{"id":1437,"date":"2024-01-17T08:28:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-17T13:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/?p=1437"},"modified":"2024-01-17T13:55:14","modified_gmt":"2024-01-17T18:55:14","slug":"our-grocery-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/frugal-living\/our-grocery-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Grocery Budget"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-23605\" src=\"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/frugal-living\/files\/2008\/08\/BLG-A6403_How-to-Buy-Groceries-on-a-Budget.jpg\" alt=\"How to buy groceries on a budget.\" width=\"1200\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/frugal-living\/files\/2008\/08\/BLG-A6403_How-to-Buy-Groceries-on-a-Budget.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/frugal-living\/files\/2008\/08\/BLG-A6403_How-to-Buy-Groceries-on-a-Budget-300x125.jpg 300w, https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/frugal-living\/files\/2008\/08\/BLG-A6403_How-to-Buy-Groceries-on-a-Budget-1024x427.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/frugal-living\/files\/2008\/08\/BLG-A6403_How-to-Buy-Groceries-on-a-Budget-768x320.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Recently I have had many emails and comments regarding our grocery budget. Here are the fast facts about our grocery budget.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Usually I budget about $600 per month for a family of eight.<\/li>\n<li>My kids&#8217; ages are 14, 12, 8, 6, 4, and 2.<\/li>\n<li>The 14, 12, 8 and 4 year old eat as much as an adult on a regular basis.<\/li>\n<li>I live in a high cost of living area (Washington D.C.).<\/li>\n<li>I shop exclusively at the military commissary with occasional trips to CVS.<\/li>\n<li>Our grocery budget covers everything, including diapers, cleaners, toiletries and bird seed :).<\/li>\n<li>I use coupons, but only save about $15 a week when using them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There are many people who spend significantly less than I do to feed as many people or more. I do not have all the answers on how to cut your grocery budget, but I will share the things I did to go from a $1200 a month grocery budget to a $600 a month budget.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Menu Plan -Knowing what we are eating during the week helps me to shop more efficiently at the store. We also waste very little food. I am ashamed to admit that a few years back I would throw out a garbage bag full of rotten food every few weeks because I over bought or we just didn&#8217;t eat it.<\/li>\n<li>Shop with a list &#8211; My list is my master. It is my goal not to buy anything that is not on my list. I am able to check the commissary sale prices before I go to the store, so if I see a great deal I can add it to my list before I go. There are no impulse purchases.<\/li>\n<li>Shop Alone- I love my children but I do not take them to the grocery store. When we are out in public I am always working with them to have appropriate behavior, and this is difficult to do when I am shopping for 21 meals for 8 people. There are many other opportunities to work on behavior while out, so I shop alone.<\/li>\n<li>Shop Weekly- I have little fridge storage space so shopping weekly works best for me. I do not make little trips to the store here and there to pick up things. We just do without until the next shopping day. Little trips add up to big money.<\/li>\n<li>Stay away from convenience foods- I purchase very few prepackaged food items. I shop the produce, dairy and paper aisles. I usually buy one bag of chips and one box of crackers per week and no other snack foods. My kids snack on fruits and veggies, cheese and popcorn.<\/li>\n<li>Eat Seasonally- I try to plan my meals around the produce that is in season and less expensive. The exception to this is apples. My kids love apples and I purchase them year round. A few months back I wrote a <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/saving-on-produce\/\" rel=\"noopener\">post<\/a><\/strong> about how to save money on produce.<\/li>\n<li>I bake my own bread, bagels, pitas, pretzels, pizza crust, pancakes, waffles, muffins, etc.<\/li>\n<li>We rarely have meat as our main dish. I usually serve two to three meatless meals a week and the other meals usually have a minimal amounts of meat in them. If we have chicken pot pie I use one and a half chicken breasts in a 9&#215;13 pan and fill the pie with lots of veggies and potatoes.<\/li>\n<li>We don&#8217;t eat dessert, soda, juice, candy, or cereal (with rare exceptions).<\/li>\n<li>We eat a lot of beans. They are healthy, filling and super cheap.<\/li>\n<li>We eat leftovers and throw away very little food.<\/li>\n<li>Buy in bulk. Make sure you check the price per pound, but usually you can save quite a bit of money purchasing in bulk. I am part of a food co-op and order every few months. I save a lot of money on honey, grain, and oats by purchasing these items in large quantities.<\/li>\n<li>I purchase organic when I can, but I try to put my organic dollars to good use. <strong><a target = \"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.delish.com\/food-news\/a26872638\/dirty-dozen-foods-list-2019\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Here<\/a> <\/strong>is a list of produce that usually contain the highest amount of pesticides.<\/li>\n<li>I shop with cash. This has made the biggest change in my grocery spending by far. I am so afraid of not having enough money at the register that I keep track of everything into my cart. Cash as helped me to curb impulsive spending and allowed me to walk past the cereal aisle without picking up a box or two.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Those are some of the things I do to keep our grocery bill under budget. I am sure there are many ways I could cut back even more, but this works for us. What do you do to keep your grocery bill down?<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently I have had many emails and comments regarding our grocery budget. Here are the fast facts about our grocery budget. Usually I budget about $600 per month for a family of eight. My kids&#8217; ages are 14, 12, 8, 6, 4, and 2. The 14, 12, 8 and 4 year old eat as much [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3358],"class_list":{"0":"post-1437","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-frugal-living","8":"tag-redo","9":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/frugal-living\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/frugal-living\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/frugal-living\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/frugal-living\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/frugal-living\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1437"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/frugal-living\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23607,"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/frugal-living\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1437\/revisions\/23607"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/frugal-living\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/frugal-living\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/frugal-living\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thehappyhousewife.com\/frugal-living\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}