Things you're doing right:
- You're buying mainly healthy foods.
- You're not buying shredded cheese -- you know they put a thin layer of cellulose over shredded cheese to keep it from sticking together? Money aside, ICK!
- Eggs are very cheap right now --
Walmart is selling them for something like $2.60 for FIVE DOZEN. How do the farmers make any money? Consider omelets, quiches, etc. When my oldest went away to college, she was thrilled that the cafeteria served B4D (breakfast for dinner) every Thursday night; we adopted the habit in our own home.
- Fish is affordable (about $1/piece) IF you buy basic white fish in big frozen packages. It's only expensive if you're looking at salmon or deli-counter stuff. Let's not talk about my love of scallops and shrimp, and Swordfish is for anniversaries or other special meals -- not an everyday meal.
- Giving up "mostly organic" was a smart choice. By and large, organic is an advertising thing more than a health thing.
- I don't see you mentioning drinks, so I assume you're not buying sodas, juice or alcohol. I read somewhere that the average family spends 30% of its grocery budget on drinks, most of which add no nutrition to their diets.
Room for improvement:
- Get out of Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. Unless you're popping in for a single loss-leader, those are not budget stores.
- Echoing others, get rid of those chicken nuggets. Easy but very expensive for what you get. If your kids are attached to them, maybe you can still use them ... but less often. Make them a special treat.
- Still thinking of chicken: I just bought a huge pack of Chicken Tenderloins at Lidl yesterday -- $9 for the pack, and I divided it into FOUR smaller packages for the freezer (6 tenderloins per pack for my family of three). That's $2.25/meat cost per meal (that was a sale, but it's not something that's all that unusual). Walmart almost always has big packs of chicken breasts for $1.99/lb. Dividing up a big pack takes about 10 minutes and can save real money.
- Similarly, we LOVE chicken thighs, and they are often cheaper than other cuts. I can almost always get boneless skinless thighs at Target -- delicious in soups or baked, they're one of our go-tos. A chicken thigh recipe I found this summer /am making constantly -- good hot or cold for leftovers:
https://redheadcandecorate.com/2018/01/chicken-loretta-2/
- You don't specify what type of yogurt you're buying, but that can be pricey. Look into making your own yogurt. You can make a gallon of yogurt with only 15 minutes or so hands-on time, and it'll cost less than $2. Emphasize to the kids that they can choose their own fruit.
- You don't say where you're buying, but we love Aldi's for cheese. Their selection is good, and their prices are always lower.
- You mentioned scratch-and-dent stuff. Are you also buying reduced-for-quick-sale meats? My freezer is full of nothing but yellow-tagged foods. Yesterday, for example, I bought three packs of chicken legs at Target (6 legs per pack?) -- they were $1.00, $1.04 and $1.04 respectively. They will find their way to the grill tomorrow night ... with homemade BBQ sauce.
- Yes, meat prices have skyrocketed lately. Instead of filling a plate with a piece of meat + veg, look for recipes that stretch meat. For example, we eat LOTS of stir-fry at our house; I chop a single chicken breast or a single steak between the three of us. An excellent stir-fry sauce that mixes with ANY protein and veg: 1/3 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup sesame oil, 1 Tbsp cornstarch, fresh garlic and ginger. Very inexpensive, and it's my youngest daughter's favorite.
- Are you soup eaters? I keep a medium-sized plastic tub in my freezer, and when I have a spoonful of green beans or half a chicken breast left over, I pop them into that container. When it gets full, I add broth, and it's soup. FREE soup.
- I don't see beans and rice in your line-up, but they're a budget saver. Look up a recipe for Red Beans & Rice. SO GOOD. You can add chopped chicken or kieobasa sausage, if you wish.
