DH and I spend about $150 a week on groceries for the two of us. This usually covers all our meals for 5 days. DH thinks we are spending too much on just the two of us. I told him $150 for basically 15 meals per person is not bad. It comes out to $10 a meal per person. But I did tell him I would try to brainstorm ideas on how to spend less on groceries. My problem is we don't eat processed or pre-packaged foods. So how do I lower what I spend on groceries if what we usually buy is meat, fruit, veggies, and eggs? We already buy our meat in bulk at Costco. Can you share your tips?
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I spend $200 every two weeks at Costco and Trader Joe's. It's typically all fresh, unprocessed foods (and feeds 4). I stick to my meal plan strictly. We usually do eggs or oatmeal for breakfast, sandwiches or salads with fruit for lunch and meat, grain and veggies for dinner. I actually spend more when I buy processed foods, especially at Costco!
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1) Cut out meat 1-2 times a week, it will save you a lot.
2) Don't stick to specific brands. If you are more open to the sales you can save a ton.
3) Buy produce that is on sale, if you make your meal plan off of that instead of "what you always buy" -
@WALLAROO: Consider sticking more often with heartier veggies and things that are in season. Also consider cheaper meat options e.g boneless skinless chicken thighs instead of chicken breasts, ground trukey, whole chicken etc.
Sauteed hearty veggies like broccoli and cauliflower over salads all the time. That type of thing.
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We spend about $80 a week on groceries (for just the two of us; DD is an infant), but we also allow ourselves to grab two meals out, each week (usually reserved for day dates or take out, on weekends).
We meal plan, and design our grocery list based on that. We only make meat-based meals about 2 or 3 times a week, which saves a good amount of money. We buy most of our staples at Trader Joe's (cheap!), and pick up organic produce/meat at a health store or farmer's market. Now that it's fall, we're spending less money on expensive summer fruit like berries and melons, and more on root vegetables and apples, all of which are definitely cheaper.
Consider ingredients that can stretch over multiple meals; i.e. a pack of tortillas could make Monday's dinner of quesadillas with leeks and goats cheese, lunch the next afternoon could be a greek style wrap, while Wednesday's breakfast could be breakfast burritos with sausage and eggs.
Shop sales, clip coupons, frequent Trader Joe's if you have one nearby, and and buy generic (Whole Food's 365 brand is *awesome* and affordable).
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The biggest way I've been able to reduce grocery costs is to plan my meals so I have less waste. Like @deerylou said, if you have to buy a package of tortillas (or a head of cauliflower, or a special kind of cheese, or whatever) for one meal, plan other meals around that special ingredient to use the rest of it up. When I stopped throwing away half packages of this and that, I started saving a lot more money.
Also, as part of this, I've been freezing a lot more. If I buy a jar of pasta sauce and we don't use it all, I freeze it in an ice cube tray then pop the cubes out into a zipper bag and the next time I want pizza I don't have to buy a whole other jar, I can just defrost a few cubes. I do this with chicken stock and pretty much any sauce too.
Also I will specifically plan (and tell my husband) to use some things for leftovers. Like if I make ground turkey for tacos, I plan to use half of that for nachos a few nights later. Before we would either stick the leftover meat in the fridge and it would go bad, or my husband would eat it all (even though he wasn't REALLY hungry for that much).
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@deerylou: Whole Foods 365 brand is incredible. I just found out that I can buy a half gallon of organic whole milk for $3.79 compared to $5 for Organic Valley. Amazing.
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We price match with each week's flyers. It takes a few extra minutes, but ends up saving lots. We also only buy what's on sale, unless its something we desperately need. I'd say we spend about $90 a week for 2 of us.
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We spent about $85/week for a family of three. We all eat breakfast at home, my husband packs a lunch 3-4x a week, and we make dinner at home.
We make a meal plan for the week, I clip coupons and match prices, and he does the shopping.
I'm a horrible impulse shopper so our food budget does much better when my husband is in charge of the shopping!
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Are you open to frozen vegetables? They are often less expensive and you can use what you need, less waste.
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Get creative with beans--specifically dried beans. Chilli, soups, mash them and shape them into burgers (with spices of course), etc. I've also found it helps to cut meat out.
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Ugh, some of you spend 100 a week on groceries? I really, really want to learn to do that. I have literally no idea how I could spend so little.
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I plan around sales - I go through the ads and base my meals off of what's on sale. The fruit we eat in lunches is seasonal. I buy bread and meat when it's on sale, and freeze it. Also - sometimes Costco meat isn't cheaper than local grocery stores. We also cook extra for dinner and then eat leftovers for lunch - or dinner another day.
Sale cycles usually are every 6 weeks, so if you can, try to buy meat in bulk.
We do eat processed foods, but our grocery budget is $60 per week. I very rarely go over that.
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@WALLAROO: we spend about $100 a week and don't do processed stuff. There are great tips for cutting food waste above- we also do meatless Monday that saves $ and in general I halve the meat in recipes and add in a grain like quinoa or amaranth. If you bake from scratch price compare to amazon- I buy my flours an sugars there and it's a significant savings.
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Wow. Thanks for all the great suggestions! We are a Paleo/Primal household so some suggestions don't really apply to us, but we should look into frozen veggies as we do spend a lot of money on our veggies. I will also look into buying only cuts of meat that are on sale.
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great suggestions!! i need to be more mindful, too
i think costs can really vary according to location as well. for example, the costco organic milk here is 9$ a gallon, and regular milk is about 4.75$ a gallon. i consider it a pretty good steal if i can buy grapes at anything under 2$ a lb.
everytime my mom comes to visit from the east coast she is appalled at our 'regular' prices! alas... we spend about 130-150$ a week for two adults, one very munchy 1 yr old, and we only eat out once a week (so cook all 3 meals every day of the week except one meal on the weekend). this includes paper goods and laundry detergent/shampoo etc. i'd like to cut down, too!
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@WALLAROO: I used to buy all our meat at Costco too, but I started to realize that regular grocery markets have better deals on some meats, and when they do... I stock up! I have a deep freezer so that helps. I often buy pork shoulder and cuts of chicken (breasts, thighs, legs) for just $0.99/lb. I'd never find that at Costco.
I still buy red meat at Costco just because I think the quality is much better, but for chicken, pork, and fish I shop sales at the local grocery market. Once I started paying close attention to price per pound for protein items it really helped us cut down on our grocery bill.
Eta: I live in Southern California if that matters at all. Not exactly a low cost of living area.
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@tysonja: Costco organic milk is $10 a gallon here too, but Whole Foods is cheaper, 3.79 for a half gallon and we are in NYC, as expensive as it gets:)
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@plantains: i would have never expected whole foods to have the better price, but that is awesome!
it's a bit far for us, but if i'm ever in the area i should check it out ...that said, we don't actually buy organic milk ever, but i'd like to!
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@Mrs. High Heels: good point that Costco isn't always cheaper!
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@tysonja: I am stunned at how good the prices actually are for Whole Foods generic stuff. The key is to stick to the 365 brand cheap stuff and not get sucked in by everything else.
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I'm a simpleton when it comes to cooking so that has really helped us save on grocery bills. Any recipe that requires too much time or ingredients, I will save for a special occasion. Twice a week, egg is the star ingredient for dinner, I'll make an omelette or quiche or egg salad sandwich. I also buy a rotisserie chicken weekly and make quick dinners with that. We love fried rice dishes too. I've made shrimp & egg fried rice, spam fried rice, ham fried rice, salmon basil fried rice, canned sardine fried rice is good too! We eat out or order to go on Sat and Sun nights
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