Experiment #11: Shopping with the Weekly Ad

I was trained in the art of bargain hunting by my mother. I am trying to take that skill to new heights. 

 I read about a family that kept their monthly budget at $150 a month for groceries, and I figured if a family with children could do that, a family of two could do it on that same amount or less even in an expensive area. The key seemed to be using the weekly ad to plan the meals for the week, so that's what I did.

The last four weeks I have made meal plans and shopping lists exclusively based on what was on sale at the local grocery store. My plan was to assess the experience at the end of four weeks, and decide if I would continue. 

What follows is an overview of what this experience was like.

Helpful information about my situation:

We typically make 1-2 main meals a week, and then eat leftovers. We occasionally go out. We are a family of two and a small dog.

We also keep extra food in the freezer, which we did draw on at times during these last four weeks. We bought many of these items before we began shopping on the weekly ad only. My expectation, though, is that we will use sales to keep the freezer stocked and will continue to be able to rely on that supply.

A Beginner's Experience of Shopping with the Weekly Ad

Week One:

I found the weekly advertisement online, and began perusing it to find any deal that might be helpful. I fully expected that this is going to be a difficult and time-consuming process. Surprisingly, there were probably a hundred different items on sale, so the selection is large. Furthermore, the online advertisement is separated into categories so I don't have to wade through every item to find what I want. We get pasta, which was buy 2 get 3 free, to use with ground beef (also on sale). We also find steak on sale for a treat.

I plan for fajitas, although I get back from the store and realize that I had forgotten the peppers. The fajitas turn into steak tacos.

Week total: $25.00 (down from $43)

Week Two:

This week I found that the process went a little faster. I get a rotisserie chicken, grapes on sale for $0.99 a pound (I remember the first time I thought that bag was 1.99 or 2.99 and then was in for a cruel surprise at checkout). I also get ground beef, since we still had fresh taco toppings. We finished off the fresh toppings and then freeze the rest of the taco meat for a later date.

Week total: $19.00, not sure how much I saved because I lost the receipt.

Week Three:

I decided to make a family chicken burger recipe. However, ground chicken can be hard to find and ground turkey was on sale. I made a substitution, and then modified the recipe slightly. Hamburger buns are buy one get one free, so I grabbed two bags and froze one. The turkey burgers didn't get us very far, but the freezer was filling up so we started working on eating some of the food in it. Mike makes a recipe with chicken (freezer) and pears and some sort of fried vegetable (fresh produce that needed to be used and was left over from earlier days; we aren’t letting anything go to waste).

Week total: about $25.00...receipt was moved, and I can't find it. Extra credit for not wasting any vegetables or fruit from earlier weeks.  

Week Four:

With a budget of $150 monthly for groceries now, we are on target to come in with plenty to spare. I take a look over the weekly advertisement and decide its time for a bit of a treat. This shopping trip also happens to fall on a Friday, which makes the treat idea even better.

Pork tenderloins are on sale buy one get one free, by the pound. I decide to buy two. We'll freeze one to save for later (pork tenderloin is rather expensive, so if I take advantage of this now I'll spend about 6 more dollars but will have another one to eat in coming weeks). I find a recipe for Pork Tenderloin sliders and a variety of sauces, and decide I'll make rolls to go with the sliders myself.

I come away from the store with about $49.00 dollars worth of food at a total cost of about $33.00.

Additional Stops:

Sometimes I can’t carry everything back from the store myself since we walk there, so Mike goes after work to get some staple items like milk, eggs, and coffee. I’ll add $20.00 to account for these sorts of purchases.  

Estimated 4 week total: $122.00

Notes: We were given tomatoes that went into a pasta sauce and salsa, and butternut squash and zucchini that went into several side dishes and saved us the cost of all of these items, accounting for about $10.

So, was it worth it?

Definitely. This was easy to do. It took me about 15-45 minutes to plan the week's menu using the advertisement, and our savings on each trip usually fell in the $15.00 range. According to my husband, who used to do most of the shopping, we've cut at least $100 dollars of the grocery bill.

I'm going to keep track another four weeks now that we don't have the vegetables that were given to us and the freezer's contents are turning over to whatever we buy at the store now. I'll let you know how it goes, but this is a promising start.

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