I feel like I already do as much as I can to try and save money on groceries, but lately my total at checkout is just unreal for only half a cart of food. I use our store rewards and coupons from their app, plus I buy a lot of off brand if it's cheaper. I plan my meals around what's on sale, most of the time. What else can I do?! I don't know if it's just because the girls are getting older and eating more or what, but the grocery budget is getting out of control. For us at least.
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We shop at Aldi. We spend about $300/month on food for the 3 of us. We usually only eat chicken, ground beef and shrimp as our protein. Once every 3 months or so we will buy a big bag of salmon from Costco.
We eat a lot of fresh fruit, mostly frozen vegetables (which I have found you can sautee and they taste like they were fresh), and we do protein-veggie-starch meals. I don't do casseroles. We use up our leftovers by repurposing or having a mishmash dinner where I put out all of the food we have leftover and everyone picks what they want.
We also do breakfast for dinner once every week or every two weeks.
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I have no tips, just commiseration on the grocery bills getting out of control. I pretty much never walk out of Publix for less than $150
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I have found that I can do really well with the sales at the local (expensive) grocery store. It's really important to me that the food is of decent quality (no sense in paying 99cents a pound for tbone if it's full of gristle and veins, sorry to be gross) so we are willing to eat smaller portions of the good stuff.
I also have a food saver vac sealer, so we can buy large portions of protein, cut them down and freeze them.
We get some vegetables from my dad's garden, is that an option for you, to plant a few vegetables in your yard, to at least offset some of the cost in the summer?
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@Bao: Definitely check out any discount grocery places if you have them nearby. Like @mediagirl: mentioned Aldi is great and has actually made huge improvements in quality and selection lately. I got grass fed ground beef there recently for $2.99 a pound!!! Other discount stores I know are particular to your location, you wouldn't want to buy meat or produce there, but canned/boxed/dry goods you can get for a steal, especially if they're expired by like a few days or dented or whatever. If there's a particularly awesome deal, stock up. This one was hard for me at first because it would make my bill for that one trip higher, but the trade off for the rest of the month's bills makes up for it.
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@looch: I had strawberries, (didn't get much), I have tomatoes on their way to being picked and a cucumber plant that gave us 1 cucumber, the rest kind of died haha!
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I love Grocery outlet when I have time I go there first then to Fred Meyer to get everything else. We also stock up at Costco for fresh staples- cheese, milk, avocados etc. And we utilizing Amazon Prime- TP, detergent, diapers, k cups.
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@IRunForFun: oh yeah! They have a decent organic selection. I am a big fan of their organic free range chicken broth. The Simply Nature brand is great.
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@IRunForFun: @mediagirl: I was so excited to try Aldi and ours is horrible - its super small, not much selection and the berries while cheap were rotting within 2 days
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@Mamaof2: bummer! We have 4 near us so we go to the one that seems to have the best items. Whenever we have something go bad quickly, we just take it back on our next trip. Since we go often (2x/week usually) it's not a big deal to take things back. They have a double money back quality guarantee.
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I'm sure you already do this, but cheap meal planning has helped. We buy ground beef in bulk from the farmers market and then I'll try to stretch 1lb into 6 meals (either tacos or spaghetti sauce by sauteeing it with lots of onions/peppers to make it go further). I use http://www.budgetbytes.com/ a lot and I always love the food, but it doesn't always fly with my 3 year old. We eat simple meals and all take PB&J sandwiches for lunch several times a week.
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I am an Aldi fan here too! I can easily walk out of there with most of my grocery list (except meat) for under $60. I then go to another grocery store for meat as I'm super picky about my meat and am currently not a fan of Aldi's. But, I know that they will be all organic within the next few years.
Insider tip too, but many of their items are the exact same as name brands, but just in a different package and a fraction of the price. For example, we were getting the large container of Stonyfield yogurt and were paying over $4/container at the grocery store. Aldi's version is maybe $2.50 or less and when you read the back, it is processed at the same place, same ingredient, same nutritional facts. There are lots of other examples of this. Mine is a bit of a hike, but we are getting another one super close this fall and I'm stoked! I can't rave about them enough.
