September Month End Shopping and Eating Out Budget Update

Every month, I work with my monthly budget of $160 for our family of three to get the most for the least amount out of pocket. I mix sales, coupons and any deal that I can find to stretch the budget as far as possible and fill the pantry and freezer with things at the lowest cost.  The great thing is that leaves lots of room to get things that we need to use for future months at the lowest prices because we have so many things already in the house in our stockpile.

I did a horrible job of adding up my receipts this month.  I added up my first half of the month receipts and broke them all down here.  After that, I put no more receipts into the spreadsheet and just put them in a pile on my table.  I finally got to it on September 25th with 5 days left in the month.  Luckily I was still under budget with a few more days to get deals for the month and then I added a few more trips and realized my formula was wrong and it didn't include the first trip of the month. This math calculation messed up my month and I ended up going a little crazy.  Below is everything that I got for the month with the things that I got in the second half broken down.

Aldi $17.58

Giant $0.44

Safeway $12.30 

Harris Teeter $6.19

Harris Teeter $5.16

Shoppers $0.08

Target $0

Aldi $19.89

Aldi $1.42

Harris Teeter $13.56

Shoppers $0.04

I got a yummy freebie from Shoppers and I enjoyed it lots!

Giant $0.15

I went to the store to get the cherry juice and the yogurt showed up free on my account when I was in the store.  I ate the yogurt for lunch that day and it was yummy!!  I still haven't had the cherry juice but I look forward to it because the last one was really good.  I got $0.25 back from Saving Star for the yogurt.

Harris Teeter $13.07

The sugar was on sale for $0.97 each with limit 4 so I got them all.  I was excited to get the Veggie Straws for $0.50 each.  The Hodgson Mills Vital Wheat Gluten was on sale for $3 and there was a printable coupon which made them $2 each.

Shoppers $0.11

Another great snack for free and I only paid the tax.  I opened it and ate in the car so that was where I took the picture.

Wegman's $19.68

We were running low on ground beef and totally out of mac and cheese so I went to Wegman's to grab those and decided to get the yeast because they are free after coupon there.

Aldi $5.31 

I went to get ice cream sandwiches which according to my son are very important and turkey for my husbands lunch which according to my husband is also very important.. not really but I haven't had a sale on turkey in a little while so we were running low.

 Harris Teeter $21.79

I was super excited to hear about the rumored super doubles and even more when I knew that I had money left in the budget to spend.

Traders Joe's $3.58

I went to get blue cheese because we were running very low so I decided to make a lot of trips in one day and this was my first stop.  I grabbed this and put it straight into the cooler.

 Shoppers $0

I went to Shoppers to get the freebie and they didn't have it in stock so the manager said that he would give me anything from the cookie and candy aisle under $3 so I grabbed the Oreos and went to customer service to get rung up.  There was a little delay because the person there didn't think that it was a match and I explained twice what the manager said so he rang it up and kept the receipt but I was right by the door so I just left with my cookies.

Safeway $0

Next stop was Safeway to get my freebie that was loaded on my card which I am looking forward to making into Cinnamon Sour Cream Pound Cake.

Harris Teeter $14.19

I went to get the Kool Aid Sparklers for the taste and tell.  I also grabbed the Canola Oil sale for $1.97.  I grabbed four more of the oatmeal because they were an amazing deal and that should get us through the winter months with my son's oatmeal.  I turned in the Kool Aid for a $0.75 Ibotta rebate.

Wegman's  $0.48

I did a lot of transactions with different registers to get a bunch of yeast with all the coupons that I had and change in my pocket.  I was super happy to have the previous ones that I could cut down the side and dump into a small mason jar that I keep in my fridge.  I use a lot of yeast so I will be having lots of fun bread with this for super cheap.

 Aldi $1.94

We were out of milk so I got another milk as my last grocery stop for the day.  I was exhausted but glad that I got everything done with my one free day.

Harris Teeter $4.61

This was the start of super doubles which I started off with a bang!!! Free Annie's pasta, Lipton Tea, Enjoy Life Rice Milk bars, Turtles, Hormel Bacon, Barilla Pasta Sauce, and Birds Eye Veggie Pasta.  I got the Tide for $0.47 each and the Fruit Gushers for $0.97 each.

Harris Teeter $0.03

I grabbed my two free Tomato Sauce.

Harris Teeter $0.18

I was excited to get the nail polish because it normally gone by the time that I get to the store.

Harris Teeter $4.91

I got the Barilla Pasta Sauce, Blue Diamond Almonds, and nail polish for free.  I got 6 more boxes of granola bars and after coupon and sale, they were $0.74 per box.

Harris Teeter $0.20

I went to another store to grab a few things that were out at the last store and they were all free except tax.

Harris Teeter $0.08

My husband grabbed three jars of spaghetti sauce.

Harris Teeter $7.57

I went a little crazier the later in the day and put in a huge total for me.  The TastyKake doughnuts were $0.75 each and one of my son's favorites.  The Quaker Chewy bars were $0.74.  The Mahatma Rice was $0.39.  The Barilla Pesto was $0.79 each and I turn it in for a $3.00 Ibotta rebate.

Harris Teeter $0.08

I was excited to get lots of spaghetti sauce to stock the cupboards.

Harris Teeter $3.19

I didn't get this deal in the morning because I didn't think that I had a coupon but I found one so I had to go to a few stores to find it before the deal was over.

Harris Teeter $5.68

Last stop of the month and I got more of everything from above and was glad to get home and unpack and try to see what my totals were for the month.

Total Retail $626.89

Total Saving $443.40

Total OOP $183.49

I went super crazy at the end of the month and found that I had a little error in my formula on my spreadsheet so my first total wasn't included in my calculation.  Oops!!  Also there was a super doubles that landed on the end of the month.  I was $23.49 over my grocery budget but well under my Eating Out Budget (see below) to make up for the overage so I was still under by $8 for the total budget.  I was happy with all the amazing deals that I picked up this month including 30 boxes of granola bars which would normally be about $90.  I also got 20 jars of spaghetti sauce, pesto and alfredo sauce which would normally be almost $60 but I got it all for free after sale, coupon and Ibotta rebate.

My happiest thing that we have done this month is amazing saving with using gift cards and free money this month.  My husband used Home Depot gift cards to buy stuff for the house and still has some left to use towards fertilizer and other things we need.  I went to Kohl's because I realized that my son didn't have a shirt for picture day and found shorts on clearance for $6 and shirts for $5.  I had a gift card that I already got from My Points and got another one while I was in the store and only spent $11 for 5 items.  I still had two Target gift cards which I used to get new dish brushes and clearance notebooks for $0.07 so paid nothing.  I used the rest of the gift card and Pay Pal to pay for our Target purchase.  I used Pay Pal for my son's school pictures. Working on using my Swagbucks and My Points to pay for lots more going forward including ordering $75 in Swagbucks for Amazon in case I need to order a new bread machine and $50 for Home Depot for more fertilizer. 

Eating Out

My husband and son decided that we had to have take out pizza so we ordered a Pizza Hut pizza and picked it up.  It was $8.47 and gave me a night off cooking so it was a nice change of pace.  The best part is that it is way under budget for the month and we earned a free pizza which we used on the last day of the month with no money out of pocket.  That was nice because we still had $31.53 left in the eating out budget which I spent on groceries.