Looking To Cut My Grocery Expenses
September 16, 2009 – 4:31 amWe spent over a hundred dollars a week on food last year for my wife and I. I don’t think this is outrageous, but it’s more than I’d like to spend. Since this puts our food budget at about $5,000 a year, this is a huge budget bucket for us.
So the question is why did we spend so much, and what can I do to reduce these costs?
- We already shop at multiple stores, but we did just switch from shopping at Tom Thumb to shopping primarily at Walmart. This change should reduce our costs, but I don’t know by how much.
- I use a price list, and stock up when I find a low price. Since I shop Walmart there aren’t that many deals from one day to the next on the items I buy, but it helps when I hit other stores.
- We have been eating out less, so it might be worth seeing how we did on the budget when I combine our dining out and grocery budget.
- I’m thinking about tracking our food consumption diligently for a month. I don’t have a great feel for where most of our grocery costs come from. For example, is meat a big percentage of our budget? Or milk? Or cleaning supplies?
- If I can identify the most costly ingredients I purchase, then I can work to make recipes that minimize some of these ingredients (or their frequency).
We’ll see how it goes!
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3 Responses to “Looking To Cut My Grocery Expenses”
We’ve found that stocking some staples, planning a week’s worth of meals based on our weekly Wednesday advertised grocery specials, and making enough to use leftovers creatively all help keep the two of us well below $50 a week.
Coincidentally, I was thinking about this from a different angle yesterday at http://www.kitchentablenomics.com/ Sometimes your lowest price choices aren’t the most economical ones.
By Gene at www.kitchentablenomics.com on Sep 16, 2009
Coupons are a wonderful way to cut your grocery expenses. It isn’t enough to just use coupons, though. You need to know how to match those coupons with store sales to maximize your money.
Check out http://robthestores.blogspot.com/ to learn more about where to find coupons and how to use them to make grocery shopping less expensive.
By Mom on Sep 17, 2009
I’m married with three children. Our monthly food bill would be so much more if it wasn’t for my wife’s unbelievable knack to optimize the use of coupons. She regularly saves 35% or better on every trip to the grocery store.
One site she follows that helps her quite a bit, it’s http://simply-saving.com/free-coupons-and-samples. Check it out.
By Billy Akerman on Sep 21, 2009