Ever wondered what your friends and neighbors spend on groceries every month? As my family grew over the years, and our grocery bills rose nearly as high as the rent for our small apartment, I often wondered, “Is everybody else spending the same truckload of cash to put food on the table?”
I thought I had finally found the answer when I learned that the USDA has a handy chart to calculate what average families spend on food each month. There are even separate columns for thrifty, low-cost, moderate, and liberal spending habits.
I did some quick addition, and learned that Uncle Sam thinks thrifty families (i.e. the ones that are extremely frugal or barely scraping by) were spending MORE per month on groceries than our family did. And low-budget families? Their grocery bills were over $300 higher than ours.
I was surprised that the government considered us thriftier than thrifty. True, we were buying inexpensive meat and stocking up when things went on sale, but we were also buying some totally non-essential things like ice cream and juice. What were the “low-budget” people buying? Steak and caviar?
Given that our grocery budget was officially in the frugal range, I was pretty satisfied with it until I talked to my friend Ashley Ekpo, whose family is the same size as mine. She had recently made some changes to the way she shopped for food, and she was actually spending hundreds of dollars less each month than we were.
Hold up—what?!? Did they subsist on rice and beans? Nope. They ate things like chicken fajitas and Parmesan-crusted tilapia. OK, now she really had my attention. How was she able to feed her family great food and still save such a staggering amount of money?
I decided to interview her and find out.
Q: What was your grocery spending like before you started making changes? Were you pretty thrifty, or were you buying prime rib and fancy cheese?
A: I was always thrifty. I grew up in a home where we planned our meals, packed lunches, and grocery shopped according to those plans. My family has continued that tradition, but lately our food expenses had gotten higher and higher. Part of it was our growing family. But I also like to try new recipes, which were costing us money by going to the store multiple times, sometimes for unique ingredients.
Q: What prompted you to become more frugal with your grocery spending?
A: We realized that food was a huge part of our monthly budget, and much more than we wanted to spend.
Q: What did you start doing differently?
A: One of the first things I did to save money was to live off of our existing pantry and freezer food for a week or two. We still had to buy fruit and vegetables, but we had enough food to cook several dinners.
Creating a list of regular and affordable dinners helped us keep costs down too. Rather than trying so many unique recipes with rare ingredients that wouldn’t be used again, I stuck to what I knew worked, and only did a new meal once every few weeks.
Q: How did your family feel about these changes? Did they notice?
A: My family responded really well and didn’t seem to notice much. It took some time to make changes from our typical meat-driven meals like pork chops or salmon to more pastas and veggie-dominated dishes. Eventually we just learned to thin out the meat portions and still keep our favorites.
Q: You’ve been doing this for about a year now. Which strategies are you still using, and which ones have evolved or fallen by the wayside?
A: We’re still following the same methods and it’s still successful! The only thing that has changed is that I’ve started using a grocery delivery service which has only helped! As I make less trips to the store, I’m not grabbing things I don’t need and not browsing when I’m hungry or bored!
My Family’s Cheap Grocery Challenge
Ashley’s experience really inspired me. My grocery bill may be lower than average in our country, but it’s still a staggering amount that really adds up over time. I discussed all of this with my family this week, and we agreed to try some of the strategies that made such a difference for the Ekpo family. We also decided to do a Cheap Grocery Challenge this month.
For the next few weeks, we’ll see how many unnecessary foods we can forego or replace with something cheaper that we still like. We’ll be eating steel cut oats or store-brand cereal for breakfast. Dinner will have less meat, and cheaper carbs and veggies. No more spending $100 each month on orange juice (I was shocked when I realized how much we’ve been spending on OJ alone).
At the end of the month, we’ll see how much we saved, and which foods we missed (or didn’t). I think we’ll discover that if we’re intentional and creative, we’ll save a lot of money without feeling deprived.
What would you do with a few thousand extra dollars each year? Build up your savings? Pay off debt? Take a vacation? Maybe you’d like to try a Cheap Grocery Challenge too!
If you do, or if you have frugal grocery tips to share, please let me know in the comments. I love to learn from other people’s experiences!
Want to Read the Next Chapter?
Our Cheap Grocery Challenge Report (Month #1)
P.S. You can check out Ashley Ekpo’s fitness blog at startingoverfitness.com. She’s a fitness instructor with great advice about what fitness strategies work, which ones don’t, and how to fit exercise into your busy life. 🙂
Great interview! I plan to try out these tips. I also have started learning how to cut different fruits and vegetables, rather than buying the pre-cut ones. This has saved us at least $50 a month because we eat lots of fresh fruits and vegetables.
Great idea! We’ve stopped buying all those bags of baby carrots for the kids’ lunches because buying whole carrots to cut into carrot sticks costs half as much. 🙂