My Frugal Week

I went to IGA on Monday morning to take advantage of a meat sale. I bought 10 pounds of ground beef, which was on sale for $1.99 a pound. This was not the ground chuck that I used to purchase. This was ground beef at 73/27 mixture. I made sure I drained this meat well after cooking. 

I don't know if we will ever be able to purchase ground chuck at a decent price again unless I find it on markdown, which does happen from time to time. 

I also bought a package of 3 sirloin pork roasts, which were also on sale for $1.99 a pound. There were three nice sized roasts in the package and I cut each one of them in half, which is plenty for the three of us for one meal. I put 4 of them in the freezer, saved one to cook for dinner, and gave one to my Dad. 

On Tuesday we woke up to snow in the forecast, but school was still open, which turned out to be a mistake. I dropped my daughter off at school only to turn around 2 hours later and pick her up and had a rough drive there and back. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday turned out to be snow days and unfortunately, I missed two days of working as a result. 


All breakfasts, lunches, and dinners were eaten at or came from home this week. 

Dinners this week included:

Monday: Tacos with all the fixings
Tuesday: Spaghetti & Garlic Bread
Wednesday: Meatloaf, Mashed Potatoes, Green Beans & Onions
Thursday: Chili
Friday: Chili Tacos
Saturday: LaChoy Beef Chow Mein, Rice, Corn
Sunday: Pork Roast, Oven Roasted Potatoes & Carrots

Other things done to save money include:

1. Read a book for free on my tablet Kindle.
2. Paid bills online to save on postage costs.
3. Entered codes at Kellogg's Family Rewards
4. Entered codes at My Perks for Purina Cat Chow
5. Entered codes at My Coke Rewards
6. Watched Port Charles for free on You Tube during free Internet time. 
7. Stayed home four days this week and spent no money. 

Things we do every week to save money:

1. Haul our own garbage for free to the county dumpsters. 
2. Paid bills online to save on postage. 
3. Used cloth napkins at meal time instead of paper napkins. 
4. Combined all my errands into one trip this week to save on gas. 
5. Log onto MyPerksCatChow.com daily to earn free cat food. 
6. Clip coupons from the Sunday Paper.
7. Check grocery store sale ads for good deals on food. 
8. Combine store coupons & manufacture coupons with sales to get the best price on food. 
9. Use paper in the printer twice by reusing to print on 2nd side. 
10. Make use of residual heat on my electric stove. 

January always brings with it extra expenses for the renewal of my car registration, auto insurance, and auto membership, which is a yearly fee. All expenses have been paid for and I even have a little surplus left at the end of the month, which is a good thing. 

How did your week shape up this time?

Belinda
CFO ~ Chief Frugal Officer
© Belinda & Frugal Workshop, 2011-2014.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without”

Found Sale on Ground Chuck

Image Credit

IGA has a two day sale on Fresh Ground Chuck this week for $1.89 a pound. It was only for two days and I'm not sure if you can see the yellow bubble inside the ad, but it says "While Supplies Last!" I thought to myself that they probably don't have very much in stock and it is going to sell out fast and I really wanted to get in on this deal. With ground chuck costing $4.00 a pound here right now, I knew this was a good deal.

School was cancelled yesterday due to the freezing rain here, and I had to take my Dad to the hospital for a medical procedure, but I did end up getting to IGA even with all of that and got in on this very good deal. 

There were a lot of people surrounding the meat case when I got there because they were having a good sale on several types of meat, but I only wanted the ground beef and did manage to pick up four packages of this ground chuck. The cashier told me people were panicking because of the freezing rain and she had been swamped all morning.

Here is a picture of the four packages I bought:

8.66 pounds - $16.37

8.57 pounds - $16.20

8.71 pounds - $16.46

8.63 pounds - $16.31

Here is a picture of my receipt as well: 

So, I ended up buying 34.57 pounds of meat for $65.34 or $70.57 with tax.

I came home and packaged this up into two pound packages for my freezer. I ended up with 18 packages with 2 pounds each for the freezer. There are 16 in this photo as I placed two of them in the refrigerator to use this weekend. I am planning on making tacos for dinner tonight.

Here is a picture before they went into the freezer:

The last time I was able to stock up on Ground Chuck was in August 2011, which was over one year ago. I know I've been talking about using up what I have in my pantry, but I also subscribe to The Pantry Principle. The basic idea behind The Pantry Principle is to stockpile your pantry with food that you are able to purchase at the lowest possible price. So, even though I am using up the food in my pantry, I would not pass up on a good sale like this. 

This will last me for quite some time and save me a lot of money. If I had bought this ground chuck at the regular price of $4.00 per pound I would have spent $138.28, so I actually saved $72.94, which was more than I paid for the beef. 

I am just tickled to have found this great deal and be able to stock my freezer with food bought at the lowest possible price.  

Make sure you are checking your weekly grocery store ads each week. This sale was for two days only and I wouldn't have wanted to miss out on it by not reading the store ads. 

Belinda
© Belinda Richardson and Frugal Workshop, 2011-2013.
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, do without”