A common question people are asking me is how I keep my grocery spending to a minimum, but when I look back and what I’ve spent in the past year, it doesn’t look extraordinarily frugal to me.
In fact, it looks like in the month of September I’ve been eating my budget out of house and home (partly true, if you’ve seen me eat before).
However in months of May and October in particular, it looks like I’ve been starving myself.
How to reconcile the two!? 🙂
Here are a few of my reasons why my grocery budget looks so off-kilter at times.
(Seafood market in Hong Kong)
WHEN I TRAVEL, I DON’T HAVE “GROCERIES”
While I travel, I don’t count what I eat while I am traveling as “Groceries”.
It is more under the category of “Travel > Food”. In this past month in Europe alone, we spent $700 CAD each buying food to eat because we didn’t have a kitchen to cook in, and we had to buy pre-cooked foods to eat.
When we went to Europe the first time around for a month and a half, it was $900 CAD each buying food to eat.
It is clearly a lot more expensive to eat out and buy pre-made foods than to have a kitchen and do it yourself.
WE USE A LOT OF POINTS
As we’ve come to the agreement that we should use my PC Mastercard for everything, we rack up a lot of points between the two of us. From living in hotels to traveling to paying for every little thing in between including things for my company, it all adds up to big savings for us in the end.
I’d estimate that we get about $40 a month free in groceries on average. That means between the two of us, we spend about $4000 in cold hard cash on average, which is a hell of a lot of money, but not unreasonable for this year, seeing as we’ve been traveling for work and play since January.
Check out your local credit card rewards, I’m leaning towards going for cash back this time, seeing as we can easily hit the $2000 minimum required to spend each month, and get back 2% in cash rather than points to use for shopping at the grocery store.
WE DON’T BUY PROCESSED/JUNK STUFF
I admit to being a bit of a nosy person when I am at the grocery store.
I am always curious as to what people buy, and generally speaking, their carts are full of huge bottles of soda, canned foods, prepared frozen meals and boxes of stuff, and that ADDS UP at the till, even if it seems cheap to throw it in the cart on a whim.
Our cart in comparison is usually these 8 things:
- Organic Milk (3 cartons of it… we drink quite a lot)
- Organic Eggs (2 cartons of it)
- Vegetables (we do buy canned tomatoes, they taste better)
- Fruits
- Condiments (Oils, Sugar, Salt)
- Baking things (Flour)
- Dried foodstuffs (Rice or Pasta)
- Fish/Meats
On the rare occasion, we will pick up a bottle of pop, but we don’t do it on a regular basis, nor keep the fridge stocked with it.
I am also not trying to condemn anyone who buys soda and so on by saying how much healthier we eat in comparison, but it’s the honest truth that it is very rare for us to buy frozen, (99% of) canned or packaged items.
As a result, I think our food budget is kept quite low.We are buying food in its rawest form possible for less than $5, so we can cook and transform it into a meal that would otherwise cost $15.99 to buy as a family-sized frozen dinner.
Other things like cereal costs money too. Have you seen the prices for the boxes of cereal lately!? I remember the boxes being twice the size and half the price!! Outrageous.
So there you have it, the 3 main reasons why it SEEMS like we don’t spend a lot on groceries, when in fact, I think we’re piglets.
Just a girl trying to find a balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver.
I cleared $60,000 in 18 months earning $65,000 gross/year.
Now I am self-employed, and you can read more about 
Thanks the tips! Some of them are really new to me. For example, I have never thought shopping with somebody isn’t really good for the budget. And now I understand that I shop with a friend I spend more) Many things distract us and we make unnecessary purchases. It’s easy to get confused in a variety of new products and foods so it’s necessary to make a budget and to take limited amount of money with you. I always make a shopping list before going to the grocery store. When I’m short on cash I use a credit card or try to restore finances with online loans. But of course it’s better to frugal and stay in frames of your personal budget.
