I don’t know if it’s just us or if the price of food is going up.
I do the majority of the grocery shopping for me and mr. avabeth. We alternate weeks with a large shop one wee and a small shop the next. It’s just the two of us, neither of us is a vegetarian or doing Atkins or whatever. We eat a lot of chicken breasts, pasta, and I like to cook new things like soups and chicken dishes I find online. I also like to bake or make fresh desserts like white chocolate and berries. Even so, I buy on sale as much as possible and always use my discount card. I look for specials on items and try to stock up if it’s something we use often like sour cream. We have a small weakness for specialty cheeses, but I don’t buy those often, or if we do, we get the triple-cream brie from Trader Joe’s once a month. (And we’ve compared - a shopping trip at Trader Joe’s is comparable in price and content to a shopping trip at our local grocery store - Trader Joe’s is 45 minutes away).
Still, we’ve averaged our shopping out to around $100 for the large shop and $50 for the small. So we’re spending $300 a month on groceries alone.
Is this normal? What are you spending in your household? Anything I can do to bring our bill down?
My local mom and pop grocery store, which has the worst produce section I’ve ever encountered, is a bit pricey overall for everything and a run in there for 2-3 weeks worth of vittles for the kids and us is $175 with nary any produce.
If I go to the Megalomart ( Meijers) and can stay away from the clothing,toys,stuff ( it is very hard) I will spend about $160 with produce. But I don’t get alot of meat there. It has a fabulous produce section.
If I go to Costco, it is usually for meats and a few bulk foods ( kids snacks) It will run about $150 a shot.
About $400 a month. Give or take a few bucks.
With the kids it gets expensive quickly. We use at least 4 gallons of milk and a couple loaves of bread and a few boxes of cereal each week and then there is meat and veggies and cheeses and snacks… Get to the checkout and all of a sudden the bill is over $100. This doesn’t include paper producsts, pet foods, cleansers, laundry soap or shampoo or any of that which we tend to get at BJ’s. A single walk through that place is usually $200. Thankfully we don’t do that very often.
Lately I’ve been making a huge pot of soup on the weekend and having that for lunch a few days during the week which is awfully handy. Soups are one of the nice things about the cooler weather.
The grocery store I shop at, which is on campus, is pretty heinously overpriced. Don’t have any examples off the top of my head, but I might be shopping there later today, so I’ll ask for a receipt or write down the total or something.
The local grocery had some of our favorites 2/$4 and they had $1 off 2 coupons so we stocked up today!
My kids get dry cereal as snacks. Better than candy or chips and still something they get excited about. Easy to store/transport and easy for toddlers to feed themselves!
I go shopping usually twice a week, and spend about thirty dollars per trip, so that’s in the range of two hundred fifty dollars per month. And that’s all just for myself, as I live alone. I eat out about once per week, usually spending about ten dollars when I do. My grocery shopping is done mostly at Harris Teeter, an upscale chain that we have in the South. I could probably cut the bill down by about ten percent by going to Kroger, but they’re way out of my way, I don’t have a car, and I’ve found that Harris Teeter has more variety despite being a lot smaller. For instance, I can get whole wheat hamburger buns at Harris Teeter, but not at Krogers. In the end, though, I don’t really care about cutting down on my grocery bill, since I really don’t have much else to do with my money.
As for strategies: buy store brands rather than name brands. For anything nonperishable, buy in bulk because you will eventually use it all.
I do most of my grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s. I go there usually once a week. I spend about $45 every time, which includes their great little premade lunches, which I bring in to work. SO much cheaper than eating out once a day. Since I’ve really tried to cut down on my ordering dinner in, that $45 covers pretty much all my food for the week. (I might have a snack if I’ve hungry at work, if if I’m running errands on the weekend.)
I am a vegetarian, so I probably spend less than an omnivore might. Veggies are cheaper than meat.
Where do YOU live? Fresh veggies, in my neck of the woods, are equally or more expensive than meat, especially if we’re talking the amount needed to make a whole meal out of 'em.
