Frugal Groceries

Are you comfortable with how much you are spending on groceries?

One of the biggest expenses in our household budget is the $400 per month I take for groceries ($260), supplies ($50) and household items($90). It wasn't until I broke down our grocery spending by category (protein, junk food/carbs/baking, dairy, produce) that I was able to lower my grocery bill by so much. It is so time consuming and SOOOOO eye opening. When you are spending the majority of your money on junk food/carbs/baking stuff, you KNOW that you need to change your thinking!

The other thing that helped me tremendously was buying only enough food for one week. I would take $60 per week and wouldn't stock up on anything. I bought everything that we needed for one week and one week only. It nearly killed me to miss some of the loss leaders/sales, but this exercise showed me how low I could really go in my budget.

I found that when I limited my grocery budget to an amount that I thought was too low, I was MUCH more careful of throwing things away and wasting my money buying junk.  Throw in a little faith and awareness of what I was buying and we made it on $60 per week for food!

I didn't stop buying milk, produce or meat, but I definitely got rid of the treats! I stopped buying crackers and lost weight...I love crackers and can eat a whole box! Every two months, I buy a box of saltine crackers and that's it. I bet I used to spend $20 a month on crackers! I stopped wasting time trying to find deals on cereals, granola bars, fruit snacks, etc. I just didn't have the money to play the grocery games. I buy two boxes of cereal a month now. If it were up to me, I wouldn't buy any, but my husband loves the stuff.


I shopped this way for a few weeks (or months - I can't remember) and found that I could spend $40 per week for the food we needed and then I would take $20 so I could fill my pantry. Eventually it was $20 per week for needs and $40 for the pantry!

Now that I've made a commitment to buying more products locally, I have no idea what kind of "raise" I'll need in my grocery budget. One dozen eggs cost about $.80 more, meat costs about $1.00 more per pound and I won't find out about produce until this summer. There's a bit of a cost to supporting local farmers and ranchers. Peace of mind: PRICELESS!

During the month of May I'm breaking down my numbers again. I really want to see how much I'm spending on produce vs. baking items. I need to keep track of how much food I throw out as well.  I may need to continue doing this through June because I am DETERMINED to use up every.single.thing in my freezer before I buy more food!

Whether you are spending $1,000 per month or $100 per month, ask yourself, "is my spending in alignment with my values and goals in life?" If not, make one small change today and baby step your way to a frugal grocery budget that is in alignment with your values!

This post is linked to:
We Are THAT Family
Life as Mom