I particularly noticed this recently when the Euro was doing so badly. Our supermarkets advertised a lot about lowering their prices so that customers wouldn’t go over the border to Germany because of it being cheap… however, I noticed I didn’t really profit from the lower prices because it was all on processed foods made abroad or using foreign ingredients, which I hardly ever buy: I stick to local and seasonal basics and what is produced within the country (and Switzerland is tiny, so even “other”-regional isn’t far away!).
My staples just now are local milk, oatmeal, apples/plums (we live in a fruit area), seasonal produce like potatoes, carrots, leeks, broccoli or pumpkin etc. that are grown in fields near us, occasionally the apple cider that is made here (usually we drink water), all kinds of cheese from this area, local bakery breads/flour… I guess the rice we buy is Italian, but I buy plain rices and make my own dishes rather than the package risottos etc. Any meat is organic and local, too. Herbal teas are local but black tea is foreign (we don’t drink coffee at home) and any flowers I buy for pleasure are Max Havelaar fairtrade. Oh, and our chocolate is Swiss, too, LOL!!!
We also tend to avoid the processed/prepackaged stuff. My only exception usually is cereal (I buy whatever is cheapest) and granola bars. We don’t like spending a lot on food, but we try to buy the healthy/fresh stuff. Also, the carts full of prepackaged stuff reminds me of all the extreme couponers. They tend to buy A LOT of prepackaged stuff because that’s where the coupons are. I wouldn’t bother getting unhealthy crap just because it’s cheaper than real food!
Also, that’s cool that you can use your credit card “points” to directly buy groceries. I’d probably do that if that was an option for my credit cards.
Katie and I are going to be living on a similar amount grocery-wise for the next few months. We eat cheap though so it is do-able.
Peace,
Annie
I forgot to mention how much time/money we save. We used to spend about $400-550 a month on groceries before planning meals. Now we spend $150-250 for two people. We used to toss tons of food, now we toss only old condiments that are more than a year old after opening. Time wise: we save at least 6 hours a week on grocery shopping alone – now its “in and out” in 15 minutes instead of wondering the aisles. We also save time on food prep, but I’ve never quantified those numbers. And we do this ecause we live to cook and we love variety and we want to save money and don’t want to waste food. We also stopped drinking juice – that stuff is terrible for you-as much sugar as a can of pop! Much better to eat fruit instead, just as tasty + you get fiber.
And the food bill is still high only because my husband is a voracious eater who eats about 3 times what I eat at a meal + snacks, and we like to support local farmers and shop at farmers market when possible.
My husband and I managed to reduce our grocery bill by 50-60% and reduce the amount of food we toss by making a meal plan every week. Now instead of going to the grocery store and buying a little of this and a little of that and something quick for busy nights and racking up 100-150$ grocery bills every trip, we make a meal plan and shopping list over Sunday brunch. We plan what we’ll eat every day, and also plan for days-off (and eat out at an expensive restaurant or get takeout). We plan only dinners, and we always make enough for lunch next day. We can also pre-prep ingredients. The added bonus is that we save time and mental energy fromnot having to figure out our meals on the go. On Wednesday after work, for example, when we’re too exhausted to think, we already know that we’re making pineapple fried rice, and everything is ready, all I have to do is toss it all in the pan and we eat 20 minutes later. It also allows us to be more creative and avoid the “chicken Tuesday”.
Sorry that should be inexpensive restaurant ($30 for two ppl max)
Yes, I’ve noticed that the food budget looks a bit ‘better’ in the months when we have travelled. Glad it’s not just me. I don’t specify travel-food; just travel. On the other hand this should shift a bit now that we have the motorhome. My intention is to pack as much practical food into the box as possible so that purchases away from home are not as many. Which may not be quite as much fun, but we’ll see how it goes. You are obviously more adventurous in your food choices than I am, judging from your photo. We live 10 minutes from the fishquay and have only this year started having ‘adventures’ in shopping there – since they started advertising £1 for 1 pound of fish. Major bargain if a little bit icky here and there.