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@mediagirl: I worship you. Our monthly grocery bill is the size of a mortgage. And we meal plan. But, it does include beer and wine
Our weekly bill is easily 200 for 2 adults, 2 kids and our nanny eats lunch here.
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@hummusgirl: one pound into 6 meals? For how many people? That's like a tablespoon per meal per person....
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@looch: I totally agree. my husband could eat almost a pound (at one meal!!)
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@winniebee: yeah we spend like $800 a month. It's insane. I'll hire @mediagirl: as my personal shopper lol
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@Mrs. Sunshine: hire my husband. He's the savvy shopper in our house. Ha!
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@Mrs. Sunshine: I would say we are easily over $1,000. Some weeks are $250 and some are $200. Crazy.
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We have a decent size garden this year so I'm freezing/canning a lot for winter - we just froze 90 quart bags of corn, I've done a few bags of peppers, zucchini, and broccoli, and will be canning tomatoes (whole/diced/and salsa). Every other year I do pickles. Last year I canned enough jalapenos for 2 years.
We also will get a whole beef/pig once a year and DH and friends do the processing themselves. Big $$ saver. Obviously not everyone can do that.Its so nice to not have to buy any of the above at the grocery store. I'm also an Aldi's fan just b/c I can walk out having spent half as much as I would usually, but ours is a ways away so I don't get there often.
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Impulse shopping is a problem for us. I also detest going INTO Walmart, but our Walmart now has grocery pickup. We place our order online (or through the app) and pick up our groceries at a scheduled time. They bring them to our car and load them for us. We get to shop from our kitchen and don't make impulse purchases and I don't have to go IN Walmart. It's saved us a fair amount of money.
We also don't buy meat at Walmart, but we also have a vacuum sealer and will do a bigger protein shop occasionally (sometimes at Costco) and breakdown into smaller packs like mentioned.
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@Mrs. Sunshine: @winniebee: holy crap! We spend around $400 (maybe $450 if we are out of a lot) and that's too much ha!
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@mediagirl: @NorthStar: We shop at Aldi's too! You can't beat the prices on milk, eggs, produce, etc - the other stores don't compare even when they are offering super deals. Costco probably compares but we do not have a membership there.
We'll get chicken and deli meat at Aldi's but will also look at the deals elsewhere in the area for proteins.
We try to limit Trader Joes shopping to once every 4-6 weeks.
We don't buy/drink beer as much as we used too. Instead of craft beer, DH will drink Budweiser after mowing the lawn and when we are seriously craving craft beer, we'll just buy a couple of cans or bottles. -
@Bao: for example, last night we had grilled chicken (3 breasts), corn on the cob (made 3 ears), coleslaw, and macaroni salad. All homemade. The macaroni salad was for dinner 2 nights. The chicken alone cost $7 for 3 breasts and we had exactly 1/2 breast leftover, which I'll eat for lunch today. We go through a package of meat each meal.
We also go through a dozen eggs a week as well as a gallon of skim milk and a gallon of whole milk. Easily 15 yogurts a week. A pound of deli turkey, salami and cheese a week. 2 loaves of bread a week. I don't know how savers do it. We just eat a lot and school does not provide meals for my kids!
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@autumnleaves: yes, the craft beer and wine gets me. I buy a bottle of wine a week and a 6 pack -- and the craft beer 6 pack is $12 or so!
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@winniebee: I think a lot of it is regional, some places have more expensive food. If you look at it as percentage of income, I would suspect it's similar.
But I commiserate. Grape tomatoes cost $2.50 a container, no matter what the season. I do feel I get a good deal on milk (no hormone, no abx, but not organic) at $2.99 per half gallon, but everything else, I feel i pay a premium just because of where I happen to live.
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@winniebee: I bet it's regional though too, cost of living here is pretty low compared to most areas...we also eat a lot!
