Budget Grocery Haul - October 4, 2025

How you build your pantry has a huge effect on your overall budget. Here’s my budget grocery haul for the first week of October.

array of groceries laid out on wooden table.

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It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? I shared my last budget grocery haul back in May before life got super-duper full. We had graduations, birthdays, a 3-week trip to Japan, and then summer happened.

Things were so busy, there were some weeks when my kitchen resembled Mother Hubbard’s. I just did not have time to mess with grocery shopping, so we shopped the kitchen and ate just fine.

Now that back to school season is behind us, I’m ready to hunker down and build up our food storage for winter.

If you’ve been following my budget grocery shopping, you know that I shop a number of different stores based on who has the best price for what. If you’re not sure which is the best grocery store for you, it’s a good time to find out.

This week I made quick stops at Trader Joes (for skyr, some produce, and a bottle of wine) and ALDI (for odds and ends since I was in the neighborhood.) My bigger grocery hauls were a Walmart pickup and a stroll through Ralphs, a Kroger affiliate.

My Walmart Grocery Pickup

array of groceries from Walmart laid on table.

I do a Walmart pickup when there are things that I particularly want that aren’t already on sale elsewhere. I also do it when I’m too tired to push a full cart through ALDI.

Pro tip: before ALDI moved to the neighborhood, Walmart was not the best game in town. It actually penciled out to drive a town over to ALDI. When they put in an ALDI closer to my house, the nearby Walmart lowered its prices. Now it’s a fair mix of who will have the better price.

butter for baking since our freezer stash is now gone
dried cherries to make this cake
puff pastry to make this dessert
dry beans for this chili
the makings of this for game night
a few spices we needed
the ingredients to make this vital baking ingredient
some ingredients to round out what I needed for this baller pasta

Unfortunately, as we know things just add up. And dang it, but this small array of groceries was $85. Yikes!

Ralphs Groceries

I shop Ralphs once a month where I snag their sales, digital deals and markdowns. The markdowns are where I can really score.

sale meat on table, wrapped in plastic bags.

I buy most of our meat at Ralphs on sale or marked down. This past Saturday I bought

burgers marked down to $5.66/8 burgers – we cooked them that night for dinner
higher quality chicken breast for $2.63/pound – I cooked it this past weekend for the aforementioned baller pasta, chili, gumbo, and Mulligatawny
chuck roasts on sale for $5.99 (cringe) – froze these for future pot roast and pot pie
Italian sausages on sale for $3.99 – I froze these for future meals.

Weekly digital deals this round were pretty good. These are deals you have to load to your shoppers card via the app or the store website.

frozen potatoes – $2.99/bag
cuties – $5.99/5-pound bag
cheese – $5.99/2-pound bag
Nestle chocolate chips – $3.49/bag

Ralphs offers deals where if you buy 5 of certain items you get $5 off. You used to have to buy even quantities of 5; that was a pain. Now you get $1 off each item.

pasta – $1.50/lb
cake mix – $1.19
tea – $2.79
Hershey’s chocolate chips – $3.29
crackers – $2.87 after extra coupons
hamburger buns – $1.99

I often score a few good things on clearance; not many this week, but seeing as one kid requested single yogurts, I call it a score.

lemon and lime juices – $1.35
Chobani yogurt – $3.39
spinach – $2.95

There are some Kroger items that I am particularly partial to, especially their tortillas, spicy pickles, and popcorn. This time I got:

burritos – $2.49
oyster crackers – $1.49
popcorn – $3.29
bagels – $2.79

This purchase, after discounts and digital coupons was $215.

My weekly total, counting TJs and ALDI was $360. We obviously won’t eat all this this week but will draw from these items over the coming weeks and months.