The Grocery Budget Challenge

It would take a bit of work to split out all the 'non food' items from our bill to figure out exactly how much we spend only on food. We typically shop at Wal-Mart on Sat or Sun morning every week, and buy EVERYTHING from there for the 'house'. We have walked out of there with two carts full more than once. One cart with nothing but non food items, ie a floor mop, childs bicycle, picture frame, wax candle heat thing, air pressure gauge, lots of random stuff. My wife also claims that I eat a too much food and throw too much stuff in the basket. I eat everything I throw in the basket though. I just have a naturally high metabolism that is raised even higher due to the time I spend in the gym.

Looking at that pdf sheet, if I guesstimate on removing the non food items, we probably come in somewhere around the low to moderate cost plan for 4 people even though we only have 3 people (wife, myself, and a 4.5 yr old boy).

We never go out to eat. I would guess 99% of the food and liquid that goes into all three of our bodies comes from those weekly grocery trips to Wal-Mart. I am guessing a lot of people don't realize how much their eating out expenses add up to over a month since it is a few dollars or so spread over several/many times during a month.

My wife has a hard job with sometimes long days, so she usually cooks one massive meal on Saturday or Sunday, and we eat on it all week. I have no problem eating the same thing for dinner every night. I eat the same thing for breakfast, snacks, and lunch every day at work. Like Jeff said, I view it as fuel for my body and use clean fuel.
 
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My wife has an 1/8 acre garden full of everything we like to eat. She's old school, cans and freezes everything. She keeps 15-20 chickens which helps cut down grocery cost too. I have no clue what we spend on groceries. After our first child was born she stopped working (6 years now) and took care of the kids and the homestead. Our money has always been separate, but when she stopped working instead of handing her my check book, I told her to come up with an amount she needs every week to make things "go" with the house and kids and write herself a check. That way I knew exactly what it was going to cost me to have her at home. The system has worked flawlessly, she budgets well. Like ratlabguy said , my dinner is cooked most every night,she makes my lunch for work everyday, our house is clean, my yard stays mowed, my kids have mom at home, snacks appear in my pantry on a weekly basis and none of the utilities have been shut off. I've never had a budget or even balanced a checking account in 25 years. I set my lifestyle to what my income was 20 years ago and as my income has increased , my lifestyle really hasn't. Most of my friends who complain about finances it has been a direct result of increasing their lifestyle with every income increase, you'll never get ahead like that. I'll ask the wife what she spends on groceries a month, I'm sorta curious now. For the record I hate the grocery store and do everything in my power to avoid going there...
 
I think buying with an eye to long-term savings is really the ticket. Cyd knows what we eat, so when it goes on sale stupid cheap, she stocks up. What doesn't get eaten right away goes into the freezer or the back of the pantry.

Also, fuck a whole lot of Food Lion. Meats, cheeses, milk, all better from Harris Teeter, for the same or lower prices. Their house brand stuff is great.
 
shawn said:
Also, fuck a whole lot of Food Lion. Meats, cheeses, milk, all better from Harris Teeter, for the same or lower prices. Their house brand stuff is great.
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HT is about the only place we shop for food now. We know what they have and the house brand stuff is pretty good. FL and other discount stores don't seem to ever have what we want or (dare I say it...) have an organic option. That means multiple trips to multiple stores, etc. to save a mere $5? I'm ok with spending a couple extra $ at HT and making one stop for all of our food. Every so often we will stop at SAMs or Wallyworld for non-food items and do get a few food items in the process, but it's not a regular trip.

Since we recently put another fridge and upright freezer in the garage, we now buy more in bulk and tend to use the weekly trip for fresh veggies and fruits.
 
HT can't hold a candle to Publix. I don't know if it's just our local area, but HT had silly high prices for everything, and then Publix moved into town and order was restored to our grocery universe. I'm assuming that HT has probably had to lower their prices to compete with Publix next door, but I don't know because we don't go there. When you go to Target (pre-Publix) because their produce section is better than HT, that's just sad.

We go to Trader Joes too but only for specialty stuff like excellent uncured bacon, Toscano/Parmesan cheese, olive oil, tamales, etc. Whole Foods has some interesting stuff but they're generally out of our budget.

Every time we go to WalMart they carry less and less of the things we actually buy, and the prices are ratcheting up so they're not the deal that they used to be. And it's full of completely insane/rude people that I prefer not to be around. So I just buy my motor oil there and very few other things, because it's not worth the hassle to buy anything else there.
 
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^^^totally agree that the workers at Discount places suck! The buying experience as HT is just pleasurable every time I go in. Every time I go into FL or Walmart, I'm reminded multiple times by the people why I hate going in there so much. Plus, they tend to be the same price or more for the good food my family likes as HT. so, I just avoid the place at all costs.

In Greenville, there is not much to choose from. No Publix, whole foods, or trader joes. :(

We do have a farmers market but it's mostly overpriced, more so than HT for the same veggies.
 
