how to keep grocery costs down without clipping coupons August 13, 2008
Posted by deepali in budget, food.trackback
This fabulous post at Notes from the Frugal Trenches had me thinking about how I manage to keep grocery costs down.
My budget includes $25 per week for groceries. I also have $25 per week for lunch at work, but I rarely hit that (except for the few times I go out for lunch). So $25/week for breakfast and dinner and all my snacks (plus weekends). I’ve also budgeted a certain amount for dining out, but I try very hard not to do that unless I’m meeting friends.
So in addition to a $100/mo grocery bill, I also try to eat all organic and natural. I shop at Whole Foods, everyone’s favorite expensive specialty store. With few exceptions (ie, a big party or camping trip), I manage to keep my budget below that amount almost consistently month to month. After reading the post at Frugal Trenches, I thought about how I shop, and how I could do better. The key is to get delicious, natural, fresh food without spending more time than I need to. Hence, I don’t clip coupons, I don’t play grocery games, I don’t keep a price book. Some things I do:
No meat consumption. Meat is expensive, much more so than veggies. I might buy a package of veggie burgers or Gimme Lean, but generally I try to obtain my protein from beans, quinoa, etc, which are very cheap in the bulk bins and will last.
Things on sale. If I want to make something and the ingredients are not on sale, then it needs to wait. If I do see things on sale, I try to combine sale items for meals. Which means…
Creativity. There is very little that doesn’t go well with other things, except when you think about chemistry. You want to be careful mixing citrus and dairy, for example (doesn’t mean you can’t though). But I’ve gotten over my societally imposed taste structure and started exploring interesting combinations.
Farmer’s market. I’ve said this so many times before, but the farmers’ market is a great way to get great fresh food for cheap.
Some things I need to do:
Awareness of what is in my pantry. I need to remember the things I already have, so I can plan a bit more carefully. For example, I know there is a box of veggie burgers in my fridge. They need to be eaten.
Meal planning. I don’t plan meals in advance. This is something that ties in with knowing what I already have. I think if I did a quick check-in with my pantry every week, I’d be even more efficient with my grocery shopping.
This means that there could be even more flexibility within my grocery budget for spontaneous items. It also means I could buy some ingredients that right now I only have one or two uses for. With some advanced planning and awareness, I could unique ingredients, have multiple uses, and not have to worry about anything going bad.
Grocery shopping doesn’t need to be a time-consuming activity. I grab my canvas bags, go to the farmers market, yoga, Whole Foods, and am back in time for brunch. Stress-free!
Great post! Thanks for the mention! Our attitudes and spending are similar. Whole Foods came to England but isn’t very popular (mostly because it is a chain I think).I don’t have one near me but there has certainly been heated discussions about it in the press!
Excellent point about meat consumption! I keep costs low by not buying meat or cheese, and minimal processed foods. But $25/week? I haven’t been able to do that. I’m a sucker for $4.99 cartons of organic berries and such. But if I tried I bet I could do it. Brown rice and beans go far!
@ FT – Whole Foods has its problems, for sure (their CEO is a little nutty). But the employees love working there (which is a perk for me).
@ Michelle – farmers market!! Berries are never $4.99 there. But actually, I got berries at WF the other day for $6.99/2 lbs. They’ve lasted quite a while. Not organic, but they were local.
@ FT and @ Deepali:
Interesting discussion, again.
Whole Foods has located itself in S Kensington, just about the only place where people have the kind of silly money WF charges for food flown over from who-knows-where. Some less rich people living in the catchment do not shop there. Office workers in that area definitely do not go in to pick their lunch salad etc. A very well-heeled head-hunter in that area told me that if she got her lunch at WF, she would spend 3-times her usual spend incurred at lunch from a small deli.
I also think that the debate of ‘local’, ‘organic’, ‘green’ etc confuses most people. Organic farming benefits from being surrounded by more conventional farms, who use pesticides and kill bugs so organic growers can continue to be holy about pesticides. Otherwise organic farming can rarely match the yield of conventional farms, making the produce not just costlier to consumers but also less ‘green’. There is a considerable body of evidence in the UK that suggests that local produce is not always greener because of how it is produced and shipped around. And I was cynical when I located emu burgers at the twice-monthly farmers’ market near Edinburgh Castle; as far as I knew, Scotland had no native emus. Borough Market in London has great produce but it definitely is not cheap for fresh produce.
If one is on a budget and not being wasteful, and wants to eat healthily, I think better planning (ever wonder how people shop in supermarkets with no lists in hand?) and creativity as Deepali points out are the key tools.
Good post again.
@ Shefaly – Oh, so much to respond to. If I want to eat local in my area, I have a few choices: joining a CSA, driving out to farm, shopping at a farmers’ market, or shopping at Whole Foods. Here, the farmers’ markets have strict rules – everything must be locally produced. It must also be pesticide and synthetic free. There are few commercial farms in the area (they tend to be much further south), so very little pesticide use is happening away. In addition, the Chesapeake Bay has been ruined by runoff from chemical inputs, so our surrounding three states have very strict usage regulations now.
Yields are still perfectly fine – nothing around here was ever meant for world-wide shipment anyway. Not to mention, over the long-run, yields will actually be greater with organic than non-organic farming.
As for Whole Foods – they aren’t flying anything in from “who-knows-where” anymore than any other store. In fact, if I want local produce on non-market days they are my best option. All the greens come from within one hour of the city. Most of the fruits as well. They do keep some exotics for consumer demand. And everything is labeled with the farm it came from.
And for something to be “local” here – it can’t be “shipped around” (that defeats the purpose!).
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