Question by Zoe’s Mom: Moms, how much do you spend on groceries each month? And do you have any tips for saving on food?
I’ve been going over our food budget trying to see if there is anything that I can do to save us some money. I want to try to save a little on food so that we can take the money saved and put it into savings and use it pay off debt faster. I’m also trying to see if what we spend is average. So my questions are, roughly how much a month do you spend on food? What kind of meals do you prepare? How big is your family? And what tips do you have for saving money on groceries?
Thanks!
Best answer:
Answer by mysterious stranger
the cheeper the better when buying foods dont go of name brands but instead try store brands, and if you dont need it dont buy it its not nesscary and there is no budget because the budget depends how many you r feeding and the age of the children i have two children and we try to buy in bulk and large quantities.. we spen about 200 every time we shop
Give your answer to this question below!
500.00 -600.00
3 ppl
Cuban food
There are four in our family (me, my husband, a 3 year old, and a 1 year old) and we generally spend around $ 400 a month in groceries. I clip coupons like crazy from the sunday paper and online. Our grocery store has a lot of “buy one get one frees” each week so we stock up on those items and also try to use coupons that go along with those items as we can even use a coupon on the free one. That helps tremendously. We try to buy and make the things that are the good deals instead of buying exactly what we “want”. We’re also vegetarian, so that helps with the cost as well.
Just today we went to the grocery store and got $ 220 worth of groceries for $ 140 just by buying mostly sale items, generic when possible, and using coupons.
I spend about $ 200 a month on groceries for the 3 of us. BUT, hubby buys his own lunches, and daughter gets lunch at school, and I frequently eat lunch out as well. And none of us are much in the way of breakfast eaters. And I don’t make dinner on Sunday.
General money saving tips are probably ones you’ve heard a million times:
1. Buy store brands as much as possible. Usually the quality is comparable, and occassionally it’s better. (I like Kroger brand tuna MUCH more than the brand names.) And buy generic for things where it really DOESN’T matter. (I buy the cheap 1000 sheet rolls of toilet paper. Why pay big bucks if it’s going to get flushed away? I buy cheap sugar. Sugar is sugar.)
2. Avoid convenience foods. Cutting up your own salad greens is cheaper than buying the stuff in the bag. Making spagetti sauce from canned sauce (or fresh tomatoes in season) is cheaper than buying a jar of Prego or Ragu. (But not ALL convenience foods are more costly. Inexpensive bread is probably cheaper than making your own. Cake mixes (at least if you buy them on sale) are cheaper than cakes from scratch.)
3. Shop sales. I check the sale ads every week, and stock up on non-perishables and meat for the freezer when it’s cheap. And I plan my menus, to some degree, around what’s on sale as well as what’s in my freezer. Also, if your store has a table for day-old baked good and such, always check it out. I can often find decent bakery bread for $ 1 a loaf. Meat with sale-stickers on it can also help the budget.
4. Plan menus. As noted under #3, if you plan ahead you can work around what’s cheap. But if you head for the grocery store at 5:30 with NO idea what you want to make for supper, you’re likely to spend a lot more … esp. if you’re hungry.
5. Unless you live in warmer climes this probably wont’ be much use now, but if your town has a farmer’s market, shop there during the season. Again, not everything is cheaper there, but many items are, and they’re always tastier and local.
6. Unless it tastes awful where you are, drink tap water, and make pitchers of iced tea rather than buying lots of soft drinks.
7. Eat vegetarian (or what I call ‘mostly veg’) once or twice a week. Beans and eggs are cheap. Cheese less so. A few slices of bacon can add a lot of flavor to something at little cost.
FWIW, I’ve never had much luck with coupons. They seem to mostly be for convenience foods and costly brand names that I don’t buy anyway, or that are still more expensive with the coupon than a store brand is without. If I was really dedicated about clipping, I MIGHT save a couple of bucks a week … but it’s never seemed worth the effort to me.
Do you qualify for SNAP? (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; formerly known as Food Stamps)
Eligibility requirements depend on household income and number of occupants in the home. Go to your local DHS to find out if you are eligible.
I’m in Australia so the numbers aren’t going to give you a good comparison and anyway- my bill changes from month to month rather drastically! Our grocery bill over a month ranges from $ 50 to $ 800, and that’s because I stock up on non perishables when I have the money so that I don’t have to shop when I’m broke!
My tips are- check your unit pricing, these tell you how much an item is per 100g or per litre and helps compare prices when buying foodstuffs.
Non-foods, check your efficiency, unit pricing is a waste of time with these- would you rather pay $ 4 for 4 rolls of 4 ply toilet paper with a hundred sheets to the roll or $ 4 for 8 rolls of 2 ply with 200 sheets to the roll? Laundry liquid and powder is another big money drain- sometimes you are better off buying the more expensive ones as you get more washes per dollar!
Factor in transport costs too- yeah doing groceries at shop 1 might save you five dollars on the bill compared to shop 2 but if you are spending $ 6 more in fuel to get to shop 1 then you are better off shopping at the more expensive shop!
Work from a meal plan- have a look at what you already have in your cupboards and work out a menu around those items- then buy only what you need to make those meals.
