This Month's 2024 Extreme Budget Grocery Spending – March

 

I began this month with a lot of wonderful food options in my regular pantry and freezer as well as my deep freezer and my LTFS.  In the refrigerator I had three corn tortillas, a few slices of whole grain bread, five low carb dinner rolls to have with soup, a two pound bag of carrots, about two pounds of russet potatoes, one onion, four granny smith apples (I really need to do something with those, I’m thinking Dutch apple pie for Easter) just less than a pint of cream, a 16 oz and an 8 oz package of block cheese plus a partial block, a package of cream cheese (really needs to be used up too), a new container of sour cream and one of cottage cheese, some assorted condiments and three partial bottles of salad dressing.  Not a bad start to the month at all.

 

My first shop of March was to pick up a handful of sales items on my list.  First up was a three pound bag of mandarin oranges on sale ($2.99) at Albertson’s.  Next was to pick up two packages of asparagus on sale for $1.49 a pound plus I had a 40¢ OFF coupon and two free items I had FREE offer digital coupons for – a ten count package of flour tortillas and a bottle of store brand salad dressing.  I was thrilled to happen upon a markdown pot roast which made it home with me for $3.69 a pound.  Not the best price I’ve ever seen, but definitely the best I’ve seen in quite some time.

 

My next trip to the grocery store was much bigger.  For my “big haul” I went to Winco in order to stock up on a few things for my pantry and fill up the crisper drawer in my refrigerator with some fresh produce.  I was also running low on cream (emergency!) for my coffee so I definitely wanted to pick up some more of that.  I quick stroll through their meat department netted me another marked down pot roast for $8.20.  It was 4.5 pounds making it $1.82 a pound!  Now that is more like it!

My final trip for groceries was to simply pick up a head of lettuce at Trader Joes so I could use up the last of my grape tomatoes along with a few other veggies and make more green salads during the final two weeks of the month.  It had been a good long while since I’d had a banana so I also picked up a couple of those too.

 

I did not have any nonfood purchases last month so my $50 budget for the entire year is still holding strong at $39.52 left to spend.  My fingers are crossed that I can successfully do this part of the challenge and not go over budget.

 

To begin the month of March I had my $50 budget plus $36.33 of unused funds to rollover for a grand total of $86.33.  I concentrated quite a bit this month on finding items I could can and add to my LTFS which included the two pot roasts and a large package of lean ground beef so I was very grateful to have that extra rollover amount this month.  The total I spent on food came in at $73.94 with $12.39 still remaining.  I’ll be rolling that amount over and adding it to my April budget which will have me starting the month off with $62.39.  I can work with that!

 

So far I feel like I’m managing this grocery challenge really well.  I’ve found my groove and mapped out my strategy as I will be navigating the coming months.  The fact that I was able to add seventeen pints of home canned chili con carne to my LTFS and pantry plus have plans to can up those two roasts has given me even more confidence in what I am doing.  I’m eating very well with a good variety of choices and have had virtually little to no food waste.  I’m pretty darn happy with my progress so far.