How To Prepare For A Monthly Grocery Restock | This skill has saved me hundreds!

what's up everybody welcome back to Simply Breeze um so today is Thursday and it is after work um I worked from home but I'm in just regular chill sweatpants it works but it's like know what time it is it's after 5: um so today what we're going to do is we need to go grocery shopping this weekend payday was yesterday and so this weekend we're going to go grocery shopping I know there's a couple of things that we definitely need but what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through the kitchen I'm going to go through my freezers and kind of just look and see what it is that we're out of I know for certain that if I don't have a list I'm going to forget it if I forget to put it on the list it's also probably going to be forgotten with that I currently know we are out of chicken we are out of pork we need some fresh fruit we need fresh veggies couple frozen veggies nothing serious okay so now I'm going to go look around everything in the house and in our freezers and I will be back to tell you what I have found and what I've discovered and then what I'm going to plan on doing for making sure I'm as prepared as possible for grocery shopping this weekend so I'll be back okay so I also think I need some coconut milk I need cheese um pasta we need spaghetti noodles and regular noodles we're at of we are very low on ramen noodles my fiance wants cheesy crackers um we're out officially out of breakfast sausage okay so we need breakfast sausage what else do we need I literally just look through everything oh I need collagen need collagen we need eggs coffee and I think that's it and then I have between now and this weekend when I go shopping if there's anything else that pops into my mind for me to prep and get ready then I can just add it onto my list and that way I'm prepared um so the next thing I do to prep for grocery shopping is I go ahead and I set my budget okay so I because I've been doing this for so long I now know how much on average my fiance and I need to spend a month to feed ourselves okay and that generally does not include protein um and I'm talking meat protein because my fiance got an elk in October so we have El about half of an elk in the Frid freezers um we have what's left of our half of a cow from almost 2 years ago we still have steaks and ground meat and roasts um and we fish so we have fish in the freezer as well what we don't have is I know we don't have pork and we don't have chicken and I currently haven't found a good source for those for me to Source elsewhere so I generally get those at either my local grocery store or at Costco depending on who has the better deal when I go shopping um but I also o buy in bulk so I don't generally have to get pork or chicken every month so on the months that I know I need to get some an animal meat protein I usually have to adjust my budget accordingly but on the we months that I know I don't need to purchase a lot of animal meat protein my budget can be much lower um but generally my fiance and I can spend anywhere between $150 to $300 some sometimes $400 depending on how much meat we're actually getting um but because we're getting pork and we're getting chicken I am estimating our grocery bill to be around $300 I'll probably give myself a little bit of wiggle room so I'll probably put like 325 um and when I write my monthly budget my grocery bill is one of the first things that I budget for because feeding us is important to me so I always budget for the groceries near the top after I budget for rent after I budget for gas for my car I don't pay on my car we own all of our cars outright so no car payments need to be factored in um so things like that but then the groceries come next so I set my budget once I have set my budget I have gone ahead and grabbed my local grocery store ads we get these in the mail for the two closest local grocery stores to us um they are for me personally they're Safeway king supers and so I'll just compare and contrast these two ads to kind of see who's having the better deals and generally I'll just go to one um because I don't find it worth it to go to both just because I kind of have to like go in opposite directions to get to them so generally Whoever has the most deals or who Whoever has the most better deals I'll generally go to that grocery store okay also if you don't get grocery ads in the mail another thing that you can do is download their app I can almost guarantee nowadays every single grocery store has an app there's an app for that for anything nowadays so if you haven't done it already just get the app the app tells you what coupons are on sale any sort of discounts you can look up items specifically to see if it's on sale see if it's in stock um so I highly recommend you look at your grocery store ads you get the app on your phone it's really convenient I really like having the app on my phone as well because sometimes I for forget to clip a coupon and if I'm entering the grocery store I'll clip the coupon right there it's already associated with my account and I'm set to go just making sure I get the best bank for my book that way so why is this important why am I walking you through how to prep and plan for a grocery store it is May it is officially May which means high schoolers are graduating from high school some of you are graduating from college like these are Big Milestones these are big things but a lot of times it means you