NEVER shop on an empty stomach- we make a lot of impulse purchases when we are hungry!
If you have a couple of recipes your family loves, make up double when you cook it and freeze the excess- it’s good for taking for work and school lunches and when you are dog tired it means you have a meal in the freezer that you don’t have to cook!
I’ve had wonderful success saving on our grocery bill while increasing the quality of my family’s food these past few months by changing the way I cook and being as efficient as possible with food. With the money I’ve saved, I’ve invested in some helpful kitchen gadgets that help me be even more efficient while cooking, so I don’t go crazy and give up on the whole thing altogether. It was a great goal (we need to save $ 70 and then I can get) that made saving kind of exciting and immediately rewarding.
When I go shopping, I buy bulk foods as much as possible; bulk spices save a ton (42 cents for a full container of Italian Seasoning can’t be beat!), as do bulk beans and grains. Even better, you only buy as much as you’re willing to store in your house at the time, so you get a reduced price without the Costco sized packages. I also buy larger meats, like whole chicken, turkeys or ducks, pork or beef roasts. I’ll make the turkey or other bird one night and make it a really nice meal, with a lot of vegetables and other sides. Once we have the roasted bird meat, I make all sorts of dishes like roasted chicken risotto with vegetables, pizzas, baked sandwiches / sandwich pockets (tip: Pillsbury makes a great seamless crescent roll dough that is great for pizza crusts and baked sandwiches), chicken pot pie / chicken with dumplings. With the dregs of the chicken and broth on the very last day, I make a soup, usually “bird” and lentil. For the roasts, I’ll cook up a pork or beef roast one night and have that as dinner, and then make chilis and stews (slow cook in the oven overnight for awesome flavor). Once the poultry or roasts are done the first night, I have to spend very little time actually cooking for the rest of the rotation that the meat lasts, so I feel like I get more time with my family for my trouble. We’ve been reducing the amount of meat that we’ve been putting into our food and increasing the vegetable content, so the meat lasts longer, too. With the money I save buying whole meats, I get to splurge a little and stick to only buying more expensive organic produce, which just tastes better in my opinion.
After we’ve eaten our fill of the roasted meat (which is less meat since than it was previously since I’ve started making more vegetables and sides) we get all the meat off the bone and then I make a broth with the carcass (or scraps if there are no bones). Store bought broths are ridiculously expensive, especially when you consider that you can make them from scraps you would have otherwise put in the yard waste / worm bin / garbage. I always keep a gallon sized ziploc bag in my fridge or freezer specifically for vegetable cuttings, and keep popping in all the peels and discarded pieces of vegetables (except for potatoes). Once the bag is full, I use the cuttings to make a vegetable stock, or add it to a poultry carcass or other meat scraps to make a combination stock. Another tip is if you see that your grocery store is having a banging sale on precooked rotisserie chickens, pick one of those up for chicken dinner and broth. Sometimes the precooked chickens are cheaper than the raw ones, so keep an eye out!
I make my own biscuits and pancakes so I never have to buy / keep on hand mixes, and I make my own cakes and other desserts from scratch. With the money I’ve saved cooking this way, I’ve saved up for the ice cream freezer bowl for my Kitchenaid mixer, and can also make my own ice cream or frozen yogurt with leftover dairy waiting to go bad in my fridge. Also, I never buy powdered sugar, when I can just as easily powder my own in my food processor or blender. Why spend and store more?
Another purchase I was able to make because of our savings was the grater / slicer attachment for my mixer. Now we only buy block cheese, instead of grated or sliced. The slicer is awesome and we’ve been making our own potato chips, which kids *love* and is a great way to use up potatoes that need to get out of the pantry.
As you can see, I save a lot of money by trying to use food very wisely and try my best to not let a single thing go to waste. It can be kind of a challenging routine to get in to, since I had previously been accustomed to getting pre-cut chicken breasts and shying away from whole chickens, but now that’s it’s a habit, it’s been working out well. I’ll even debone my own chicken to get the raw meat for recipes that specifically call for raw chicken parts rather than precooked roasted chicken. The carcass of the uncooked bird is still used to make a broth, but I prefer the flavor of roasted chicken broth.
My next goal is to get the meat grinder attachment for my mixer and stop buying prepackaged ground meats, or paying my grocer’s butcher block to grind it for me. This way, I can buy the cheaper large roasts and make my own ground meats for hamburgers, sausage, etc.
There’s only the three of us that live in our house, but we feed extra folks (two or more) almost every night, with no burden on our grocery budget. In fact, cooking like this has proven to be quite lucrative, because I feed my friends these super cheap meals, and they bring us wine or beer, which can be quite expensive!
I’ll have to admit that we were spending ridiculous amounts of money on groceries, upwards of $ 500 a month, I believe. (It’s hard to calculate just how much because we get all of our household goods and some of our clothes from one store so it can look like we spend more than we actually do on groceries alone.) But since we’ve been doing this, we’ve probably halved our food budget, and eat like kings, according to my family.
i spend about five hundred pounds a month 4 a family of 4 n that includes nappies wipes cleaning stuff n toiletries