July's Grocery List

Brian and I are debating on whether we should include Costco in July's food budget or June's food budget. We technically BOUGHT it in June but all that food was for July.... But if it counts for June our total would be about $350 if it counts in July the total is $330. Brian has been budgeting $400 for meals so we are doing pretty well.

We do eat out each Saturday (once a week is a big change for us) and SOMETIMES on Sundays but both those times it is for lunch which of course keeps cost down. On average it is less then $30 for both of us tax and tip included (some days more, some less). I guess we could cut that out (we have enough left overs to feed us for both those days) but that is the one thing we do each week that is fun. We don't go to the movies, or shopping (last Saturday was the first in years for me and Brian outside of him getting work clothes) or anything like that. We want to save money but we don't want to be hermits when we don't have too.

Anyway, of course we couldn't/can't get everything at Costco so that did involve Food Lion. We had to split it up into two trips. One trip for the first week and the second trip for the last three weeks. We couldn't get a whole month right after going to Costco.

I accidentally threw out the first weeks receipt and the months grocery list so I will be sparing you with what we actually bought but I think we did well.

The first trio we only spent about $40 dollars (that $40 didn't even come out of our pocket, we had a $25 Visa gift card and I had $13 in cash from cab tips). The second trip we spent $112. We did get a few things extra like Ice cream and 2 pizza's (we got 4 things free if we bought two frozen pizza's that we could use when we have game night), a box of energy drinks for Brian (his version of coffee) but even with that our total is $152 which is about $30 dollars less then last months. And saving $30 is saving $30 and we didn't have any coupons this time!

Hopefully August turns out to be the same or better! I think part of why July was less then June is that we had more things left over from June to use in July that we didn't have to buy. I am thinking about getting the Sunday paper so I can get the coupons. I am not going to become a Extreme Couponer but I usually can use some of the coupons out of the paper which would take care of the cost of the Sunday paper and save us a little more as well. Plus I could get more organized. I do still end up buying things that we already have. Like Rosemary this trip. We now have three rosemary's because I keep looking, can't find it and put it on the list. I think one of our Christmas List items this year is a new spice rack to help organize them because we have more spices then we have room for.