Grocery Costs for 7/22

I've done all of my grocery shopping for this week's meal plan and am now ready to see how my spending turned out.  I really like breaking down my spending to see where my money is going and where I can be saving more.  When you are menu planning on a budget, it is helpful to take a good look at where your money goes.

I'm changing the way that I look at my grocery costs.  I realized that it looked like I didn't buy any produce!  Calling fresh fruits and vegetables "Staples" may be accurate, but it isn't that helpful.  During the summer when almost everything is in season, I like to have as much fresh produce as possible.  My kids love fresh fruits and will eat a lot of vegetables, so we have something with almost every meal.  For produce purchased for a particular recipe, I will still include that in my dinner costs.  But when I'm picking up a bunch of bananas or corn on the cob to have with whatever meal, I will put that in their own "Fruits and Veggies" category.

So here is what my spending looked like for this week:

Breakfast: $11.40

Lunch: $6.79

Dinner: $36.54

Staples: $15.65

Fruits and Veggies: $8.36

Buy ahead: $5.98

Splurge: $1.00 (twizzlers :) )

I also picked up some grill tools from the grocery store for $4.48.  We needed a new basting brush and grill cleaner, and they were on clearance.

Everything added together with tax and bag credit came to $98.34