are becoming an adult you're about to venture out on your own maybe you've always had a roommate or maybe you lived in the dorms or maybe you were living at home now is the time that you need to know how to shop for yourself how to feed yourself how to stay within budget and how to do it without breaking the bank and making sure that you're doing it as efficiently as possible with a list with a plan knowing what your deals are okay so this is especially important for anyone who is just now going out on their own who hasn't had to do any sort of grocery shopping for themselves on this scale because I tell you what when I first moved out on my own it was after college I lived at home all through college which was a blessing however I didn't take full I should have done better financially and I made some poor decisions but that's not the point here the point is I lived at home and so I didn't have to do the majority of the grocery shopping I'd go to the grocery store if there was like something special I wanted but generally I didn't have to go to the grocery store grocery shopping for the first time for myself one I spent way too much money I bought way too much food and that resulted in a lot of food waste okay so that that's why I'm telling you this you're going to kind of go through a shock thinking you need all this food and then you're going to quickly realize you probably overspent you overp purchased and now you don't know what to do with everything that you have so this is this is why I'm telling you have a plan and I'm going to kind of lay it out for you or I'm kind of explaining to you what it is that I do because this really helped me out narrow down what it is that I needed sometimes it helps me to have meal ideas in hand other times I think it's really important to get Basics pasta any variety of noodles you can use in a lot of things with the exception of making lasagna you can use most other noodles in a variety of ways so I like to get Staples I just get some fresh fruit for eating I like to have frozen veggies on hand I like to have pasta on hand I like to have a block of cheese that way I don't necessarily need to buy sliced and shredded if I just get a block of cheese I can make my own sliced I can make my own shredded cheese I don't need to pay the premium for pre-sliced and pre-shredded cheese okay so now that I've I'm going to compare and contrast all of my stores I know for a fact there are certain things on this list Costco is the best deal and so I'm going to write that next to it my coffee Costco 100% the coffee is always a better deal for us at Costco the one that we get we get a locally um roasted coffee and it is by far cheaper at Costco than it is at the local grocery store my eggs are going to be much cheaper at Costco I like to get five dozen eggs just because I like to do things like make breakfast burritos make breakfast sandwiches make hard boiled eggs and I just eat a lot of eggs for breakfast in the morning and a dozen I'm going to have to go to the grocery store every week I'm not about that I don't I don't need that stress I need to stay out of the grocery store so I spend less money if you know you know so my collagen is also much much cheaper at Costco and I will go and do a comparison and I'll explain that to you once I've already gone to the grocery store um or I'll do a voice over while I'm showing you the haul but my Costco on average tends to be I get more for Less so I generally get my cost my collagen at Costco um my breakfast sausage is generally I'm going to put that in air quotes So generally it's cheaper at Costco to get breakfast sausage however there have been a few instances if my local grocery store is really running a good sale or if they've got things marked down that they just need to get out usually then the grocery store is cheaper um my cheese so because I get blocks of cheese at Costco the block of cheese that I purchase I get a 2 and 1/2 lb block of cheese and I get it from anywhere between $88.99 to $1.99 the same brand of cheese for 1 PB on average unless my store is really running a really good deal on average for one block of cheese is around $7.99 instantly Costco is the cheaper version or the cheaper option I should say so I wrote that down um and then my pork and my chicken sometimes it is cheaper to get it at Costco sometimes it's cheaper to get it at king supers um I know before I think it was several months ago I went to King Supers for lunch to get like a bag salad and I saw that their whole organic chickens were buy one get one free and so I left the store of four chickens everybody at work thought I was quite hilarious because I was at work and I come rolling in the Flor hole chickens that needed to be refrigerated um but those are the kind of deals that you need to look out for because that was way cheaper than going to Costco cuz I've scouted out the whole chickens at Costco and the price is fair I'm not going to say it's bad the price is relatively fair but the price did not beat a BOGO on whole chickens and then my noodles this time I'm going to get my noodles from Costco as well because I really like this brand that they carry and I get a six-pack of noodles they're organic noodles and I just I think for the quality that I get I definitely like the Costco brand better and I have noticed that pasta prices are starting to increase I used to be able to get pasta for a dollar it's now $2 on average sometimes it's $150 but when it used to be a dollar and now