Last Grocery Post

Are you ready?  We are finally near the end of the month, and definitely at the end of our budget.  This month definitely wasn't as easy as September.  It posed many challenges.  But I am happy to announce that our budget made it through the month.  Or at least it almost did :)

While planning our menu for this last week of October I had to get creative.  We really needed to use what we had on hand.  That included the leftover half can of coconut milk and half butternut squash from one of our meals last week.  Here is what I came up with:

As you can see from our meal plan, we have one small issue this week, or well next week.  The end of the month isn't until Wednesday.  How do we make this type of budget work for months that aren't exactly 4 weeks (since most months actually are not)?  We may survive on rice and frozen veggies for several days until we get paid!

Here's the list:

As always, you can find recipes for most of our meals on my Pinterest Page.  Your grocery list may look much different depending on what ingredients you already have on hand.  I forgot to put Greek yogurt on the list but we did pick that up at the store.  The only item we couldn't get on the list was Nutritional Yeast.  I'll have to swing out to another store tomorrow to purchase it, but it is so cheap so we won't even count it.

Other notes from this week:

1. I baked bread for lunches and snacks
2. We will be eating veggies from the freezer and leftover salad greens from last week
3. I baked oatmeal squares for breakfasts, and will probably bake apple muffins later in the week too.

So this week's grand total: $62.18.  If you recall, that puts a bit over budget for this month.  I blame the dish soap we needed to buy this week.  Luckily we were gifted a Wal-Mart gift card at one of our baby showers and we squeaked by this week by using a little over $10 from the card.  Monthly Grand Total: $311!

Of course we still need to worry about Monday-Wednesday next week, but for such a busy month I think we did really well.  Considering we hosted a dinner party for nearly 20 friends this month and I also blew almost $50 from our grocery budget on impulse buys at Earthfare one week, again, I think we did awesome!

As much as I enjoy strategically mapping out our meals and groceries for the week, I think I am done writing about it.  Much to your dismay, I'm sure.  I hope that I was able to share a few good tips, and maybe even some motivation for others.  Ultimately I have created a resource that I can return to time and again to remind myself that I can successfully budget $300 a month for groceries while eating healthy and well.  The days of expensive grocery trips are behind us! 

Check out our past Grocery Budget Posts
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3