek Yogurt and the NibMor Chocolate Bar.  I now carry something with me just in case there is overage at the register now because it never rings up as expected but I saw that they have Ocean Spray limit 1 for $1.88 so I grabbed that because my husband and son had already finished one of the big ones in just a few days.  The great thing is that there was a rebate on Ibotta for the NibMor Bar and any item so I got $0.50 back.  I also had another rebate for $0.15 on any chocolate on Checkout 51.  We enjoyed the yummy chocolate bar a lot!!

Aldi $6.94

We were out of potatoes to make french fries so that was an obvious purchase which was hard because we had so many purchased during the winter that we had for a long time and now the prices are back up to $3.99.  My son enjoyed the ice cream sandwiches and we used them to get over our sore throats so we bought more.  The whipped topping was for my son because he likes it with his pancakes.

Aldi $13.99



We didn't have a lot of things in the house which seemed odd to me after this month because I felt like I spent a lot of time in the store this month.  We got chips to have chips and salsa.  We got milk, butter and cheese because we were out of all of them.  We were out of sliced pepperoni and my son decided that he was going to make a pizza for lunch so we needed the pepperoni for his complete pizza making experience.

 

Total Retail $1,191.05
Total Savings $1009.93
Total OOP $181.12- $15.61 for diapers= $165.51

So many sales and coupons to save a ton of money this month and it might be my highest savings ever!  I saved around $39 with the catalinas that I got and the cash back from the ones that didn't print so it seems like it worked out for more free groceries. Although I ended up over budget, I think that I saved a ton and I got a bunch to use for the coming months including my deodorant which I was totally out of my stockpile and chicken nuggets which won't go to waste in this house for sure!

I got back a ton of money in rebates including $23.55 in Ibotta, $7.15 in Checkout 51 and $3.83 in Saving Star plus additional 1% of the Kellogg's, Nabisco, Clorox and P&G products which I have no clue how much that will add up to if there is any more coming.  I got a total of $34.53 back from the items that were already great deals.  I don't count this money back into the grocery budget because I don't transfer it into my bank account but rather my Pay Pal so I used it for other things and we call it our free money.  It has paid for school pictures, Stride Rite Shoes, Home Depot supplies and items at Target like the granola bars and cranberry juice this month.

Although I could have skipped the toilet paper deal and the trash bags, I know that I will be happy to have them when it comes to the time that I need to use them and probably worth it to be over by only $5.51 since we saved the money with less eating out money spent...see below.

Eating Out

We budget $40 a month for take out or eating out which usually means some pizza or another treat during the month when we plan to eat out or have a special treat.  The great thing about limiting this is that we make sure that we are planning for eating out and not just doing it because we are tired and don't want to cook.  We also get take out and mix it with things from home to make a more complete meal that is easy and cheaper to stretch the budget farther.  This month we were planning on saving it for Spring Break so that we could have some family time out but we are now spending it recovering from sickness instead so we might be saving some money on eating out based on that.

My husband bought my son a $6 movie theater sized bucket of popcorn which is mostly ate himself at the local college basketball game.  My husband took my son out and they bought doughnuts at Safeway for $1.41 because they were out and wanted a breakfast treat.  My husband used the Starbucks gift card to get my son a chocolate chip cookie for $0.  We went to a local restaurant chain and used our gift cards and my husband said yes to dessert so we spent $4 for the amount over the gift cards.  We got a yummy take out lunch when my son was at a play date for $10.59 for a cheese steak with fries and fountain drink.  The total spent was $22 for the month so we were super under the monthly budget and we got lots of things out that we enjoyed.

We also have a gift card for one of my husband's birthday gifts still to spend.  I have a gift card to the local coffee shop which will probably get my son a cookie or treat and the rest of the gift card to Starbucks.

I hope that you had a great month and got lots of great deals!!!