I’m a PhD Student and My Husband Is a Training Supervisor — We Spent $150 on Our Weekly Grocery Haul and Came in $25 Under Budget

Name: Lainey
Location: Denver, CO
Number of people in household: 3; me, my husband, and our toddler
Age: 32
Occupation: I’m a PhD Student and my husband is a Night Training Supervisor
Where you shopped: King Soopers and Walmart
Weekly grocery budget: $175
Amount spent: $150.48

King Soopers, a supermarket chain located mostly in Colorado (with one location in Wyoming) and Walmart. I also already had other staples already on hand (i.e., olive oil) from Costco.

Meal plan, shop online, and compare prices! Every week, I plan out the meals for each day. Then, I’ll grocery shop online at both King Soopers and Walmart simultaneously, comparing which store has the cheaper items on our list. Often, King Soopers has cheaper produce, and Walmart will have cheaper rice, beans, and canned goods. Doing this saves me a few dollars each week, which adds up over the month and the year.

I also take advantage of the deals from weekly ads and online coupons at King Soopers. I’ll stock up on items I regularly use, even if they aren’t part of the meal plan for that particular week.

Although I spent $150 on groceries this week, my actual budget is a bit larger. I aim to spend about $175/week (or $700/month). Being under my weekly budget allows for me to do a monthly Costco run for staples like olive oil, nuts, oats, etc. 

Every few months, I also make a Trader Joe’s run, and purchase beef from a local farm every eight to 10 months. We buy in increments of 1/8 or 1/4 of the cow and store it in our freezer. The cost ends up being about $5/pound, regardless of cut, and we take pleasure in knowing exactly where our beef comes from.

I pull recipes from a variety of sources: select food sites (like The Kitchn!), blogs, Pinterest, Instagram, and my own tried-and-true favorites. Because I enjoy cooking and trying new recipes, I often opt for whatever looks fun and novel. 

Using the Apple Notes app, I pick recipes for each day and place it in a grid with URL links. Any leftovers are our lunches for the week. Sometimes, the schedule changes; I’m too tired to cook or we get invited to someone’s house for dinner. In those cases, I just readjust my meal plan for the week and push a recipe to the following week. 

This week, I didn’t end up making Tuesday’s raspberry chocolate bites, Thursday’s frittata, Saturday’s cabbage salad with teriyaki chicken, or the quinoa granola bars for snack, so I will simply roll those over to the next week.

Walmart

• Olive oil cooking spray, $4.84
• 1 pound dry chickpeas, $1.46
• Unsweetened applesauce, $3.12
• Salsa, $2.54
• Everything bagel seasoning, $2.12
• 3 cans coconut milk, $5.22
• Organic baby spinach, $4.98
• Ginger root, $0.84
• Red cabbage, $1.66
• 4 organic bell peppers, $6.92
• Green leaf lettuce, $1.97
• 5 Roma tomatoes, $1.45
• 5 small avocados, $3.86
• Avocado, $1.06
• Strawberries, $2.13
• Cherries, $6.40 
• Clementines, $6.98 
• Fresh thyme, $1.78
• Greek yogurt, $5.18
• 2 bags frozen riced cauliflower, $4.34

Total: $68.85

King Soopers

• 2 English cucumbers, $2.00
• 8 bananas, $2.10
• Lemon, $0.50
• Organic blackberries, $3.99
• Organic raspberries, $3.19
• Green cabbage, $2.94
• Boneless skinless chicken breasts, $19.11
• 2 jalapeño peppers, $0.39
• Whole milk, $3.19
• Frozen wild-caught salmon fillets, $13.99
• Half-and-half, $1.99
• 3 mild cheddar cheese blocks, $5.00
• Peanut butter, $2.29
• Salted butter, $2.99
• Gruyère cheese block, $1.99
• Sesame hamburger buns, $2.99
• Sourdough bread, $4.99
• Ancient grain naan, $3.49
• Alfalfa sprouts, $5.00

Total: $81.63 (includes 50-cent coupon)

Our toddler eats the same things we do with minimal exception. We want to expose him to many different foods. All three of us eat avocado toast for breakfast. 

