How do you save money on groceries and what is your weekly spend on it ?.

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Sewingcreations15

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Thought I would start this thread to find out firstly how you save money on groceries and what do you spend per week on groceries on average ?.

We save money on groceries by looking for sales and buying up big when we see really good specials. Another way we save is by buying gift vouchers from our RACQ roadside assist club which gives us 5% off our groceries, home wares and clothing and fuel too. We are also not store loyal and will go to any store online or physical to get the best prices and buy in bulk a lot to save on unit prices.

Our grocery budget for a family of 2 adults is $300 a month and we put away another $40 to stock up our pantry with any super specials we see.

I am also curious to see if we are normal in what we spend or we are super thrifty.
 
i no longer have a weekly budget as i now only get the sales. we also grow our own food[veggies and some meat] we put 100 dollars a month for groceries. been doing that for 2-1/2 years. so we have excess for when a super sale hits.
 
@timmie that is the way to do it is get your stocks up so you only buy most things on special and we are now about at that stage here too. We always grow our own vegetables too but are in a transition period at the moment setting up the new gardens in our home. Chickens will come next once we clean and repair the chicken pen that is here.
 
I use store discount cards which give me the sale price of products ( no card no discount/sale price), plus after so many points you get 10 cents off a gallon of gas. The more you spend the more points and the more money off gas you can get. Also I load digital coupons to the card on products so I can save even more at the stores and I'll use paper coupons when I come across them. I have a card for each of the four different grocery stores here in my area and where ever I can get the best deal is where I'll shop. I don't have a "set" amount of money I spend every week. It can change from week to week depending on if I got a good deal on something the week before and stocked up so I don't need it that week.
I also have cards for all 3 "pharmacies" in my area ( Walgreens,CVS,Rite-Aid)
The one farmer's market I go to just started using some discount app for the phone but I haven't downloaded it yet since I haven't gone there yet this spring ( which I need to do)

I get $400 a month for all of our needs ( not just for food). I also buy gas and I use that money to pay a co-pay for a doctor's visit if necessary. I usually have money left over which I save to our emergency cash reserve. Its come in handy before believe me

I grow some of our veggies ( waiting on more raised beds/containers) and I have fruit trees and berry bushes

I use codes I get from online stores to get big discounts on clothes and shoes for both of us ( I just got 50% off my whole order for my bday at one online woman's store)

Also hubby pays for a "club fee" at one online store and we get discounts on products through that. He uses it more than I do
 
You reminded me @WVDragonlady yes we also have store cards and we now and again get $10 off our groceries after we spend a certain amount and get 2000 points. I only buy what we need and the points just mount that way. Our grocery budget will vary too depending on if we find good specials on things and then I take off the overspend from the following month as usually I have stocked up significantly anyway. Our pharmacy also has a rewards card in which we get 15% off the normal cost of non prescription items and they also offer a good bulk discount price on things too.

We also have two emergency kitties one as a cash reserve at home and one in the bank. Whatever is left over that isn't spent in any budget category gets put in a high interest bearing account and I put in $20 a fortnight into the home cash emergency kitty.
 
We shop at various stores for different items, always looking for sales and coupons. Wife does most shopping and uses digital coupons a lot now. We buy bulk at Sams a few times a year. Produce markets and farmers markets from time to time. Plus what we raise ourselves.
Not sure exactly what she spends weekly, as it varies from week to week. Monthly I would guess $300 -400, but that also includes stocking up on some things for long term and she gets a dime of per $100 spent on fuel. That adds up nicely.
 
@Bacpacker that is a really low expenditure as well. We also get 4c per litre off our fuel by using our supermarket rewards card from buying over $30 in groceries in one transaction. It doesn't cost us any more as we only go shopping when we need groceries and the 4c per litre off plus the extra 5% off we get by using our roadside assist gift cards makes a huge difference over the course of a year on our expenditure.

From what I have seen so far I think we are all super thrifty on how much we spend on groceries and stocking up other needs.
 
My budget can't really be compared to the rest of ya'lls. Living in California means that even with coupons and sales etc our cost of living is a lot higher.

But I buy giftcards for our groceries every paycheck (bi-weekly) to earn points on a cashback website. I in turn have been using the points to earn giftcards I am using to pay for our big family vacation this Christmas.

