Grocery Spending: August Round-Up

So, here we are at the end of August. Oy! This past Sunday was my 3rd week of couponing to help reduce our monthly grocery budget.  Since it was the last week in the month, I had planned for this week to be the "freezer week."  Meaning, mainly eating meals that I had froze earlier in the month, or using ingredients (mostly meats) that were previously froze.  I did want to get one fresh meal this week, so this is our meal plan:

Monday: Shrimp rolls (think Lobster Rolls, but with shrimp) with chips - Fresh
Tuesday: Spaghetti with meat sauce (meat was frozen, sauce and noodles from pantry), garlic bread (bought, frozen) and salad (fresh)
Wednesday: Chicken enchiladas. Chicken is coming from the freezer, just had to buy some sauce, cheese and tortillas.  This will yield one batch for dinner and another for a future freezer meal
Thursday: South of the Border Quiche (freezer) with salad (fresh).

For this week's shopping trip I had a whole stack of coupons ready to use, but it turned out that the generic brand prices beat my coupon prices so I think I only used 1 coupon this week.  Since so many of the meals were already in the freezer, this was a very light week - as was the plan. 

This week's deals:

Safeway Brand Mexican Cheese: Original Price = $2.99
E-coupon: -$1
Total Cost: $1.99, Savings of $1


Mama Bella Brand Frozen Garlic Bread (2 loaves): Original Price = $4.29
On sale for: $2.99
Manuf. coupon: -.50
Doubled: -.50
Total Cost: $1.99, Savings of $2.30

Shrimp: Original Price = $5.06
On sale for: $3.22
Savings of $1.84

Told ya there was nothing exciting this week...


Total Cost Before Coupons: $54.41
Total amount of coupons and e-coupons: $2.00 (ha!)
Loyalty card savings: $13.70
Total Savings: $15.70


Total Cost: $38.71

Total Savings: 30%

AUGUST TOTALS:

Week 1 (hadn't started couponing yet) = $85.34
Week 2 (couponing begins!) = $64.21
Week 3 = $56.08
Incidental (Tide was on sale Friday only for $5, I had a $1 off coupon, so I made a special trip) = $4.00
Week 4 = $38.71

GRAND TOTAL FOR AUGUST: $248.34

Compared to July ($430.84): Reduced our grocery spending by $182.50!!
42% Reduction thanks to couponing and freezer meals!

Let's hope September brings some great deals and we can keep this up. And for fun, here is a picture of what it looks like when I plan for the week.  Surrounded by grocery ads, my coupon stack, my grocery list, a cookbook and my computer to look up e-coupons. Takes about 2 hours to complete my list.