This Month's 2024 Extreme Budget Grocery Spending – May

 

After taking a three week hiatus from grocery shopping last month (I honestly did not need a single thing during that time) I was ready to get back into the store and get myself some fresh produce for the fridge.  I began the month with only a few carrots, a couple stalks of celery as well as about six pounds of red and russet potatoes left in the crisper drawer.  All of my other vegetables and fruits were either frozen, canned or dehydrated so I still had plenty of solid options, but I was definitely craving a fresh green salad.

 

To begin this month I had $36.59 plus my $50 May budget and a carefully crafted shopping list.  My current list is set up to cover both the months of May as well as June so I was in no rush to get everything in one fell swoop.  Up to that point the sales flyers at the grocery stores closest to my home had nothing going that would bring me in to do any shopping so I stopped into Winco after work one day and picked up the bulk of the items I wanted from my list.  Winco sits furthest away from my home, but closest to where I work so I just walk or drive over there and do my shopping.  Although they don’t do weekly sales or much advertising their overall prices are pretty hard to beat and they often have in-store unadvertised sales on certain items.

 

On May 1^st I stopped at Winco on my way home from work for some shopping.  I picked up quite a few canned goods to add to the LTFS, a five pound bag of whole wheat flower so I can start baking my own breads again, a package of flour tortillas and one of corn tortillas (I’m not quite in that phase of life yet to make my own tortillas), a one pound bag of frozen peas and carrots, a fair bit of fresh produce, a carton of sour cream and, of course, a quart of cream for my coffee.  While I was there they had five pound bags of russet potatoes on sale for 98¢!  Although I didn’t really need potatoes I went ahead and grabbed one anyway.  If I don’t end up using them in the next couple of months I will likely just can them into pint jars.

 

Mid month I stopped into Fred Meyer to pick up a # block of cheese and a FREE bottle of salad dressing. A week later I stopped into Trader Joes to pick up some romaine lettuce, two roma tomatoes and some feta cheese to bulk up my salad makings.  The next day I popped into Albertson’s on the way home to grab asparagus on sale for 99¢ a pound.  It was more than enough veggies to hold me through the remainder of the month, in fact well into the start of June.

 

A sale on lean ground beef at Fred Meyer plus a $1.25 OFF digital coupon plus another customer appreciation coupon allowed me to pick up a 3# package of 80% lean.  I used half of it to make a batch of taco soup to can and add to my pantry for easy, quick meals.  The rest of the ground beef will be used to make a meatloaf for the freezer with a small package leftover to use in a recipe later on in the future.  The final price on the ground beef after all was said and done was $0!  I am quite pleased with that.

 

I had one small nonfood item to purchase which was to replace the hydrocortisone cream in the first aid kit as the one that was in there was getting low.  Since we are heading into bug bite and rash season I thought it was a good idea to grab a new tube.  I spent $1.25 of my nonfood budgeted amount leaving me with $38.27 still left to spend this year.

 

Once I had entered in my final purchases I had spent my entire $50 budget as well as $14.34 of the rollover amount.  Moving forward into June I plan to finish buying the last of the items on my May/June shopping list.  I still have $22.25 in rollover funds to add to my $50 budgeted amount for June for a total amount of $72.25 to start off with.  Overall, I think my extreme grocery budget for 2024 seems to be working out fairly well and I’m maintaining my LTFS too.  Yay!!