The Grocery Budget Challenge

I think we discussed this earlier in the thread but the selection at HT and the house brand stuff is actually pretty good. I'd much rather shop at HT than the other discount places. They always have 100% of what I'm looking for. While the other places seem cheaper, I'm spending twice as long shopping to save $5 per week.

I shop by unit price and rarely look at the sticker price but mostly as the into pricing to effectively compare between brands, sizes, and stores. HT seems to be close to the value stores when you look at unit pricing. Mostly, their produce is about 10% more $ but is nicer than Wal Mart and FL and they have everything we want. So, the 10% is a non issue at that point.

Time = money (or in this case, valuable time with the family) and I don't have the time to shop multiple stores for what I need. Plus, the workers and crowd at HT are WAY better to deal with than at WM or FL.
 
HT at Cameron Village is better for the people watching but it is actually a little more expensive, for some staple items, than the one at North Hills.
 
Yup. Selection at Food Lion is terrible. I'm pretty sure they don't sell produce or meat if it doesn't come frozen or in a box. Wal-Mart is a joke. HT costs exactly the same as the rest, even cheaper if you shop the sales.

Food Lion's house brand cheese is just... not good.
 
shawn said:
Food Lion's house brand cheese is just... not good.
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This. There's a big difference in quality of milk and cheese by brand and by store... and I'm not saying it has to be 'expensive,' by any stretch. The
'best price' cheddar cheese at HT is way better than whatever was the 'best price' at FL. I buy the cheapest of three brands of whole milk for the kids (and it's not the HT house brand) and it tastes better than Pine State (Ernest P. Worrell, forgive me for saying so).
 
I think you are hitting on a few key points co-mingled.

No chain store carries the same product across all their stores. Gte milk at a HT in SC and you are getting Peeler dairy milk. Get it at a H in Va and you are getting a total different product.

Also all these stores use competitive analysis pricing. Locally we have 2 wal marts 4 miles apart on the same road. Did you know walmart will price match, walmart?

The one that is more convenient is in a higher rent district and the prices are higher. Most recent grocery trip, they price matched the other store to the tune of $27 or 7%...its really as simple as going through the line walking to CS and saying I want you to price match this to store ZYX if they balk ask them to process a return, their tune will change.

Once my wife did this and I guess she was wearing the old jogging pants and looked in need...so the lady CSM actually priced matched it then scanned her employee discount card and gave us an additional 15% off like half the stuff...

I hate the idea of shopping at Wal Mart but ... convenience.
 
BUCKEYE PERFORMANCE INC. said:
Please explain that to my wife.
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Wife completely understands. Wife works 10 hour days. Wife gets home from work around 7 pm. Husband too hungry to wait on food, and wife too tired to cook. Hence no reason for grocery list unless husband is going to cook.

Does not shop well with husband [emoji12]
 
Our family grocery budget is $130/week for a family of 4, 2 kids - 5 yr and 2 yr old. This includes toiletries and we stick to it pretty well unless we have to restock on diapers. We used to cut coupons but they started sucking and we don't use most of those products anyway, so we gave it up. I shop at Aldi, Compare Foods (most produce just as good as HT, but half price), and HT. We only eat out once or twice on the weekend, never during the week.

I absolutely HATE wal-mart, but do shop there if I need something I can't get at one of the 3 stores above.
 
Since this came up again recently, I thought I'd post the USDA Cost of Food at Home for January 2017. Looks like it hasn't changed much from the May 2015 one I originally posted.

We're also still spending less on the food we eat at home. I kept track the past couple of weeks and I'm buying about $100 worth of groceries... I'm just not paying that much, depending on what we normally buy that's on sale and what's priced low enough to stock up. Last week I stocked up on coffee and trash bags, along with the normal stuff, and the bill was $86.89 and the coupons/card savings were $15.59. Yesterday I stocked up on canned beans, cheese, fish, and veggies (Lent!)... the total was $63.33 and the coupons/card savings were $38.40. I think that's a personal best. :lol:

We spend less than $100/month on Amazon Subscribe & Save snacks and staples (Bob's Redmill stuff, snacks for school, toilet paper, diapers, etc.), so some of that factors into what we eat on a daily basis. I also occasionally buy additional bananas, milk, or snack stuff if I have to go to Target for something and it's worth my time to not make an extra stop and/or it's cheaper by unit price there. We go to lunch or dinner once on the weekend, usually, although lately we've been doing 'better' about eating at home.
 

