Grocery Shopping on a Budget Challenge

My husband is a big fan of a certain debt show on television where couples are put on a tight cash budget and issued a challenge to live out of jars for a month. When the money in the jar runs out, you’re out of money, unless of course you pull from another jar. Watching the show, I am puzzled when repeatedly families are put on a grocery budget of approximately $125 per week. I’m all for thrifty shopping but for a family of four to eat healthy on just over one hundred dollars a week? I am sceptical.

Being one for a challenge, I have decided to give it my best shot and have issued myself the challenge to try it for my family. Given I have certain dietary restrictions and challenges, I already menu plan each week so I don’t have a learning curve there. Unfortunately, some of the food items I require come at a higher cost, plus I have a heavy workout and fitness schedule each week so I eat a great deal of protein which is another added cost. In light of these added expenses, I have allowed my family of four a grocery budget of $200 per week for the challenge (almost half our regular budget).

So how to approach grocery shopping on a tight budget? Here’s my plan:

Hit the local wholesale store and pick up meat in bulk. I already do this on a monthly basis so I know what cuts of meat I can get and have learned that I can get all the meat we need for about $100 or less (we have a vegetarian day once or twice per week in our household). That averages out to $25 per week leaving me $175 to work with for the remainder of the groceries. At home, I take the meat and break it down into serving sizes for our evening meals, and freeze it.
Menu plan each meal and snack for the week in detail making sure to plan meals based on the meat I have bought at the wholesalers. This includes the kids school lunches and after school snacks, but leaves open one night per week to either use up leftovers, allow for the chance to satisfy any food cravings, or to dine out.
Create a grocery list based on the menu plan, then go through the cupboards and cross off any items I already have on hand.
Sit down with the weekly grocery store flyers and price comp the items I need. My local store will match competitor’s sale prices so that saves me making four or five stops to finish all my shopping while still taking advantage of sale prices.
Go shopping, sticking to my list and resisting the urge to buy impulse items.
At the end of my shopping trip, I will keep all my receipts in order to track how well I am doing.

Week One

Week one is about to begin and today I made my trip to the wholesale store and bought meat to help get through the month:

7 tilapia

5.5 lbs lean ground beef

4 pork tenderloin

8 large skinless, boneless chicken breasts

54 chicken wings

This is enough for about 19 meals for my family (my youngest is not a fan of meat) for a total cost of $90.03 ($22.50 a week or $4.74 per meal).

Good start.

Sunday will be my day to do the rest of the grocery shopping and I have roughly $177 left for the trip. Ok, can't be too hard..can it?