For lunch, we have a hodgepodge of leftovers from the previous week, including pork, chicken, Parmesan snap peas, and radish crostini. In the afternoon, our toddler snacks on a banana with peanut butter and flaxseed (a longtime favorite of his). 

For dinner, we eat cheeseburgers with baked cabbage, carrot fries, and a salad. I love making homemade french fries, but carrot fries are a new recipe, and a total winner! We all loved it. We end with vanilla ice cream (bought the previous week) with strawberries for dessert. 

My toddler’s favorite breakfast is oatmeal. I doctor it up with chia seeds, flaxseeds, peanut butter, half-and-half, maple syrup, and banana. I pre-soak the oatmeal (per this tip!) and it makes the oats so creamy. Game-changer! I usually make one cup of oats and it feeds all three of us for breakfast, often with leftovers. 

I knew we would have a late lunch that day because we were going swimming with a friend, so I grab a snack bar for my baby to have later that morning. 

For lunch, we eat a Mediterranean-themed veggie sandwich. (My son’s is “deconstructed”).

Dinner is cauliflower tacos, rice, beans, and a corn dip with tortilla chips. The rice, and many of my pantry items used, were purchased from previous weeks when they were on sale at King Soopers. 

Breakfast is plain Greek yogurt with peanut butter mixed in. 

We are going for a hike in the mountains today so we packed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, nuts, and clementines for lunch. (I’m pro-duff cut, for sure!) Perhaps you’re seeing the theme, but we eat a lot of peanut butter at our house! I used to blend my own peanut butter in the Vitamix from salted peanuts and coconut oil because I wanted a peanut butter with minimal ingredients. However, I discovered that the Kroger natural brand peanut butter is cheaper, only contains peanuts, and is much less work. A win! 

After a long hike, we simply ate leftover cheeseburgers for dinner. 

My son and I eat peanut butter toast for breakfast and leftover cauliflower tacos for lunch. 

My toddler also snacks on some Cheerios in the afternoon. 

Here is where our menu becomes a bit confusing because my husband works the graveyard shift. On the days he works, I pack him with a substantial meal that needs heating (beef and cauliflower rice skillet this week), a veggie sandwich that he can eat on the run, and various snacks (clementines, nuts, and sometimes a baked good like banana bread). Because he sleeps all day and wakes up in the evening, I make breakfast food for our dinner and his “breakfast.”

For dinner (my husband’s “breakfast,”) I make Scottish oatcakes (a type of pancake made with oats) and scrambled eggs with leftover ham and whatever veggies I have in the fridge. I usually buy the oats in bulk at Costco.

My toddler and I have Greek yogurt with peanut butter and flaxseed, as well as peanut butter toast for breakfast. 

For lunch, we have a salad with chicken. My son has elements of the salad without lettuce (tomato, chicken, etc.). I like to make my own vinaigrette. 

For dinner, I make breakfast burritos and a berry smoothie. By no means are we vegetarian, but my husband likes to read books and listen to podcasts on health and longevity. As a result of his research, I cook vegetarian meals periodically throughout the week. Breakfast for dinner makes this easy, as eggs and beans are great protein!

Again, my husband has a veggie sandwich and a skillet meal during his night shift.

Breakfast is toast with peanut butter. Lunch is a veggie sandwich for my son and me. 

I forgot about a church BBQ when meal planning for the week so for dinner, we go over to our friends’ house for hamburgers, hotdogs, watermelon, salad, chips, and cookies. I make high-altitude-adjusted chocolate chip cookies. My cookie-making in the “Mile High City” (Denver) has been a process, starting with pancake-flat and brittle-hard cookies, to finally soft and scrumptious cookies.

Once again, my husband had a veggie sandwich and a skillet meal during his night shift. 

We eat leftover breakfast burritos for breakfast. 

For lunch, we eat chicken sandwiches and some leftover sides. (We use up the buns from the cheeseburgers earlier in the week). 

We had invited my in-laws over for dinner, and that evening I made coconut chicken curry with rice and whole-grain naan for us all. I hate wasting food, so I try to use up ingredients left over from previous meals. For example, in this meal, I use the remaining half of a jar of green curry paste. 

At Kitchn we believe setting a food budget for you and your family is an essential part in getting your financial life in order. Don’t know where to start? We have a guide for that. Want to share your Grocery Diary with Kitchn? See how here.