$50/Week on Groceries? Yep!

When Jim lost his job back in March, to say we had a small sense of panic is an understatement. It left us with his weekly unemployment check, a shadow of his former paycheck, and my part-time job with Disney. So many things went through my head as I tried to figure out how we would pay the mortgage, the bills and eat. Eating a gluten-free diet isn't the cheapest way to eat ... or so I thought.

I've been asked many times since March how we managed to eat, and eat well on only $50/week. That's all our remaining funds could handle and still afford the litany of things life demands. Budgeting took on a whole new sense of urgency.

Now that he's employed again, we have eased up a bit, but still choose to allot $50/week for groceries supplemented with a once a month shopping spree of about $100. Gone are the days of stockpiling food in the pantry and freezer. We're just the two of us now and a full cabinet is money. When living check-to-check and week-by-week, 10 cans of tomato sauce could easily translate into a couple dollars of gas to get us through. Crazy, but when funds are limited, we had to change how we looked at everything.

It's an adventure. That's the positive spin I put on it to keep myself from going crazy with worry. We now get kind of excited over finding really good deals at the grocery store. One of the best Jim found was a decent-sized ham (think holiday size) for only $.29. Yep! It was priced incorrectly ... obviously ... but the manager let him have it for that. We were so excited and I can't tell you how many meals we got out of that ham all the way down to pea soup using the bone. :D

Today Jim went up to Stop & Shop and came home with almost $40 of meat for $20! Imagine the excitement to know we just got six meals for $20! We'll make soup with one of the chickens which will really stretch this to more than six meals. This alone comes out to about $3/meal for the meat. Fortunately we have other stuff in the freezer to mix up the protein a little more, but this is exciting!

To make it even better, if you look at the receipt you'll see that our savings totaled more than our actual cost. Whoohoooo! Now we have $30 left for vegetables, etc.

Unfortunately, Stop & Shop doesn't have the best prices on all things. That's another thing we learned during our unemployment ordeal. 

Our grocery shopping day starts with the meats that are on sale at Stop & Shop. We then head to PriceRite in Worcester for the biggest portion of our shopping. While not the fanciest place, and ya hafta bag your own groceries (but who cares about that), the prices are unbeatable. On most items, their prices beat S&S.

While the fresh produce is priced well below S&S and is a good purchase, their fruit tends to spoil quickly. While a good price, unless you're eating it within a day or two of purchase, it's a waste of money. We have recently decided to not buy fruit from PriceRite any more and now go to the fresh produce stand. A&R on Worcester Street rocks.

We also hit the Dollar store for some items. So our grocery trip looks like this --

1) Stop & Shop (Grafton) for sale meats.
2) Dollar Tree (Worcester) for various items.
3) Price Rite (Worcester) for veggies, bread, milk, pasta, potatoes, etc.
4) A&R (Worcester) for fresh fruit.

Prior to any of this, we make a menu for the week so we don't go shopping without having a clue of what's needed.

If I got into couponing, I'm certain we could save even more. For now, we're quite happy with where we are. For those that have asked, hope this helps. For those that didn't, hope you got something from it. :)