Questions & Comments:
- You say you're buying lots of veg. Are you buying bags of chopped veg prepared for the steamer, or things you prep yourself? The price difference is significant. It's hard to beat the cost of plain store-brand frozen veg, and the nutrition is the same as fresh -- but for some recipes, fresh is necessary
- Are you buying your chips at Aldi? Lidl is cheaper still, but Aldi's chips are pretty cheap. Do note that their sizes are sometimes smaller, so be sure you're "being honest" about pricing. No, chips aren't healthy or cheap, but don't beat yourself up over it. Most of us aren't buying as much healthy stuff as you are.
- Do you shop at Walmart? (Or its little brother, Walmart Neighborhood Market, which is quicker in-and-out?) They always have a big loaf of Italian bread (sliced or unsliced) for $1 -- sometimes it's in the day-old for less. Excellent for garlic bread or French toast.
- Similarly, do you have Jimmy John's in your area? They sell their day-old sandwich bread two 12" sandwich rolls for $1. You can drive-through and get JUST the bread. They often give you 3 rolls for the $1. I think they think I'm poor.
- Look around for other food-places in your area. We love to go to the Chinese grocery store, the Chef Store, a small butcher, and more. Not everything in all these places is a bargain, but we like buying certain things in those spots.
- You didn't mention food storage. Are you buying /storing things when they're on sale? My small chest freezer cost $40 from Craigslist. Do you have a pantry so you can stock up on canned olives, etc. when they're on sale? If not, could you get a freestanding pantry cabinet, even if it has to store in a hallway or the dining room? Here's a website I like; it's slanted towards the Mormon Church, but no reason others can't use the information:
https://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/
- Have you ever read The Tightwad Gazette? It's a book that was very popular around the time I got married -- 30 years ago. It's a dated now (you won't relate to the prices she quotes), but the strength is in the methods. If you can get your hands on the first book OR The Complete Tightwad Gazette, read about her grocery store notebook method. Very analytical. In a nutshell: the author created a method for monitoring prices at multiple stores, and (after several months of recording prices) she figured out who was cheapest for peanut butter, who was cheapest for bread, how often chicken breasts go on super-sale, etc. And then she developed a list for each store so she could shop Store A this week and stock up on all the cheapest things, Store B next week for their cheapest things, etc. I know that when I started keeping records, I found that my hunches on who's cheapest weren't always true. It'll be work initially, but this is probably the only way to really get to rock-bottom.
I couldn't do $400 on a regular basis.
I think $100/week is possible, but it would require a good bit of effort. On the other hand, I think you can hit $150/week without much work -- and that can include a reasonable amount of fresh veg and enough splurges that it won't feel like a sacrifice at all.
Also, I never bought chicken parts when on a budget. Always a whole chicken on sale.
Maybe it varies from place to place, but I can pretty much always get chicken breast on sale (in big packs) for $1.99/lb. On the other hand, whole chickens vary wildly in price -- I won't pay more than $5 for a whole chicken. I have seen them in the $13 range, which is decidedly not a good deal.
We do love a whole chicken, and my husband always makes broth from the bones. He puts the bones into a colander pot inside the InstaPot. If we have any onion tops or other veg handy, he adds that. He pours the broth out in 2-cup measures into green-lidded dollar store plastic that we use ONLY for this purpose. Except for a bit of electricity, this broth is FREE.
If we don't have that broth, we use a concentrated jarred thing called Better than Boullion, which we buy at Walmart. It costs about $4 and lasts forever -- so much cheaper than paying for canned broth.
Now I'm wondering if I should up the bar and start at $600 per month and make my way down to $500 if I can.
That sounds very reasonable.
Yes, deli meat also tends to be highly processed. Ask yourself WHY deli meat lasts longer than, say, a roast beef you cook yourself. The answer is chemicals.
For sandwiches, are you eating tuna salad and egg salad? They're cheaper than ham and cheese.
It was hand soap from bath and body works (on sale). I definitely splurge on certain things that I like and I know that about myself
Nothing wrong with a splurge -- unless you're genuinely in financial trouble -- but splurges should be planned /carefully chosen. Otherwise you can go overboard without realizing it.
