Grocery Budget

[Pdyx]

I've been struggling to find a number for our monthly budget for groceries/food. We always go over (or almost always). I tried to set it at $500 because that seems pretty reasonable for a married couple with no children, but we always climb up towards $700, unless we're really careful, and we never seem to make it under $500.

I know there's a shit-ton of factors involved here, but does anyone have thoughts on how to manage their food budget? We try to not eat out very often, and meal plan, though sometimes we lose sight of those things (and I think that's the answer, we need to really do better meal planning, maybe have a cash only budget for food so we can see the remaining amount for the week?).

What's your food budget, do you have one, do you stick to it? Tips/tricks?

[Serious Paul]

I have kids, so my food budget is absurd. Guys I work with spend a lot of time clipping coupons, and I wish I was that organized. They buy in bulk, when stuff is on sale with coupons. There are a few who do like a food collective where several families kick in, buy supplies and meal plan for thirty days. They spend a weekend cooking it all then eat it for the next thirty days.

Frankly I'm not that organized. So all we really do is use a garden. We prefer, when I have the cash, to buy our meat bulk from guys I know who raise and butcher cattle, pigs, goats and lambs. Chicken is just so cheap raising it on your own just can't beat the price.

[UncleJoseph]

[quote="Pdyx"...but we always climb up towards $700, unless we're really careful, and we never seem to make it under $500.[/quote]

That seems really, really high for 2 people. Are you buying particularly expensive foods like steak & seafood a lot? Or spending a lot of premium coffee or booze? Booze, meat and coffee (especially Keurig K-cups) are the most expensive part of the bill, I've found. Food is ridiculously expensive these days anyway, but those are the killers for us. In addition, paper products (toilet paper, tissue, paper towels, etc). have gone up a lot too.

My wife and I are notoriously bad at grocery shopping or planning meals. We usually just go to the grocery store and shop when we know we need groceries, but rarely have any idea what we need or what we want. Our grocery trips are more akin to impulse shopping than anything else. That said, we occasionally spend $500/month. Not counting dining out or alcohol purchases, we rarely go over $350/month.

If the type of food you're purchasing is expensive, but isn't something you can/want to change, then the only way to save money is to shop sales in combination with coupons. I always purchase extra whenever something is on sale. I use coupons occasionally when I can. If you can purchase meat in bulk (or kill your own), you can save a lot of money. There may be a food co-op in your area. We have a couple of them here, but they usually cater to folks who don't want pasteurized milk, organic free-range meat, organic veggies, etc. So those folks usually don't save much money, but get exactly the food they want at a better price than the supermarket offers for their specialty foods.
Doing things like purchasing a whole or half of a cow, or whole pig, etc. will save a ton of money if you source the meat correctly.

[sinsual]

Never shop hungry!

Make sure you eat before you go grocery shopping, it really cuts down on the impulse buying.

Look for the "offbrand" grocers (Food-4-Less, Sav-a-Lot, Wiinnco etc) 75% of their products are name brand products in a non-name brand label. Many companies do a run of "X" number of servings of their product in the name brand. The remaining product is packaged in the offbrand labeling.

Look for alternatives in product. IE: That T-Bone steak at $13 a pound can be replaced with a T-Bone pork chop at $6 a pound. If you want a cut of Top Sirloin at $11 a pound, buy a full roast at $8 a pound and make your own cuts before you freeze them.

Meal planning is all and good, but, make a dual or triple plan. IE: give yourself options for each day. You may have planned a 1 hour meal, but ended up with 20 minutes to cook. If you have options that take that into account, it is easier to stay on plan.

A slow cooker is your friend. There are recipes all over the net.From soups to roasts to stews etc. Last night's stew makes a good take to work lunch the next day.

[3278]

I know there's a shit-ton of factors involved here, but does anyone have thoughts on how to manage their food budget?

Don't. Make a list of the things you need to eat to be healthy, and then go buy those things. If that costs $700 a month, then maybe look for less expensive alternatives, but most of us waste way more money on things way less beneficial than food. Consider food an investment in your health.