I use coupons but only on things and brands I actually use and only when I need them verses buying things I don't currently use in bulk. I try to shop the sales but that doesn't always work. But I am not afraid of the reduced for quick sale items if it is something I use or need.
 
Here is a link to what the USDA thinks we should all be spending on groceries as per thrifty, low, moderate and liberal plans as of this year -

https://fns-prod.azureedge.net/sites/default/files/media/file/CostofFoodMay2019.pdf.

Personally I think this is a rather generous grocery expenditure estimate but no doubt they are taking into consideration areas that are more remote and have higher grocery costs. Here in Australia from what I last saw on statistics families and singles spend approximately 16.6 % of their after tax pay on food alone and from our budget we spend 8.31% of our after tax take home pay.

What do you all think of these USDA recommendations based on what you are averaging on your grocery spends in your households ? .

For us being a family of 2 this is recommending we spend -
- $89.70 per week on a thrifty plan.
- $114.90 on a low cost plan.
- $142.10 on a moderate cost.
- and finally $177.90 on a liberal plan.

If anyone is more tech savvy than me and can post the link in it's entirety that would be great.
 
@Grimm we are similar here in Australia on our grocery costs being in a small village of under 500 people and our grocery costs are extremely high. We also go for a lot of clearances if it is something we use and are always particularly on the lookout for discounted meat. Most of the clearances are perfectly fine for example on meats, dairy and bakery goods if you freeze them when you get home.
 
@backlash it sounds like your lovely wife does a good job of cutting down costs.

Just my opinion is that both partners in a relationship should know what the household expenditure is just in case something happens to the other partner. I am sure your wife wouldn't mind you asking as you could say you were just wanting to keep in the loop with knowing what things cost. We had a friend just recently where her husband died and he paid all of the bills and did the budget and she had nothing to do with that side of things. She was completely lost and was asking us how to do it even though she was in her 70's. Sadly he left her in a lot of debt.

DH knows if I get sick or something what to pay and how much to each bill and what our expenditure is in each category as we have a budget and it is also written in my accounts book. For him this is important as he has memory loss so writing things down gives him a step by step guide. Speaking on this next payday DH will write a list out for himself and do the bill paying next fortnight to get him into the swing of things.
 
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@Grimm we are similar here in Australia on our grocery costs being in a small village of under 500 people and our grocery costs are extremely high. We also go for a lot of clearances if it is something we use and are always particularly on the lookout for discounted meat. Most of the clearances are perfectly fine for example on meats, dairy and bakery goods if you freeze them when you get home.

I always check the expiration (suggestion) date before buying the clearance foods. I got 2 whole chickens on sale last week for less than I normally pay for one. We had one for diner that night and the other is in my freezer. I should have gotten a few more but they were a bit large for our family and we never would have finished the whole bird in a week. I got a couple dozen eggs this week on clearance. 2 weeks ago it was milk and we finished the gallon in a couple days and it had over a week til its sell-by date.
 
What we do @Grimm with chickens is buy the largest family size ones on special and cook it and have a roast dinner the first night and then break all the meat off it and bag it in meal sized portions for the freezer. Then we later will make things like chicken pie and stir fries out of it. This does of course depend on what freezer space you have. You could cook up two in a roast pan and do this so you can take advantage of the price savings. Cooked chicken will last a month in the freezer so you can use it.
 
What we do @Grimm with chickens is buy the largest family size ones on special and cook it and have a roast dinner the first night and then break all the meat off it and bag it in meal sized portions for the freezer. Then we later will make things like chicken pie and stir fries out of it. This does of course depend on what freezer space you have. You could cook up two in a roast pan and do this so you can take advantage of the price savings. Cooked chicken will last a month in the freezer so you can use it.

Good idea. I am the only one in the house that eats white meat after the first day so I'd have to cook some extra thighs and mix the meat.

I try to have a leftovers day towards the end of the week to eat up everything we have sitting in the fridge but K hates leftovers. It must stem from his childhood and leftovers were cold fast food and greasy casseroles when his mom did cook.

Growing up in my family leftovers never made it past a day in the fridge. My dad always came home late in the evening and finished the leftovers for his dinner. If my mom made 'sos' I'd eat it before he got home.
 