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My wife shops primarily at Aldi. Their store brands are actually as good or better than name brands and half the cost. Really... 150.00 at ingles is 75-100 there. One of my regular snacks from there is their trail mixes. One has walnuts, almonds, blueberries, strawberries, cranberries and pineapple for 3$ for round a pound.
 
I live in a small town choice of piggly wiggly, food lion, was mart, iga what do you recommend.
 
Wherever you get the quality you want... Shop by unit price, it shouldn't matter which store.

I'm shopping at Harris Teeter, because they have the selection and better-tasting milk and cheese ( just the block cheddar, nothing fancy) we want. I've tried the others around here (Kroger, Food Lion, Lowes Foods, Carlie C's IGA, Target, Walmart) and do just as well at HT, because I'm looking at unit prices. If I need to pick up extras or last minute stuff, there's a Food Lion, Target or Walmart, all closer than the nearest HT. I'd rather go to Target or even Walmart than Food Lion, bc it tastes better IMO.
 
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Do like folks do in remote places... Make monthly trips to pick up better stuff and repackage it for the freezer.
 
I guess I could but I'm not much on big city's kinda makes me uncomfortable, anything Goldsboro or bigger gives me the shakes.
 
:lol: I don't mean you have to come to Raleigh... Google real butchers near you. Something like this:

Billy's Pork & Beef Center

Google Maps

'Near' is a relative term...
 
trailhugger said:
Since this came up again recently, I thought I'd post the USDA Cost of Food at Home for January 2017. Looks like it hasn't changed much from the May 2015 one I originally posted.

We're also still spending less on the food we eat at home. I kept track the past couple of weeks and I'm buying about $100 worth of groceries... I'm just not paying that much, depending on what we normally buy that's on sale and what's priced low enough to stock up. Last week I stocked up on coffee and trash bags, along with the normal stuff, and the bill was $86.89 and the coupons/card savings were $15.59. Yesterday I stocked up on canned beans, cheese, fish, and veggies (Lent!)... the total was $63.33 and the coupons/card savings were $38.40. I think that's a personal best. :lol:

We spend less than $100/month on Amazon Subscribe & Save snacks and staples (Bob's Redmill stuff, snacks for school, toilet paper, diapers, etc.), so some of that factors into what we eat on a daily basis. I also occasionally buy additional bananas, milk, or snack stuff if I have to go to Target for something and it's worth my time to not make an extra stop and/or it's cheaper by unit price there. We go to lunch or dinner once on the weekend, usually, although lately we've been doing 'better' about eating at home.
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trailhugger said:
Wherever you get the quality you want... Shop by unit price, it shouldn't matter which store.

I'm shopping at Harris Teeter, because they have the selection and better-tasting milk and cheese ( just the block cheddar, nothing fancy) we want. I've tried the others around here (Kroger, Food Lion, Lowes Foods, Carlie C's IGA, Target, Walmart) and do just as well at HT, because I'm looking at unit prices. If I need to pick up extras or last minute stuff, there's a Food Lion, Target or Walmart, all closer than the nearest HT. I'd rather go to Target or even Walmart than Food Lion, bc it tastes better IMO.
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We have developed a taste for the lunch meat and cheese from the Mennonite store.Went yesterday and got a pound of ham,1/2 a pound of Cajun turkey,a pound of marble cheese,a loaf of sour dough bread and a 1/2 pound of monkey munch.It was $26,guess I'm not a very thrifty shopper.
 