We shop twice a week, and basically buy food for the next 3-4 days. We buy whatever we're going to want for breakfast. ["Smoothies this week? Maybe some steel cut oats?"] We buy "stuff for lunches," usually sandwich- or wrap-making supplies, we buy a couple snacks [fresh fruit, yogurt-covered pretzels, etc], and then we buy dinners. Dinner is typically (2) 6oz cuts of meat [although we can never get down to just 6oz, since America doesn't sell things that size], plus a pile of fresh veggies and fresh fruit. We can't shop less often, because we don't really eat anything canned or frozen.

And it costs. We budget $400 for 2 people for a month, but we rarely quite make it, usually spending more like $600+. [Of course, that's "all groceries," which includes toothpaste, dish soap, etc.] We could cut a lot down: we could drink juice from concentrate, but instead we drink Simply juices, which are all-natural and not-from-concentrate. We also splurge a lot on fresh fruits and vegetables: we probably spend more on that than anything else, but we could buy frozen.

But why? What's this money for if it's not for our health and our pleasure? This keeps us healthy, keeps us fueled. The same as I didn't mind paying $0.20 extra to put Premium in my BMW, I don't mind spending a little extra to keep my daughter and I fed as well as possible.

Not counting dining out or alcohol purchases, we rarely go over $350/month.

Holy shit! That's less that $6 a day, per person, and less than $2 per meal! That's fantastic. We're nowhere near that.

[UncleJoseph]

Not counting dining out or alcohol purchases, we rarely go over $350/month.

Holy shit! That's less that $6 a day, per person, and less than $2 per meal! That's fantastic. We're nowhere near that.

The caveat here is that we dine out far more than we should. But still, we just don't spend that much on groceries.

[3278]

Ah, yeah: we almost never eat out. But hell, we probably spend more than $6 a day just on _fresh fruit._ I'm sure Ana ate at least $3 worth of cantaloupe today.

[Anguirel]

My food budget is low, but that's because I'm terribly lazy, cheap, and capable of sneaking in just enough variation to make it work out.

I just can't bother myself to cook something fancy if I'm the only one eating it. Breakfast has gone from cereal and milk to cereal and Yogurt with berries (fresh when possible, though dried also works). Lunch is a sandwich -- I get giant blocks of cheese, meat, and a loaf of bread. Each time I go to the store, I vary the type of meat, cheese, and bread. Sometimes I opt for Peanut Butter and Jelly, or other such things. That usually lasts 2 weeks or so. Point being, I'm ok with my lunch being about the same every day for a couple weeks straight, and it's a lot easier to make a sandwich each day than even go out. I can have cheese and meat sitting in the fridge at work, as it takes up about as much space than my packed sandwiches did when I brought those (stacked up, anyway), and I can keep the bread at my desk.

Dinner switches regularly, and yet also remains pretty constant. I bike to work daily, so I also need to be able to fit my food in a single grocery bag - this means I get food for a couple days at a time at most, though usually it's batches of larger amounts of something. Anyway, my typical meal is a meat and a veggie. Meat is usually a sausage of some sort, veggie is a frozen sort (I'm currently very much liking what's supposed to be a sugarsnap stir-fry pack, but I just boil it). Boil water and sausages, then add veggies, then drain. Food in about 10 minutes, only 2 of which require you to be in the kitchen. See? Lazy. Cheap. And I can change out the veggies or meat type easily for variation.

When I feel like more carbs, I make some pasta -- sometimes I make my own sauce (large batch, store the remainder), sometimes I use store-bought sauce. Sometimes it's angel hair, sometimes frozen ravioli. I've also been known to make my own weird pizzas.

I almost never go out to eat on my own, and rarely even go out with company. It's just part of how I like to live. Anyway, point being, it's reasonably healthy, tastes reasonably good, has a very low time investment, and it's typically pretty inexpensive -- being willing to eat byproduct meats usually is, I suppose. I'd imagine the extra fat in there might be more of an issue for someone not biking daily, as well, but I see it as an asset for how I live. I need those calories. It might not work for everyone, but it might be something you could use as an alternative to fast food or carry-out or delivery on occasion. Someone with a little more imagination and desire for flavor could probably also go with fresh rather than frozen veggies, and maybe even more variation in how they're cooked and what meat it is paired alongside -- it should be almost as simple to slice things up and toss it on a George Foreman-type grill, for example. Or, you know, add your own spices instead of relying on whatever is in the sausage.