it's $150 that change it seems kind of insignificant right because we're talking in amount of like 50 cents to a dollar but if you look at it if it goes from a dollar to $150 was a 50% increase if it goes to a dollar to to $2 that's 100% increase right it doubled it went up twice as much or yeah it's twice as much and so you also have to kind of look at it that way um the cheesec crackers I know I'm going to get at my local grocery store my ramen noodles are found at Costco they're they're not a good deal at my local grocery store either um my frozen veggies generally my grocery store has a good deal on veggies and then it looks like grocery stores are also running a good deal on fruit as well so you guys ready for this my local grocery store is in fact I'm really see this is why I do this because sometimes the deals are right here they're doing BOGO I I like looked at this page three times and and didn't see this at all um but they're doing a BOGO on it's mix and match buy one get one free Simple Truth natural chicken sale so and it's got a picture of a whole chicken so I am going to see if I can go to my local grocery store on Saturday and see if there's anything left sometimes with these deals the meat department clears out so hopefully we can score some oh that's a great deal I'm really glad I found that um and I don't know if the pork is cheaper because I don't know if I've shown you guys yet but when I shop at Costco I get the really really thick pork tenderloins like pork chops and they're usually about like 2 in thick and I cut them in half and it comes in a package of nine I cut it in half so I end up with 18 pork chops um for the price of nine um okay so we're g to do okay so lastly don't forget your list take a picture of your list this is very very important um but that's this this is generally how I prepare for going to the grocery store this is what I do is I make a list I have a plan in mind I have a budget set I know which grocery store is going to have the best deals and who I want to go to so right now I've narrowed it down to one specific grocery store which for me is my local king supers and I've narrowed it down to Costco because those are the two where I'm going to get the best bang for my buck for these specific items that I'm looking for and to go to two different stores especially like this to me it's worth it um so to me that this this is really worth it but I have a plan now and if anything else anything else that I think of anything my fiance thinks of we will just add to this list like right now as I'm talking to you I remembered my fiance wants lunch meat we're getting into summer we're going to start having lettuce and we've got pickles so I'm going to get us some lunch meat I'm going to make us some sandwich bread and then he can start having sandwiches for lunch as well so I added that to the list and I know exactly where I'm going to get that as well we're going to get it at the local grocery store okay so it's going to take time if you are just now learning how to grocery shop for yourself especially if you're only shopping for one learning to grocery shop for one person one is difficult it's very easy to overspend it's very easy to buy more than you need um so give yourself some Grace when you first start writing your grocery budget go ahead and give yourself more than you originally anticipate because I will say this I have started spending more and more at the grocery store because $150 does not go as far as it used to okay I used to live off of $150 back when I made far less money and it was far more doable than it is now now if I choose for Reed I to live off $150 to $200 like we are scraping by until the beginning of the month if that's how I chose to break down the budget this particular month um so have a budget also if you're going to the grocery store make sure the money is in your account if you're going to use a debit card two sometimes it's easier if you just pull that money out in cash and you already know hey I can spend this set amount of money that will really keep you from overspending on your groceries because you're going to be very aware of the things that you are putting in your cart and purchasing okay so oh this is annoying okay [Music] so you're going to be very aware of the things that you're putting in your cart what you're purchasing um but that's generally my plan that is how I handle this that is how I go about setting my budget and preparing for this so let me know down below what you are most nervous about if you are just now moving out of your parents house or moving out of the dorms and finally being out on your own what are you most nervous about what is it that you wish you were taught now that this opportunity is presented upon you or if you're already past this life stage share down below what it is that you were taught that really helped you out or what you had to learn so we can help this next generation of young adults moving out into the world and make sure that they are as prepared as possible and are able to afford to feed themselves and they can do it efficiently so now once we go grocery shopping I will show you what it is that we ended up with with and how much we generally spent and hopefully you found this helpful okay what's up everybody um today was grocery shopping day and I went ahead and I planned and I prepped and I prepared for this grocery shopping day I try to do it at the beginning of the month and then sporadically go throughout the month when