Middle of February Budget Update

My monthly budget is $160 for all my groceries and $40 for eating out for a total of $200 per month.  I use sales, coupons and anything to stretch my budget as far as possible.  I cook most of our meals at home with homemade breads and many treats to supplement.  I try to find the lowest possible price to stock up on items so I can use them all in the coming months to lower my spending.

I thought that I was doing well for the month even though I got a bunch of things at the beginning of the month based on the sales that were going.  I am making extra efforts to use some of the things in my pantry that have been there for a little bit and getting things more organized so that I know what is in there.  Hopefully this month will show that in less shopping.  Below are all of the things that I got this month.

Harris Teeter $54.73

I got some clearance bananas and a lime up front in the produce.  I also grabbed the 8 lb bag of potatoes because it is cheaper then Aldi's has been.  I grabbed free oatmeal and free noodles.  I got $0.50 egg rolls and beef jerky for $1.47 per bag.  Crazy amount of soda which was B2G3 and B1G1 juice that I had to fill up and check out and do a second transaction so that things didn't get smashed on the second check out.  I was a little sad that I didn't do this with one of those $10 off $50 since I obviously spent way more then I normally do in one transaction.

Harris Teeter $1.75

I got free noodles and oatmeal which were the main deals that I was looking for in this sale.  I also got the B2G3 chip deal with two pretzels and three Cape Cod chips.  I got a fourth chip but one of the chips that scanned on the app as half price rang up as a full so I returned it and got money back. It ended up being an amazing deal after sale and coupons with the return.

Harris Teeter $9.04

 I got some free meatballs and free yogurt.  The yogurt also had a coupon that gave me a $1 overage.  I got the cheese for the last coupon that I had so it was $1.00 out of pocket and there was an Ibotta rebate for $1.75.  I bought some more turkey for $2 because we were out at home.  The pop tarts were a good deal which I don't think that I calculated correctly when I was at the store but they were $0.67 each.  We were running low on cereal so I grabbed some deals on these for $0.97.

Harris Teeter $2.43

I got some more free meatballs and two more bags of Godiva which were $1 each.  I turned in $2.60 for rebates for the Godiva and any item which was more then I spent.

Aldi $16.20

I went to get milk because we were out and vegetable shortening because we were running low.  I also got turkey because my husband finished all of the previous package I grabbed at Harris Teeter.  I got another bag of chicken nuggets for the upcoming month.  I decided to make rice krispie treats with the marshmallows.  I got an extra bag of tortilla chips and pretzels because we were a little low.

Giant $2.05

We had already made color your own book marks with valentine on one side and book mark on the other side.  I got pencils to go with them and my husband and son decided that they also needed candy to go with it.  They went to the store to buy Smarties because my son loves them.  We also had bunches of Starburst.  I packed them all to go with the valentines so they got Smarties, Starburst, and pencils.

Giant $5.40

I went to Giant with my husband and son to get my free yogurts.  I also found spice drops and holiday wreaths for $0.79 each.  There was a deal on Cheez Its that my son saw so we got three boxes for $1.99 each.   I got to use a $1 off 2 coupon to get them for $1.66 each.  After they were rung up, it turns out that I paid $0.10 for one yogurt but made $0.49 on the other one.  I also made an additional $1 with the coupon on the yogurt.  I can never figure out how things are going to ring up at Giant but I thing that I got some good deals.

Aldi $11.32

We were out of butter so I went and grabbed two even though they are more expensive near our house at $1.39.  My son said that he really want to try some chips so I got him the ones that he wanted to try.  I got two emergency blocks of cheese because we only had one left and we use a lot of cheese.  The potatoes were finally $3.99 so I grabbed a bag and we only had 3 potatoes left.

Harris Teeter $5.98

I went to get the free yogurt and candy bar but they were out and they gave me a rain check for the candy bar.  The Dixie Crystal Sugars were on sale and I used a coupon to get them for $0.67 each (limit 2).  The Quaker Granola bars were on sale half off for $1.49 each but they only had three left on the shelf of the one that my son liked.  I got a rain check for them too so that I could get more when they are finally back on the shelf.

Girl Scout Cookies $20.00

My husband decided that we needed cookies and upped my order from one box to five.  I couldn't figure out where to count this but I figured it was basically a grocery purchase.

Total Retail $343.36

Total Savings $214.46

Total OOP $128.90

I was happy with what I got so far this month but I didn't leave a lot of wiggle room in the rest of the month but luckily we have $31 to get more deals but hoping to not need much.  It was mostly some treats.  I used things around the house to make banana bread, homemade pop tarts, cinnamon and sugar pie crust cookies, rolls, bread, pizza crusts and more.  It is a great way to help stretch the budget and use the things that are in the house.  I am going to try to go back to being better about making our treats at home and making something special on the weekends.  It has been so busy that I haven't had a lot of chances to cook at home as much as I wanted.  Hoping that I can take more time to do that for the rest of the month.

Eating Out

My son had a day off school at the beginning of the month and he was great at physical therapy so we used the rest of our Dunkin Donuts gift card and got hot chocolate and two doughnuts.  We paid out of our change purse and paid $0.38 after coupon and gift card.  We went to Family Bingo at my son's school and my husband promised my son that he would buy him popcorn when we were there which was $1.  We went to Starbucks one morning for breakfast but I used a gift card so we didn't spend any money.  We were out running errands and decided to get Burger King so I bought a gift card from MyPoints and we paid $0.81 after gift card.  We have used $2.19 out of our monthly eating out budget.  Normally February is much lower because January is so much higher.