Grocery Budget Update

The flu bug has hit my husband and now my son, so my postings may be delayed...

I'm really glad February is the shortest month of the year because I have been blowing through my grocery budget and we aren't even two weeks into the month! Did you see my Albertson's trip here, taking advantage of the double coupons? Well, Fred Meyer was having an oatmeal sale that I simply could not pass up.


Some background on our oatmeal purchases: My 4-year old son LOVES oatmeal for breakfast and he eats it nearly every morning. BUT he only likes 2 flavors of the Quaker instant oatmeal: maple & brown sugar or cinnamon roll. You know my Costco-loyalist husband, right? He buys the jumbo 55 pack of Quaker oatmeal at Costco for $9.99 ($.18 per packet). He and I end up forcing down the Regular and Apple flavors that are left over and we still have a ton leftover every time. It seemed like a lot of waste to me and frankly, my stocking up lately has left little room in our pantry for items that aren't being used immediately.


The Fred Meyer brand of oatmeal is on sale this week 10 for $10 so I was able to buy all Maple & Brown Sugar flavor for only $.10 per packet! No more leftovers here.

Here's what I got:

5 boxes (10 packets in each box) Oatmeal $1 each with store coupon
Bananas $1.30

Total OOP: $6.30

I had $69.12 left in my budget, less the Albertson's trip ($19.96), less the FM trip ($6.30) leaves me $42.86 for the remainder of the month. Not as bad as I thought - I can do this!