A pound of hamburger is $3 and is a minimum of 3 meals for me and Mr. Athena. Bacon can be purchased on sale for about the same amount. A whole chicken is about $6, and the last one I bought was the basis for 2 meals, 3 people each, and a couple lunches.
Veggies, on the other hand - just veggies to make a salad, not a meal - are easily $3-$4 for 2 salads. A buck for the lettuce (more if you use the prepackaged washed bags of salad greens) at least a buck for a tomato nowadays, and $1 - $2 for various other bits (cucumbers, bell peppers, dressing, etc.). So we’re talking a minimum of $3 for 2 salads. And that’s just for a basic salad, not a whole meal.
Beef we now get at the butcher shop by the half-hind-quarter (about $250 for about 6 months worth). Cosco is primarily for bulk seafood and chicken, figure $60 for that every 3-4 weeks. If the weather’s nice, and stuff is in season, we go to this huge outdoor market on the weekends where we get a week’s worth of fruit and veggies for about $10, but otherwise she goes to the grocery store and I don’t really know what she spends.
Finding out that the toddler’s alergic to wheat has proven to be the most expensive, as we’ve been buying pretty much every flour alternative in the universe, trying to find something the wife can bake a decent loaf of bread out of. (So far, the bread that was primarily Garfava flour based tasted the best, the flour was fairly reasonably priced, but gave us all an unbelievable amount of gas). So that’s been, like, an extra $40 a week the last few weeks.
I shop at WinCo (used to be CubFoods) and rarely spend more than $80-100 per month. I cook mostly Italian or Mexican- style foods, so I usually buy hamburger, ground sausage and chicken breasts for meat. My veggies are usually carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, and broccoli. I buy whatever fruit is in season. The bulk of my diet is made up of brown rice and pasta (the tri-colored spinach and tomato stuff- mmmm!) dishes.
Of course, I buy very few pre-packaged, processed, or ready-made foods, so that makes everything cheaper.
That’s what’s weird to me. I buy mostly fresh foods, too - the only processed foods I buy on a regular basis are dairy, mashed potatoes (we don’t eat real mashed potatoes - call us weird) and pasta. I buy a lot of chicken breasts, which I usually cook with spices, hamburger for spaghetti, and a lot of fresh produce - mushrooms (white, baby bella, and crimini - all whole, so I slice at home and save $.40 or so on each), tomatoes, peppers, onions, small potatoes for roasting, and broccoli.
I’d love to get our bill down to $100 a month! Is that just for you or for you and another person?
Our budget during Americorps was $31.50 a week. I discovered that after that first painful week (when you have to buy salt & pepper and other staples) that $31 is more than enough for one person. I teamed up with one of my friends for a couple of months, and with our combined grocery money of $63 we had food coming out our ears. Couldn’t eat all of it.
Mine likely averages about $300-400 a month for me, Alias, and kid. Of course, it all depends on what’s on sale. If I can stock up on things like chicken breasts, etc. for cheap it brings the total down for a while.
I eat a lot of sandwiches, (usually ham, turkey or salami) for lunch. I’ve recently started cooking a batch of spaghetti sauce or a casserole once a week and make 5-6 meals out of that. Fortunately, I don’t mind a repetitious diet. Breakfast is toast or a bagel. My downfall is my coke consumption, which is up to 3 cans a day. I had gotten it down to one can per day, but I’ve fallen off the wagon. I bet I only spend $25-30 per week on my groceries. I’m frugal and, right now, broke.
We have a teenaged son and an almost teenaged daughter, so we go through a gallon of milk a day, almost. We also have a chest freezer, so we stock up with meats on a regular basis.
Having teenaged kids in the house gets very expensive.
Equating one Australian dollar to one US dollar (we’re talking local produce here- I get paid and taxed in Australian dollars as well), Mrs Cicero and I would spend about $250 a month on groceries. We’re not big eaters, which does help, but we buy good quality stuff. As an example we would buy rib fillet steak, but only a small piece each.
Delaware - family of four; two adults, one seven-year old, one infant, three cats.
Typically, a little below US$400 per month, not counting restaurant meals. we don’t eat too high on the hog, but we avoid junkfood and try to eat healthy.