I take two hundred a week and use it for whatever is needed. If it's a great sale, I spend a lot of it on groceries. Otherwise, something I need or the grandkids need. If there's money left, I use it for chicken/duck/turkey feed. I have 3 stores fairly nearby, and check the flyers every Tuesday. Before work this morning, I went to two stores..Sprouts for produce and the tea I like for iced tea. Spent $60 there. Bought 3 huge bags of apples in that $60 that were on sale for 88 cents a lb for dehydrating. Then to the Albertsons Store...Hunts pasta sauce was 77 cents a can, bought 20 cans. Needed egg whites for husband's breakfast omelets, and Yakasobi meals for 50 cents each, bought 20. Two bottles of calcium tablets for $3 each. Friday after work, I'll be going to Krogers. 8 oz cheese is 99 cents, pretzels are 99 cents, and their private brand fancy pasts 1 lb size are 79 cents each. Will also get a couple of gallons of milk. So the rest of my money will be spent at the feed store. Really don't need much more. Freezers are full of meat. Had the last turkey I butchered frozen in the school freezer, and brought it home tonight. Will be cooking it this weekend. Will have a number of roosters to butcher in a few weeks. Did 6 birds last weekend...cooked, froze, gave me 6 quarts of cooked meat for future meals.
 
@Sewingcreations15 what a great thread. We spend $300-$350 per month so come in just under thrifty according to that site. That includes if we happen to eat out. We actually prefer not to eat out. The things I purchase in the store are not usually sale items: fresh veggies, cheese, eggs, coffee, milk (we buy raw.). I always (somewhat) joking ask, why isn't there ever a coupon for broccoli? I purchase bulk items usually organic, from Azure Standard, and we purchase a whole grass fed beef each year which is our main source of meat. I grow and can quite a bit, but we both work full time so the amount of time we can devote to growing food is limited (though every year I dream big:)
 
We have never had any kind of a budget for anything. That has never been a problem because we have always been frugal.
We do shop sales and specials and shop any store if it saves us money. We do shop online a lot.
Just my opinion is that both partners in a relationship should know what the household expenditure is just in case something happens to the other partner.
We don't keep track of expenditures per say. We basically each buy whatever we need/want. We both generally try to be very frugal but sometimes we do buy stuff we do not need but just want.
I handle all financial stuff. I cannot get my wife interested in it at all. She does look at the monthly credit card bill (99% of our expenditures are done on the credit card to get the 1-1/2% back) and sometimes asks about something on there that she does not recognize. There are never any issues between us about spending money and that has never been a problem for us. My wife admits she would be lost if something happened to me.
 
We watch the sale cycles closely and stock up when the price is down

Yes. And there are cycles.
I keep forgetting to do it but I need to start listing when and what goes on sale at the stores here so I can be ready for them.
I know theres a cycle of products the stores go through. I know March is " frozen foods" month and I noticed pastas go on sale certain times.
Holidays are when you get good buys on baking supplies and certain meats
I noticed that when school starts a lot of easy breakfast foods and easy lunch products go on sale
And I think in the late Fall/ Early Winter one store here has a big sale on their brand of canned foods ( they even say in the sales paper that its time to stock up for winter)
 
@Amish Heart that is the way to do it is when your pantry is well stocked you can just shop the specials to restock when needed and eventually your grocery expenditure goes down. I also look at all of the sales brochures from the varying stores on Tuesday to stock up. We have 2 stores within 45 km one way and I can stock from there when we are going for DH's physio appointments or a larger town 66.5 km each way the other way there is another 3 - 4 when we go for doctors appointments for DH. I always make a list for when we are going somewhere to take advantages of specials.

@hiwall if you are frugal normally there probably isn't a need to budget as if you are like us and buy fairly much the same things it will come to relatively the same cost or less if you can get it on special. I know that doing finances is not everyone's cup of tea but write her a list of what is paid to where just in case so she knows and can take over from you if need be. We buy a lot online too as it saves us a huge amount over buying at small country town prices here.