Due to the crowds and people at Wal Mart that have been mentioned, we usually try and go first thing Saturday or Sunday morning.
 
drkelly said:
We never go out to eat. I would guess 99% of the food and liquid that goes into all three of our bodies comes from those weekly grocery trips to Wal-Mart. I am guessing a lot of people don't realize how much their eating out expenses add up to over a month since it is a few dollars or so spread over several/many times during a month.
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this, on the eating out, esp lunches.
For the first two years of grad school, I had no stipend and only a part-time tech job, my wife was a beginning teacher... NO MONEY to spare! Packed PB&J, cheap lunch every day.
Then I got a "nice" stipend (A whopping $16.5k/yr), and felt rich - decided I had earned the right to "upgrade" to eating at the med school deli a few times per week.... wow after 3 months, realized how much $$ that was spending, cut that off.
Even now that I have a pretty good job, I make it a point to eat lunch out no more than once a week, twice at most - which means a $6 sandwich. Nothing fancy. It's really moer about havin ga reason to leave the office/lab for a little while. Most days lunch is leftovers from the previous night's dinner.

Related, once we were both working we used to eat out every weekend night and once during week. Since the kids came, this has backed off to take-out once per week - usually Fri night - and very rarely (like once per month) a meal out. Feeding 4, even at the local Mexican place, gets expensive real quick.
 
drkelly said:
Due to the crowds and people at Wal Mart that have been mentioned, we usually try and go first thing Saturday or Sunday morning.
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We go to the local Wegmans late at night on a Saturday night, or early Sundays, b/c that's the only time it's not crowded.
I've also learned - best not to go to the grocery when you're hungry!
 
My wife was in the bed with back pain this afternoon and the MIL came and picked up our boy for a bit so i did the grocery shopping at the Food Lion around the corner. This weeks total was $191. Non food items were paper towels, cat food, and a black box chardonnay, lol.
 
Dinner tonight made me think of this thread.
My son has 2 friends spending the night. The 3 of them compromise the left side of the 9th grade Offensive line and the entirety of the defensive line. They are all healthy youngens.
So we made Tacos.
3 14 year old boys me, my wife and our 11 year old daughter.

5 POUNDS of ground beef
36 Taco Shells (24 hard 12 soft)
2 - 1.5 lb bags of shredded cheese
1- bog ass bag of lettuce
1- jar of hot salsa
1- container of sour cream.

We have 10 shells left (nothing else) and the boys want to know if we have any more hamburger meat. I swear I watched one sopping up the grease from the frying pan with a soft taco shell

I told them where dad's liquor cabinet was...
 
^ :lol: ^ My brothers could eat medium-sized farm animals on a nightly basis.

That 2# (3 pieces) of chicken breast I bought last week turned into 3 meals.

I chopped and dredged 2 breasts in about a cup of plain yogurt, then shook them in a bag with crushed stuffing mix (my super easy breading cheat for when I can't have dirty raw chicken hands and pick up small people), sauteed in bacon grease (4 Tb?), along with a head of broccoli, chopped. Added half the juice from a can of pineapple near the end to finish steaming the broccoli. It was vaguely General Tso-ish. Served some of the pineapple on the side. Repeat 2 days later, this time over steamed rice.

The third breast I sauteed in about a tablespoon of bacon grease, with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Sliced just before done and back in the pan to let the 'sauce' coat the pieces. I cooked a can of kidney beans and a can of corn in a separate pan with some tomatoes, green chilis, cumin, turmeric, garlic powder, red pepper flakes, and sour cream. Served the sliced chicken over the beans/corn with an avocado/cucumber slaw over the top (avocado, half a cuke, 1/4 of a small head of cabbage, lime juice). Absolutely could have saved half of the beans/corn for another meal.
 
Waaaaay too many ingredients going on there... :lol:



Inspired by our time in Costa Rica, we like Gallo Pinto on the weekends for breakfast with eggs and bacon. Good thing about this is that we can use it through the week and it works well with nearly every dish.
 
Ron said:
Dinner tonight made me think of this thread.
My son has 2 friends spending the night. The 3 of them compromise the left side of the 9th grade Offensive line and the entirety of the defensive line. They are all healthy youngens.
So we made Tacos.
3 14 year old boys me, my wife and our 11 year old daughter.

5 POUNDS of ground beef
36 Taco Shells (24 hard 12 soft)
2 - 1.5 lb bags of shredded cheese
1- bog ass bag of lettuce
1- jar of hot salsa
1- container of sour cream.

We have 10 shells left (nothing else) and the boys want to know if we have any more hamburger meat. I swear I watched one sopping up the grease from the frying pan with a soft taco shell

I told them where dad's liquor cabinet was...
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Two things:
A soft taco shell is a tortilla.
5 pounds of meat is far too much meat for 6 people, regardless of their size. That's insane.
 
5# precooked weight turns into a little over 4# if drained properly.

