Weekly Grocery Shopping: Missed it by that much!

I had a great shopping trip this week! I tried to stick as closer to my $60 budget, since I had run over by $8.54 last week. (This budget is $40 below my usual budget of $100 per week, but I am doing the Eat from the Pantry Challenge, and I wanted to challenge myself to stick to a lower budget for a month. Oh, and the budget is for groceries, cleaning products, and personal care items.)

Back on Sunday, I made a quick trip to Publix to get milk, bananas, and bread. (I am impressed with the folks from the Pantry Challenge who have set a goal to only go to the store two or three times in January. I feel like I'm there every couple of days!)

Today, I first went to Wal-Mart, where I go to buy must-need things that aren't on sale anywhere else and of which I don't have an extras stored in my stockpile. I bought some needed baking ingredients (brown sugar and vanilla) as well as breads and a few other items.

Walgreens was all about personal care items; I didn't have any Register Rewards to use there (all my old ones expired at the end of December and there were no Register Rewards deals I wanted to use them for), but I did get $4 back from the transaction.

Next on to Publix again. I was able to use another of the $2/$20 coupons from the Publix calendar, which are no longer available in stores in my area.

The CVS stop was just for green bag tags - you get $1 in ECBs every four times you shop and have it scanned. Though I'm not sure why I need two tags, since you can only have one tag scanned per day, from what I can understand. Maybe it's one scan per tag per day? Anyway, I used $1.98 in ECB, so I only paid tax for them.

Lastly, I went to Western Beef, a supermarket chain with 20 stores in the New York City area and one store here in South Florida. They specialize in meat - they have a walk-in freezer room - and vegetables. The meat deals seem good, but since I buy kosher meat, I don't buy meat there. Instead I bought milk at $2.50 a gallon, eggs, and a bunch of different vegetables.

I came home and totaled my purchases. I was excited that I had spent $60.21, only 21 cents over my budget! Woohoo! But then I remembered the Sunday trip to Publix. Oops. So all told, I spent $67.04, $7.04 over budget, but $23 less than my usual budget and much less than my pre-coupon spending of $150-$200 per week (and I thought I was frugal then!).

Here's a list of my purchases. Thanks to Michelle at I Heart Publix for the original spreadsheet, which I've modified a bit.

Product	Quantity	Price	Total	- Coupon	TOTAL	Details

Publix
milk	1	$3.19	$3.19		$3.19
bananas	2.39	$0.69	$1.65		$1.65
bread	1	$1.99	$1.99		$1.99

Walmart
brown sugar	2	$0.92	$1.84	$0.50	$1.34	11/15 RP
vanilla	1	$1.88	$1.88		$1.88
GV Parmesan	1	$2.50	$2.50		$2.50
GV fluoride rinse	1	$2.78	$2.78		$2.78
bread	2	$1.97	$3.94		$3.94
GV tortillas	1	$0.92	$0.92		$0.92
tax			$0.17		$0.17

Walgreens
Kotex pads	2	$3.00	$6.00	$2.00	$4.00	$4 RR – 1/10 SS
Kotex tampons	2	$3.00	$6.00	$1.50	$4.50	1/10 SS
tax			$0.72		$0.72

Publix			$0.00		$0.00
Kraft cheese	2	$3.99	$7.98	$1.00	$6.98	1/3 SS (Publix)
Peter Pan PB	2	$1.30	$2.59	$0.50	$2.09	1/10 SS
Goodnites	1	$15.99	$15.99	$4.00	$11.99	flyer coupon, IP
$2/$20				$2.00	-$2.00	Publix calendar
tax			$0.96		$0.96

CVS
green bag tags	2	$0.99	$1.98		$1.98	$1 ECB
tax			$0.12		$0.12
ECBs				$1.98	-$1.98

Western Beef
milk	2	$2.50	$5.00		$5.00
eggs	1	$1.19	$1.19		$1.19
mozzarella cheese	1	$1.50	$1.50		$1.50
peppers	1.22	$0.69	$0.84		$0.84
zucchini	0.91	$1.29	$1.17		$1.17
scallions	2	$0.40	$0.80		$0.80
apples	1	$2.99	$2.99		$2.99
bananas	1.42	$0.49	$0.70		$0.70
eggplant	0.89	$1.29	$1.15		$1.15
garlic	1	$1.29	$1.29		$1.29
parsley	1	$0.69	$0.69		$0.69

Total Out-of-Pocket					$67.04

Check out the following to see how others shopped this week!

What deals have you found this week? Post a link to your blog entry below. Please leave a link to the post itself. I'd appreciate it if you would put a link in your post to my post as well. If you don't have a blog, leave a note in the comments!