May 6, 2022

April 2022 Spending Wrap Up

April 2022 was an interesting month for our grocery spending. We started out the month strong staying within our $600 budget but then life happened and we ended up going over it by quite a bit. We ended up spending close to what we normally spend every month but we did have some extenuating circumstances such as switching too healthier eating, Easter and our son changing up his preferred foods mid way through the month.

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Groceries

Our first haul was pretty simple and full of necessities. We were out of basics like cheese and peanut butter. I also picked up a ham for Easter and vitamins we were out of. The jam and English muffins were purely for my husband and daughter. We still have three of the English muffin packages in the freezer but the jam is mostly gone. My husband loves strawberry jam! We ended up putting this ham in the freezer too since I found a couple of others for a cheaper price. Mother’s day is this weekend and we are celebrating on Saturday. I am not sure what we are having for lunch but it will be small since it will most likely only be my mom coming over.

Grocery Haul

Our second haul was a little bit larger. I went to Winco for the first time in a long time and found some fabulous deals on vegetables and some pantry basics. I also stopped at business Costco and found a better deal on a ham and chocolate milk. We don’t go to business Costco very often and I won’t be back for a while. I may start shopping at Winco for produce though since we got some awesome deals. Costco produce has gone way up in price over the last six months and sometimes we don’t eat it all since there are such large containers. I never buy grapes at Costco for example since we never eat them all. I have found that Target surprisingly has the best grapes in a container the size we will actually eat so I will pick them up if I am in there for something else.

Washable Reusable Grocery Bags (these have held up super well!)

We completed our third grocery haul in the middle of April. For this trip we went to Costco and Fred Meyer mostly for some Easter items. I found a fabulous deal on another ham, let the kids pick out some fruit and bought some items for the seniors we support through our Buy Nothing group. Although this was a smaller haul we still ended up spending quite a bit of money.

golden beet

Golden Beets

On April 20th I ended up going to Safeway for some healthier groceries and to fill in some holes with items for the kids. They also had a great deal on chocolate milk and beef. We got a gallon of chocolate milk but did not end up getting ground beef from them. We bought some chuck from Fred Meyer instead and ground it ourselves. With the frequent recalls on ground beef we feel much more comfortable buying meat and grinding it ourselves. We have done this for years and I only recently was buying ground beef from the store. This haul probably wasn’t all the way necessary and I think this is where our grocery spending got a little bit out of hand. I am proud that we ate much healthier for the next week or two but I might have been able to make do with what we had for some of it. We are almost done with the chocolate milk. Like I have said before we don’t drink a lot of milk and one of my kids will only drink chocolate sometimes. We take the approach of fed is best with our kids and if the only way we can get calcium in them is with chocolate milk so be it. I just reduce their sugar intake in other ways and it evens out.

Grocery Haul

We did another big Costco haul on 04.29.22 which also included some smaller trips to Grocery Outlet and Whole Foods. Costco was mostly to stock up on some items we were low on like eggs, chicken and produce. We also went to Grocery Outlet searching for fig bars and were not successful but did find some great deals on crackers and I was talked into Kool Aid by my son. I bought some produce at Whole Foods when I stopped their for gluten-free baked goods for the teachers during teacher appreciation week. Some of these items were definitely over the top and this Costco trip was shockingly expensive at over $400. We did buy dog food, TP and a new dog bed which was not included in our grocery total but for what we bought we really didn’t get a lot of food. Prices have gone up considerably and we have had to switch to non-organic produce for some of the items we are buying to reduce our costs. Sugar in particular was way more expensive than I remember. It was a good thing I bought both because we were almost out when I checked at home.

Grocery Haul

We snuck one last grocery haul under the wire on 04.30.22 when we stopped at Fred Meyer to once again look for fig bars for our son. We found fabulous deals on macaroni and cheese and Luna bars and some replacement rosemary plants for the ones that were damaged during our snowy winter. I also bought goldfish since Costco was out and sunflower seeds since I have been having a hard time finding these and I was getting low. I have been needing to go to multiple stores for snack items like fig bars and crackers since supply chains seem to be more inconsistent.

Cabbage and Peppers.

Our total ended up being over $1100 just for food items. I did not get everything we bought on camera but I was able to add them all to our total which ended up being close to what we have been spending the past six months or so. We have been consistently up from the $800 or so we were spending every month last spring and in 2020. Groceries have massively gone up in price and it is definitely affecting our budget.

Roasted vegetables.

I chronicled our spending on our YouTube channel and watching our grocery hauls over the course of the month was pretty eye opening for me. Our goal for May is to do as close to a no spend month as possible but we do have Mother’s Day and a family birthday to contend with. We are also trying to go camping over Memorial Day weekend and possibly have people over so I am not sure if we can do a true no spend month but if we can cut our spending down to the 600 goal for April I will be happy with it.

How has your grocery spending changed over the past year?