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We spend around $100 a week for myself, wife, and 2 year old daughter. We usually eat out 1-2 times a week, sometimes more if we have stuff going on during the week and no time to cook a meal. Problem is, it seems all of our food gets gone pretty quickly in the first 2 days. I usually snack a lot on the weekends. Been interested to try Aldi's to see if we can get more bang for a our buck, just haven't pulled the trigger because HT is literally right up the street from our house.
 
What are you buying for that $100?

Just for clarification, what do you consider *enough* time to cook a meal?
 
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Today happened to be grocery day, so after seeing @Cherokeekid88 comment, I was a little more careful about both planning our meals for the next week (tonight's supper through next Wednesday) and checking my fridge and pantry. I still bought things that weren't officially on the list because 'Buy 2, Get 3 Free' usually is a real deal and it was stuff we eat that will keep or go in the freezer.

I also shop at HT because I shop unit price and can do just as well there as anywhere else. They also have things we like better than some other places, like the Highland Crest milk.

I paid $148.12 and my VIC savings was $81.65. For those playing along at home, that's "Thrifty" plan for a family of 4 and there are 5 of us.
 
Our family of 3 normally gets by below the thrifty price, never looked it that before, but I'm pretty surprised. You can be thirty and spend WAY less than we do. We normally shop at Walmart now just because on everyday things vs other places it really is cheaper, and it is easier to also get some other stuff we need. We often go to HT for meat though if we want something like steak, but we don't do full grocery shopping there much anymore, even when we try to shop by price, it winds up more but on occasion we still go there to shop.
 
trailhugger said:
What are you buying for that $100?

Just for clarification, what do you consider *enough* time to cook a meal?
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For $100 we usually are buying 4-5 complete meals. My wife is doing Keto, so she doesn't really eat any sides and just loads up on whatever meat we are having. So I can buy Veggies and split them up over 2 meals, so I am buying less sides, just more of a certain thing. We also get things like Deli meat, Frozen Pizzas, Frozen sides, Tide Pods, Dishwasher pods, Apples, Oranges, Strawberries, blueberries, bananas, Peanut Butter, Jelly, Bread. Bacon, Eggs, gallon milk. Usually breakfast at home and go out for breakfast every other Saturday, which means we eat lunch and dinner at home.

We would go out to eat on a night like tonight. Wife and I get home around 5:30, get changed, get our daughter changed and cleaned up, gotta be at a birthday get together around 6, which is about 25 minutes away, so we will be late, be there till 7. Daughters bedtime is usually 7:30, so us grabbing something on the way is going to be the plan for tonight... just doesn't make since to try and cook anything on a night like tonight.
 
For as long as the wife and I have been together, weekly groceries always fall between $150-200/week. Didn't matter if it was just the two of us or us plus the two girls. Our groceries include everything you can get at the 'store', deodorant...diapers/wipes...food, it's all 'groceries' to me. We do all our shopping online, on any given week Amazon could be 30-50% of what's purchased and the rest is ordered online at HT and picked up. Recently, we've added a once a month trip to Trader Joe's for new/different things to try. Currently, I still do one $10 lunch/week, and Friday's we do a $30 pizza night that we usually pick from until Sunday morning.
 
Cherokeekid88 said:
We would go out to eat on a night like tonight. Wife and I get home around 5:30, get changed, get our daughter changed and cleaned up, gotta be at a birthday get together around 6, which is about 25 minutes away, so we will be late, be there till 7. Daughters bedtime is usually 7:30, so us grabbing something on the way is going to be the plan for tonight... just doesn't make since to try and cook anything on a night like tonight.
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So one of you makes sandwiches or something equally fast while the other gets the kiddo ready and you've eaten food already purchased and much cheaper/healthier.

A low-carb 'snack' meal we might have is cheese with various deli meats, pickled vegs, and hard-boiled eggs. Some veg's are still critical for micronutrients on keto, so those with hummus would maybe work. Tuna salad with hard-boiled eggs is also good.

Or you plan ahead and make a double batch of another dinner you can reheat and eat before you leave home.
 
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