necessary but I try to get the bulk of it done at the beginning of the month so today what I did is I went to the grocery store with a list I was originally going to go to C however I chose to go to my local king supers first or Kroger um it's got another name I think Fred Meyer um wherever you are but I went to my local grocery store first to see what they had and what they didn't have that way I could get from Costco everything that I couldn't find at king supers and I am 100% happy with that decision because I found the deal again whole chickens on sale buy one get one free I totally took advantage of it and I got myself four whole chickens which is great cuz we are completely out of chicken in the house aside from just chicken wings which we just don't want to eat just chicken wings so I'm really excited for this plus then I can save the carcasses I've already got two carcasses in my freezer and then I'll add these four carcasses to it and then I can start making chicken broth again cuz we are completely out of chicken broth so let me turn you around okay so we're going to start with the deal of the Sentry so originally these chickens are $1.99 per pound okay which means that this chicken would have cost regular price $939 that one was $118 this one is $140 and then that one was $9.59 so I got four for the price of two today which was really exciting we are also finally out of goose breakfast sausage so it was time for me to stock up on breakfast sausages and I saw this it's a Colorado company it's from Boulder which is great cuz I'm totally happy supporting a local company but it was 252 so I couldn't pass that up and I got it I have also been wanting Italian sausage and of course when I looked at it I couldn't remember why I wanted it but I knew I did want it at some point so I went ahead and got it anyways we are also completely out of bacon and so this bacon was reasonably priced in my opinion so I went ahead and got two packs of bacon as well and then I saw this this ground pork and I think what I want to do with this ground pork is Egg Roll in a bowl um you can make egg roll in a bowl with beef but I do really enjoy it with pork as well so I got two packages of this I got some pepper jack sliced cheese for my fiance he would like deli sandwiches and so I went ahead and got him some hard salami and I got myself some Black Forest ham I got us these jalapeno Chomps meat sticks they are grass-fed and finished beef sticks zero sugar zero nitrates zero nitrites they use celery salt so it's got like really rather clean ingredients which makes me really happy and I thought they were delicious the Maple Hill milk was also on sale so I went ahead and got myself one because the yogurt that I like to buy they were out of and I'm actually going to make yogurt out of this mangoes for us were also on sale and I will probably eat one but I actually really enjoy these as a freeze dried snack so then they're shelf stable so I'm going to wait for these to ripen on up and then I will go ahead and get them into our freeze starer I also got some apples because I'm trying to kick my sugar habit and apples and peanut butter have helped me do it before um cabbage like I said I would really like to make some egg roll in a bowl here this month so I got myself a cabbage for that and then I want some more sauerkraut because we are completely out of SAU as well and then we got some potato Puffs cuz our potato Puffs we have are rather low and this is because Reed really likes tater tot hot dish and so if I have the ingredients for tater tot hot dish it's much easier for us to have a spur of the moment imp pulse Tater to hot dish meal we needed some frozen veggies so I got some green beans and some broccoli and cauliflower mix I am trying to heal my gut a little bit because of some other life changes I've made and this good cultures Cottage cheese is really great plus I'm trying to up my protein intake so I got two of these because it was also on sale which was phenomenal um a sour cream because we're going to have tacos here soon and I love sour cream with my tacos and king supers unfortunately I'm a little upset at them because the coconut milk that they sell in the dairy section as like an alternative milk the one that I like which was the simple truth coconut milk they don't seem to carry anymore and I don't really like the brand cuz it has a lot of extra gums and they just add way too much to it and so I went ahead and got myself some coconut milk which is for us just organic coconut purified water and then some pepperonis because I want to make lasagna my fianceé also really likes these cheesec crackers so I got him some cheesec crackers and then we're not huge we don't use potatoes a whole whole lot but I do really like these fingerling potatoes roasted in the oven so I got us some fingerling potatoes or pairing with steak or whatever but that's it that was my whole grocery haul and I only spent oh nope I'm wrong hang on I also got us a whole roasted chicken because I don't feel like cooking tonight I have a couple other things that I need to accomplish tonight and so this is a nice convenience meal that we are going to benefit from like I said I try to only go really big grocery shopping like this once a month because then I'll just go to the grocery store to get little things that like we may need that I didn't realize we were out of um but I tried to be prepared I tried to look through the house figure out what we didn't have and what we needed