For 3 adolescent male athletes, 4# doesn't go very far. Hell I'm pretty far removed from 2-a-day practices, but I can still down a 1# burger after a afternoon of work and not think twice (or feel worse for the wear)
 
I will eat 5# of chicken in 2 days... but I am a protien addict too.. :rolleyes:
 
Our food budget (which in our case includes paper products, household cleaners, shampoo and soap - I'm just too lazy to break it out) for a family of 5 is now $700 a month. We tried $600 a month and were successful until the beginning of this year. We were constantly going over and started robbing from the gas budget. Thankfully, gas is cheaper than it has been otherwise we'd be in the red.

Here's how we manage:

Coupons - mostly at CVS. My wife has their coupon policy down to a science. We don't have a Harris Teeter local, so when they run their Super Doubles, and Triples, we have to plan a trip to Salisbury or Winston to shop and we make it our goal to save enough in the trip to not only have a "good" savings, but also negate the gas unless we can wrap it into a trip to those locations for something else that we needed anyway. Our pediatrician is in Salisbury and we go to Winston for eyeglasses, the mall, and some other stuff, so it's not hard to fit it into a trip. My wife isn't happy with a coupon trip unless she sees at LEAST 75% savings. It's pretty common for her to just pay sales tax or even get money back.

Buy in bulk - we have two chest freezers and two refrigerator/freezers. One chest freezer is just for meat and prepared meals, the other is for vegetables. We are now "down to" the two refrigerator/freezers as we had to give the third to my step-daughter when hers went out. The main fridge holds the everyday stuff, one each of milk, juice, lunch meat, pickles, etc. and the other is for stock up cold stuff like Lunchables, drinks, and school lunches for the week (we will now have three kids in grade school so we make lunches on Sunday for the week). We also buy 4 gallons of milk at a time from Costco and freeze them until needed.

Costco - but be smart about it. We buy 25 lb bags of bread flour there and bake our own bread. We buy big ticket items like our digital camera, electronics, etc there because of the extra warranty they provide. We get paper towels and toilet paper there unless we can get toilet paper on a coupon deal. We are pretty loyal to our toilet paper brand, so if the coupon deal gives us cheap-o toilet paper, we stash it back for when we go on vacation to the condo at the beach where we have to provide our own toilet paper. I don't really care to if I leave a pack of cheap-o toilet paper behind for the next person when I didn't spend anything on it in the first place...

Square Foot Gardening/ canning - we have a small garden in front of our house that has done well for us this year. Huge amounts of squash, tomatoes and cucumbers have forced us to get creative about how to keep it all. We made some awesome cucumber relish, , squash lasagna, dill pickles (like Clausen), dozens of packs of stewed tomatoes, we made our own spaghetti sauce, and a bunch of other stuff.

Zaycon Foods - we buy chicken breast in bulk - 40-80 lbs at a time. We bring it all home and process it into grill bags, crock-pot meals, cooked and shredded chicken, you name it. We do the same with ground beef. We process 100+ lbs of ground beef at a time. It's easy to make a Hamburger helper meal in a hurry if you have pre-cooked, pre-portioned 1 lb packs of ground beef in the freezer.
 
Fabrik8 said:
Two things:
A soft taco shell is a tortilla.
5 pounds of meat is far too much meat for 6 people, regardless of their size. That's insane.
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Shrug.
We have tortillas and soft taco shells separate according to the package they are different sizes, who knows.

I'm a protein addict myself and there was 6 of us eating on the 5 lbs. Now wife and daughter probably ate 1/4 lb combined.

Of the other 4 humans in question they are
6'0 255
5"10 305
5'11 245
6'4 265

The last three in that group are 14, in the heart of football practice and weight lifting and probably metabolizing somewhere around 6500 kcal per day.

We will be ok, but thanks for the concern. :flipoff2:

Doesn't make it any more affordable.
 
If you don't have a teenager...just wait.
It's insane.
And they stay skinny
 
wife and I spend about 65-80 a week on groceries. We usually eat out on the weekends mainly because we are usually somewhere else other than the house on Saturdays especially. I want to make that 65-80 stretch a bit further.... yesterday, I went to Food Lion and got out for less than $60. although that only got us meals for 4 days...helped to that my parents brought me 5lbs of fresh hamburger from a local farm.
Our problem is, we waste. I usually can eat something the next day for lunch, but after that, the thought of eating the same thing makes me want to vomit.
 
Ron said:
Shrug.
Of the other 4 humans in question they are
6'0 255
5"10 305
5'11 245
6'4 265

The last three in that group are 14, in the heart of football practice and weight lifting and probably metabolizing somewhere around 6500 kcal per day.

We will be ok, but thanks for the concern. :flipoff2:

Doesn't make it any more affordable.
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The word "Scholarship" comes to mind. LOL. But at that size in the 9th grade I have a feeling that may be an option when the time comes. :lol:
 
Ours is $275-350 a week. I will say that the wife works from home and we pack all the boys lunches everyday. She gets the single serve items which is way more expensive than bulk packaging!
 
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