When we first got married five years ago, we had less than $1,000 cash to our names. Needless to say, money was tight, but we were determined to find a way to get ahead. It was at that point that my husband suggested a grocery/household budget of something like $100/mo. I balked and insisted it was impossible. I didn’t mind being frugal, but neither did I feel like eating PB&J sandwiches twice a day! And besides, I felt like I was already doing my best to try to shop sm, art, and even so, our grocery bills were somewhere closer to $200. And that was just for groceries alone; toiletries and household supplies came out of a different budget category. So we had this little area of tension- him thinking that we shouldn’t need to spend so much on food, and me thinking I was doing as good as I could.
It wasn’t until about a year later that I discovered the world of coupons, which I got into, to try to keep our grocery budget low. Suddenly, it became a game, a challenge. I realized that if I got creative, I could probably trim our grocery budget significantly. It took a bit of time and a lot of learning, but eventually my husband was wowed by the change in our budget (and probably in my attitude, too!). And to be honest, I was amazed myself. I was now spending more on groceries, toiletries, and household items combined than I had been before on groceries alone.
Here are a few of the things that I’ve learned that have helped keep our grocery/household/toiletries budget at $200/mo. For a family of four. (Just for reference sake, our family consists of two adults who are pretty big eaters, a 3 1/2 year. Old boy with an appetite as big as mine and a 7-month-old. Old baby girl who, at this point, is exclusively breastfed. If you want to see more specifics of what I purchase, check out my weekly spending posts.)
UPDATE: This $200 also includes all toiletries, cosmetics, cleaning supplies, diapers/wipes, paper supplies, and any sort of item like that.
1. Choose to do Without
While choosing to do without is not really popular or even allowed to a fun, it honestly is probably one of the biggest ways we save.
Some of the ways we do without are:
- Vince takes sandwiches for lunch almost every day to work. But he has insisted that he doesn’t need both meat and cheese, so most days he just has a meat and lettuce sandwich. At first, I felt bad, but he doesn’t mind, and the savings of not buying all that cheese do make a difference.
- Speaking of cheese, we hardly ever eat cheese just by itself. I use it in cooking, but we rarely have it just to eat as a side or snack. Do we not like cheese? No, we all love cheese! But it is something we’ve decided to consider a luxury around here to help keep our spending low.
- Orange juice is a splurge item that I get only when I can buy it for $0.99 or less. Again, we all love orange juice, but it’s not something we need to have, and we can easily eat fruit and get our recommended serving that way, much cheaper.
- We don’t buy lots of snack foods. Talk about a fast way to jack your grocery spending up, this is one of them! We don’t eat many snacks, and if we do,o they tend to be more things like raisins, nuts, fruit, or homemade cookies, energy bites, and granola bars. I still buy chips and crackers sometimes if I can get them for a great price, but they are not things that we always have on hand.
- We do several different things to save money on meat. But one of the big ways that we save is simply by not buying expensive cuts. In f, act I have a maximum buy price of $2.00/lb. For meats (and actually for cheese too), which means that we don’t often eat things like bacon or steaks. But so far we haven’t suffered, and I think we still have a great variety!
One of the side benefits to choosing to do without some things is that you learn to appreciate what you do have even more. For instance, because our sandwiches typically consist only of meat and lettuce, suddenly a sandwich with meat AND cheese becomes a real treat, and we enjoy it immensely. Somehow, I think doing without helps us appreciate some of the little things in life more fully.
2. Don’t be Brand Snobs
When I began using coupons, I started realizing that I could save a lot if I was open-minded about trying brands that I didn’t typically use. You don’t have to be very smart to figure out that if your usual brand of spaghetti sauce typically costs $0.99 on sale, but you can get another brand for just $0.50 using a coupon that you are going to save a bundle! I’ll be honest, there are still a couple of products that I am a brand snob about, but overall, I purchase whatever I can get for the least amount of money.
3. Cook from Scratch
I grew up in a home where my mom cooked mostly from scratch, so I was used to this. Fortunately, I enjoy cooking and baking. But it was still convenient to buy pre-packaged things to save time. It didn’t take me long to realize that it was also often a quick way to blow money.
Yes, cooking from scratch might take a bit more time, but with a bit of planning ahead, I’ve learned that it can be relatively fast too. One of the things I do that helps save time is to cook up large quantities of ground beef and chicken and then put them in the freezer in smaller portions. That way, whenever I need a pound of ground beef or 2 cups of chicken for a recipe, I’m saved the time of having to cook it up. I also often make double recipes of a dish and then freeze half of it. Making twice as much of something doesn’t take much longer at all, and when I have an unusually busy day, it’s so handy to be able to just pull dinner out of my freezer. I also apply this same principle to baked things like bread, rolls, cookies, and biscuits.
And you might be surprised how easy it is to make things like cream soup, Bisquick, Salad Dressing, Shake and Ba, and pie crusts from scratch. It’s probably not as hard or time-consuming as you think!
Want to see what kinds of things I cook? Check out my recipes on my blog or Pinterest.
4. Have a Price List
This might seem a bit silly, but it does help. By keeping track of which stores have the lowest prices on certain items, they have been able to save a lot. And it also helps me know when something is a goostock-upup price, too. Keeping a price list takes a minimal amount of time and effort, but it really does pay off. If you want mortipsi, check out my post Save Money by Using a Price ListGroceryry budgets will vary greatly, and not all of you will be able to spend only $200/mo. What I do to cut costs might not work for you, and what you do might be frustrating to you. However, I’m convinced that we can all find ways to trim our grocery spending. We’re at the start of a new month. I encourage you to challenge yourself to find ways to trim just $10 from your grocery spending this month. Get creative! Think outside the box. It just might be easier than you think!