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@winniebee: ah yes, luckily school currently provides lunches and snacks for our kid. But, we get eggs for $.99/doz (this week they are $.79/doz) and stock up when chicken breasts are $1.99 or less/lb. We eat a LOT of eggs, too! We go through the same amount of milk (which is typically $2-$2.50/gal. But we're the bad parents that don't buy hormone free milk....
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@winniebee: @autumnleaves: we definitely can spend $400 or more a month if we buy beer and wine! That number is *just* food, too - no toilet paper, paper towels, beer, wine, etc. We have also cut out buying anything but milk. We used to drink a lot of lemonade and orange juice but now we only get that if one of us is sick.
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@mediagirl: not bad parents! We don't either, we just buy store brand milk.
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@mediagirl: I guess I shop like a man. We buy exactly what you mentioned. Same basic protein, lots of veggies, no juice, no snacks (except fruits). Ours is still $100 more a month but that's probably cost of living.
Costs have definitely gone up since 2 years ago. -
@looch: Sorry, guess I wasn't too clear - six meals total meaning dinner for two nights for three people. So for tacos, a little scoop of meat on a tortilla plus tomatoes, guac, cheese and salsa. Lots of healthy-ish filler, basically.
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@hummusgirl: That's a cool website. Thanks for mentioning. I have been splitting my ground beef in half for two different meal days lately. I'm going toward a higher percentage of plant based foods and it's helping to lessen the amount and save money.
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@hummusgirl: Got it!
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I buy store brands when cheaper and I buy meat in bulk from Sam's Club. I stopped buying the good deli meat and just by the Oscar Meyer shaved stuff now instead of from the deli (husband eats sandwiches a lot for lunches.) I buy frozen fruit (or buy in bulk from Sam's club and freeze for smoothies and only buy the produce that is on sale (we eat fresh produce for just about every meal, this is important to us.) I do not buy organic anything, unless for some reason cheaper.
Meal planning is huge - we only buy what we need and that eliminates "quick" runs at night which usually end up in spending at least an extra 20-30 on stuff we don't need!
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@MamaG: I'm so jealous! I've been wanting to try the grocery pickup, because I figured it would help cut back on impulse buying, but we don't have it here
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@looch: I have sometimes gotten 1lb of beef into 6-8 servings. Mostly by adding lots of other things. So for spaghetti I use 1lb of beef but then add 1.5-2c of zucchini and a carton of mushrooms (all shredded in the processor) and a few cans of tomato sauce to make a real thick sauce. Makes about 6-8 servings. Or for mexican, I've done enchiladas with 1lb of chicken or beef. But then I add cans of beans and rice, enough to bulk it up enough to get a tray of enchiladas. Or for soup, I will double the veggies and liquids (and rice) but not double the meat. Helps somewhat so you're not doubling your meat cost but still doubling your total output.
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@kes18: Yeah, I am aware of those kinds of tricks, but they don't satisfy my husband. He is one of those people that would just rather spend the money to eat as he likes. I don't think he ever looks at prices of the items when he shops, and he grew up in Europe, which blows the US out of the water in terms of food pricing...so maybe he thinks it's all just cheap?
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@looch: The cost of food as a percentage of income has actually gone way down over the past few decades. Of course, housing has gone up so it's hard to feel like we're really ahead, but we actually have it pretty good:
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/02/389578089/your-grandparents-spent-more-of-their-money-on-food-than-you-do -
@hummusgirl: Possibly, I've never looked it up, but I could see how it would be true.
I was saying, though, that this is largely a cost of living issue and if we express in percentages of our income, we're probably paying around the same amounts.
What I am really interested in is differences in food prices across the world. I lived abroad and I was always in shock at the grocery store when I paid $12 for two tiny chicken breasts that didn't even total a pound!
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@looch: we eat a pound of meat per meal (2 adults, 2 kids) and my husband would never agree to not eat his fill of meat at meals!
Our weekly bill is easily 200 for 2 adults, 2 kids and our nanny eats lunch here.
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