If you’re new here, I practice the Buy Ahead Principle — which means that what we buy each week is often for future weeks. We stock up on the best deals and markdowns each week and that means that we then have a variety of items from previous shopping trips to use to plan a menu from.
With the increase in grocery prices, I’ve decided to raise our grocery budget to $100 a week because I’ve not been having enough wiggle room to stock up like I’d want to. This amount will still challenge me to be creative while also giving me enough breathing room to stock up and continue to practice the Buy Ahead Principle.
In addition to practicing the Buy Ahead Principle, I Reverse Meal Plan. This means that I plan based upon what we have on hand plus what good sales/markdowns I found at the stores. (Read more about Reverse Meal-Planning here.)
{Follow me on Instagram stories for real-time videos on what I’m buying if you don’t want to have to wait for me to get the post written up for the blog!}
I was SO excited about this egg deal!! 18-count cartons for just $1.99 at Kroger — and you could buy up to 5 with the digital coupon.
So of course I did! We love eggs and will be eating lots of scrambled eggs, fried eggs, hard boiled eggs, and maybe some egg casserole in the next few weeks. (By the way, you can use eggs for at least a few weeks after the sell by date.)
I was also happy to get five pounds of marked down ground beef to stick in the freezer! And the Annie’s Mac & Cheese is just $0.99 with the weekly digital coupon (limit 5).
I got lots of great markdowns — including pasta for $0.49/box!
The oatmeal was marked down to $0.79 each + chocolate bars marked down to $0.49 each! The Tollhouse chocolate chips are $1.99 per bag with the weekly digital coupon (after I got home, I realized that the Kroger chocolate chips are a better deal because they are Buy 2, Get 1 Free — which makes them around $1.66/bag).
All total, I spent around $80 at Kroger on all of this. I had $140 left in my budget to spend this week, so I’ll be rolling over the extra $60 to this week.