@LadyLocust buying in bulk certainly saves you per unit price and it usually works out to be a huge saving over one order we have found. I agree a lot of healthy food does not come on special that often but I wish it did too. Most welcome for the thread too :) . We are $12 odd a week under the thrifty plan too and we sometimes include eating out expenditure but like you eat out rarely.

@The Innkeeper shopping sales certainly saves you a huge amount of money. We also will if we see a good special buy cartons of it too. With your business I would imagine the savings would be huge for your own household and business combined.

@WVDragonlady yes you are right there is specials cycles and here they are depending but around 3 - 6 monthly in stores but only some things come on super specials once a year or sometimes longer. I am glad you can get regular sales cycles in the States so you can plan ahead but here in Australia it is rather hit and miss. I know when the sales are on here I buy it by the carton/s and get weird looks from the cashiers and other shoppers but I don't really care as it keeps our home well stocked.

I just tell them we live out of town so most people say they understand that and it is a good idea and we actually used to say that to people even though we lived 5 minutes out of town :) . Not like they know how far out of town we live anyway.
 
Another way we save on groceries is to forage for fruit and quite often we come home with a lot. Recently it was a huge amount of mulberries we picked from a friends yard with permission. We will make jams and have them for desserts too.

Trading or bartering is another way to save on groceries as we quite often trade excess of vegetables with friends for fruits and things we don't produce. A friend who own's a farm nearby and runs it single handed swaps our labour for doing things he has not done before and gives us lamb, pork and also gave us 2 x 30 mt fire hoses on reels with nozzles he got from schools who were replacing them. The fire hoses cost a fortune and we will use them for connecting up to our rain water tanks for bushfire protection for the home.

Do any of you barter or trade products you make or produce for other items you don't have or for groceries ? . Quite often we all have skills that we have that others don't and I think it is a good idea to hone in these skills should the SHTF .
 
A friend will be elk hunting soon. They'll be trading for turkey meat. I think they need sausage and jerky made, too, so I get a cut of that if I do it for them. We usually have about 20 dozen extra eggs a week, so I sell, barter, or give those routinely. When I'm going to the farm, I bring dehydrated marshmallows and recently read issues of an Amish children's monthly magazine for my cousin's granddaughter. I trade for raw milk. We have a gardener that keeps the 1 1/3 acres at the school weeded and cleaned up; we pay him cash every week, and I tipped him last week with a live rooster for his supper. Sometimes I tip him with eggs.
 
That is the way to do it @Amish Heart as you can trade what you have plenty of for something you don't produce or hunt for. DH also gets cash in hand gardening work which helps with the budget and savings in our household too. We quite often bank it or use it to stock up on fuel, oils or whipper snipper cord or use it for super specials we see on groceries too to stock up our food storage more.
 
We don't actually barter or trade but when I had a huge bumper crop of cucumbers I made hubby take grocery bags full into work and gave them to the guys. One guy Steve told hubby his cukes weren't doing well for some reason so he was tickled he didn't have to buy them. But then one year my tomatoes were a dud and his were going gang busters so he gave us his extras.
One fella has chickens and wanted to give us eggs because he had so many but I made hubby pay him
 
@The Innkeeper shopping sales certainly saves you a huge amount of money. We also will if we see a good special buy cartons of it too. With your business I would imagine the savings would be huge for your own household and business combined

@Sewingcreations15 it does add up, so do the savings and rebates from my Costco membership and cash back on my Costco card. The sales here follow a pretty predictable cycle, so we have learned to manage our consumable inventory reasonably well. Food costs are a huge part of our B&B expenses
 
@WVDragonlady here where we live it is kind of a country thing where if someone has an abundance of vegetable crops and the like that they give them to friends and neighbours. Likewise when we have an abundance we will likely do the same to people who have passed things on to us. Sort of bartering but just more like a country code that people instinctively do.
 
@The Innkeeper that is good that you have a regular sales cycle there and can plan ahead and save money on groceries with your B&B.

Here it is just if you see it in a sales catalogue for an item you need you go hog wild and buy them out :) . There is a pharmacy in a large town about 60 odd kilometres away that have a good sale on vitamins, toothpastes, cold and flu medications etc every so often and when I see that I stock up for a year. I generally keep an eye out on the regular places we shop at on the internet for their sales or weekly sales brochures.
 
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