I’m documenting what I’m buying each week and how much everything costs. This post covers the July 21st to July 30th and a total for July (I won’t be purchasing groceries today or tomorrow).
My 2025 Shopping Rules
I went into detail on what my new shopping rules will be in this post and this post, but in short, my initial goal was to keep purchases for food and household goods to $190 per week with 2 caveats. Then it was to keep purchases for food to $190 per week. I totally blew that budget in June. If I blow the budget again in July, I guess I’ll have to adjust it upwards again? I’ll have to check and see where we are in terms of the USDA food spending guide.
The caveats: We make most of our meat and seafood purchases from Butcher Box throughout the year. We also make sporadic larger bulk purchases from Azure Standard to save money over what we can buy in the grocery store. I currently contribute $350 per month in a separate fund for these purchases.
As a recap, I spent $256.67 for the first 8 days of July. I spent $194.40 for the second week of July. For July 14th to 21st, we spent $241.70. That brought our running total to $692.77 for the first 20 days of July.
As a reminder, we hosted our uncles for dinner on the 25th, so we spent extra to prepare for that. Although, we had tons of food leftover, which meant I didn’t have to cook much after that. Mr. FF took Master FF to Colorado to pack up his apartment (his lease was up) and put everything in storage, so it was just me and Miss FF at home from the 26th to the 29th. We primarily ate leftovers or repurposed leftovers (think chicken tacos and steak and cheese quesadillas).
What We Bought
Discount Grocery Store ($44.47 Spent)
- 1 brie cheese ($2.99)
- 3 Avocados ($4.50)
- 4 Glutino gluten free pretzels ($0.99 each)
- 1 Starbucks Cold Brew Concentrate ($6.99)
- 1 Gluten Free Mission Tortillas ($5.29)
- 24 pack of La Croix ($10.29 plus $1.20 CRV)
- 1 Lucky Charms cereal ($4.99)
- 1 pound of butter ($4.19)
- 1 Sea Salt Popcorn ($1.99)
- 2 Harvest Snaps Freeze Dried Grapes ($1.49 each)
I used the $5 off coupon I got last week.
Trader Joe’s Trip 1 ($24.44 Spent)
I don’t have a picture, because this was a shopping trip that Miss FF requested for a beach day. This is what she got:
- Cold Brew concentrate ($5.49 plus $0.10 CRV) – this wasn’t for the beach, she just got excited by the price and picked some up.
- Prepared Wrap for lunch ($4.99)
- Fresh pineapple chunks ($3.99)
- Sunscreen ($8.99)
Obviously sunscreen isn’t food, but I’m not going to subtract it from the total.
Trader Joe’s Trip 2 ($154.45 Spent)
This was the shopping trip where I picked up some stuff I needed for the dinner party. We only had 2 steaks left in our deep freezer from Butcher Box, so I picked up 4 more.
What We Bought:
- Dill Pickle Popcorn ($2.29)
- 2 packages of steaks ($15.11 and $16.37, respectively)
- Eggs ($4.99)
- Hot Honey Popcorn ($2.99) – Side note: this is so good.
- Potato Chips ($2.99)
- Organic Lemonade ($3.29 plus $0.10 CRV)
- 2 Honey Greek Yogurt ($5.49 each)
- Cold Brew Concentrate ($5.49 plus $0.10 CRV)
- Gallon of Organic Milk ($6.49)
- 2 pounds of Pazazz Apples ($2.99)
- 2 pounds of Pink Lady Apples ($3.99)
- Half and Half ($3.49)
- Crumbled feta ($3.29)
- Gluten free sliced bread ($4.99) – best price I’ve seen. I’m getting all of my bread from TJ’s from now on.
- GF Bagels ($4.99)
- 2 GF hamburger buns ($4.99 each) – the softest, biggest, most like regular hamburger buns I’ve ever had.
- 2 Kimbap Korean Seaweed and Rice Rolls for the kids ($3.99 each)
- Romaine hearts ($2.99)
- Frozen green beans ($2.49)
- Frozen peas ($1.79)
- Frozen ginger cubes ($2.69) – I’ve been out for a while and these are so convenient.
- Mini-bell peppers ($3.99)
- 2 shredded hash browns ($2.49 each)
- 2 sliced cheeses ($4.49 each)
- Bananas ($1.45)
- 2 pounds of plums ($4.49)
- I thought it would be nice to have flowers on the table, so I got a seasonal bouquet for $6.99.
Ralphs ($40.01)
I sent Miss FF to the store, so she picked these up. There was a “deal” on our favorite gluten free crackers and the other items we needed for our dinner party (they weren’t available at Trader Joe’s).
What we bought:
- 2 Bubly ($3.99 each plus $0.40 CRV each)
- Lea and Perrins Worcestershire Sauce ($7.99 – objectively insane for the tiny bottle I got. Costco is definitely the way to go on this, but I didn’t have the time or energy to make a Costco run.)
- Kroger gluten free cream of mushroom soup ($1.39 each)
- 4 boxes of gluten free crackers ($3.79 each — I’m just now seeing that the digital coupon I had did not apply. This is the second time this has happened.)
- Apparently Miss FF also got a can of Red Bull ($3.00 plus $0.05 CRV)
Uber Eats Last Minute Delivery ($23.47 Spent)
Miss FF forgot to pickup Coke and Diet Coke at Ralph’s (my uncles’ drinks of choice) and they were due to arrive any minute, so I used an Uber Eats promo code to get some. My son really enjoys Dr. Pepper, so I picked up a couple for him.
Dinner Party
I didn’t get a picture, but in case you’re interested, here’s what we served for the dinner party:
- Mr. FF grilled steaks and chicken thighs
- I made a super simple potato casserole that feeds a million people. It’s delicious and leftovers are even better. It literally takes less than 10 minutes to assemble.
- A fresh salad with tomatoes and cucumber from my balcony garden.
- I made a double batch of snickerdoodle cookies last week and froze half of them. I froze the dough balls, so all I had to do was roll them in cinnamon sugar I had already made and popped them in the oven so they were freshly baked.
I sent my uncles home with the remaining Cokes and Diet Cokes, and some cookies.
July Totals
I spent $286.84 this week on groceries (of that $16 was flowers and sunscreen). Added to the $692.77 from prior weeks in July, this brings our monthly total to $979.61. I’m going to have to do a deeper analysis of our grocery budget and adjust accordingly. $760 a month is no longer feasible I guess.
I hope you have a great rest of the week. May you find some epic sales.
*Some links in this post may be affiliate links. You are not charged for using an affiliate link. If you use my link, I earn a small commission, which I can use to offset the administrative costs of this blog. If you use my links, thank you.
Frugal Forward 
Leave a comment