and ultimately I do still need to go to Costco because I was not a fan of the price of their pork chops at my king supers I can get way more for a much better price at Costco so the pork chops I'm going to get at Costco and then I need collagen I'm going to get my collagen from Costco as well because the price at Costco is better than that at Ming supers I think there's oh and my breakfast sausage so we need collagen breakfast sausage and pork and I'm going to get that at King soup at Costco um but that should keep my Costco budget and cost relatively low and it's also just filling in the gaps that I couldn't get at king supers what's up everybody so today is Sunday we were able to make it to Costco so we went to King Supers yesterday and I showed you the haul from yesterday and now I'm going to show you our haul from Costco um I had already preemptively didn't think about it and I chopped up the big pork chops I got them marinating I stuck them in the freezer and then I went I forgot to show you guys the haul so the pork chops are already pre-marinated meats and they've been put into food saver bags so just so you know that happened but it is still what we got so let me go turn you around and show you um I just didn't want to confuse you and thinking that the park chops came came that way they 100% did not okay so we're going to start out over here so these are five dozen large cagefree eggs and I like to get the organic ones but they didn't have the organic ones this was the only option so I just went ahead and got this one and this will last us the entire month this is the pasta that I was talking about this nice organic Italian pasta and the spaghetti I didn't realize comes with eight packages um I thought it came with six because this one comes with six and this is a variety of noodles so it's a fun twisty noodle there's a tighter twist Noodle and then penet and it comes with two of each so it comes with six packages this is our block of cheese and it is a 2 and A2B block of cheese and I got this for it was on sale and so it was $8.99 these pork chops um so I ended up with 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 eight packages so it looks like the package that I bought um came with eight really big thick pork chops and so I cut them in half and then it'll feed both me and read so I put them into packages of Two And so two I kept as regular pork two I turned into Teriyaki two I turned into a barbecue and two I turned into a honey mustard marinade so that way when I want them I just pull them out of the freezer I set them in the fridge and they start to marinate and they're ready for whenever I want to use them I got parmesan cheese at Costco because the price per pound is cheaper than anywhere else and I can go ahead and shred this up put it in a freezer bag and put it in the freezer and just pull it out when I'm ready to use it this block of cheese will generally last me like four or five months so I am willing to pay the price as I only use this over the course of several months um the sausage I like to get at Costco as well um I actually don't remember how much this was but I know it is cheaper per pound than it was at my local grocery store yesterday so I went ahead and got this and I believe this is a 3 lb roll yeah it's a 3B roll of sausage olives have gotten expensive at my local grocery store so I find them much more cost effective to get at Costco so these are the olives that Costco has and these will last a little bit as well this is the coffee that I like to get at Costco as well king supers which is my local grocery store generally has this same bag same ounces same organic for about $20 and I can get it at Costco for like 16 and then we needed more Ziploc bags I like to use Ziploc bags for like freezer stuff and so we got a package that came with two of these and two of these um but that's it that is our Costco haul so we also bought some clothes but all of that's been moved upstairs and I'm really just focusing on grocery shopping the clothes were in our budget they were just part of a completely different part of the budget but the food was within budget and we are on par to stay within budget for the month so but I wanted to take you along and show you how I prepared for this where I went shopping for this based off of deals and yes I did confirm the deal I got on the chicken was far better than the deal on the chicken at Costco so just so you know I did compare the to when we were at Costco 100% the BOGO deal was the way to go there um so hopefully you learned something hopefully you found this beneficial and enjoyable if this is the kind of content that you like and if you've enjoyed any of my other content please consider subscribing and following along because we're going to be doing more meal prep more grocery shopping maybe um but there's definitely a lot of gardening and lot of life skills to help get those newly graduated high school students and college grads out into the world and prepared and set up and ready to go for this next exciting phase of life so hopefully you have a wonderful weekend and I will see you guys next time bye

Channel: Simply a Bree's

Views: 4,700

Keywords: grocery haul, monthly restock, monthly grocery haul, preparing for a grocery restock, shop with me, make a grocery list, grocery haul on a budget, grocery restock on a budget, adulting 101, how to write a grocery list, shop your deals

Id: jaQiyf5186Y

Length: 31min 19sec (1879 seconds)

Published: Sat May 11 2024