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Taming the Grocery Budget Part 1
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics Australian households spent an average of $254.20 a week on groceries, or $13,218.40 a year. That's a lot of money and a lot of hours worked. At an average of $24.07 an hour you are working 14 weeks just to pay for groceries and that's the before tax rate! Wowsers!
It's time to tame the grocery budget. Many Cheapskaters are enjoying the $300 a Month Food Challenge and succeeding, cutting their grocery bill and having more cash to splash (or pay off debt, use to build savings or save for a treat).
I spend $320 a month on our groceries. That includes cleaning products, toiletries, meat and poultry, fruit and veg (that we don't grow ourselves), baked goods, paper products and the odd incidental such as a new plug for the kitchen sink (because someone accidentally threw it away on Christmas Day). That's $73.85 a week.
Most of the people I know, with fewer children (we have three, and they're not children, they are young adults) spend two, three even four times more than that and still complain they have nothing in the house to eat and that the grocery bill is sending them broke.
In this series I'm going to show you just how easy it is to eat well, spend less and keep that grocery bill under control without going without.
The one bill you have absolute control over is the grocery bill. You, and you alone, determine how much you spend when you enter the supermarket or the butcher or the greengrocer or the bakers. You choose to spend money on groceries or to not spend as much.
When disaster first struck us, I had very little in the pantry, fridge or freezer. Sure I had a lovely upright freezer, a nice big pantry and a decent sized fridge. But they didn't really hold much.
There were packets of things, jars of this, tins of that and not a lot of ingredients.
The first thing I did was do a stocktake of just what food, cleaning supplies and toiletries were in the house. I made a list of the packets, tins, jars and ingredients and then tracked over the next couple of weeks just what we used and how much of each thing we used during that time.
While I was tracking, I was also going through my impressive collection of recipe books, searching for basic meals I could make, that we'd all enjoy and that used the ingredients on my tracking sheet. I made a list of 20 meals we liked: things like chow mein, fried rice, quiche, rissoles, curried sausages, stir-fry, vegetable soup, beef casserole, moussaka, spag bol all made their way to the list (and most of them are still on rotation on my meal plan today).
Searching the recipes books was a bit of an "AHA" moment - I realised that most of what we liked to eat used pretty much the same basic ingredients and those same basic ingredients were also on my grocery tracking. That tracking became my shopping list. I multiplied it by two to give me an approximate monthly amount of things to buy and I started shopping just once a month.
I had $200 to spend. Once it was gone, there wasn't even a spare cent I could "borrow" from anywhere, it was gone. If we ran out of something (and the first couple of months we did run out of things) we had to make do. That started me MOOing things, saving even more money while expanding our variety of meals and cleaning products.
Buying in Bulk
The first thing I did after I had my shopping list was look to buy in bulk. We were living in Wagga at the time and I loved Jewel, it was my favourite supermarket. I could go to Coles or Woolworths but they were much more expensive that Jewel so I found a friend with a Campbells card and did a lap, noting prices of the things on my list. Jewel was cheaper on every item so that answered my question, and I was sure I was paying the lowest price possible for our groceries.
There are so many options for buying in bulk. The idea is to get the lowest unit prices on the items you need. Some areas have case lots sales and co-ops. I do not have those options in my area, but I do have a few other options. For me, buying in bulk means wholesale butchers, local markets and orchards, wholefood stores and occasionally supermarkets.
Aldi is my grocery store of choice for everyday items. For me, Aldi is cheaper than Coles or Woolworths for most basic grocery items. Cheese, eggs, pasta, wheat biscuits, rolled oats, ice-cream (it's a rare treat), flours, icing sugar, sugar, sour cream are all much cheaper at Aldi. We eat a lot of cheese, so buying it by the kilo from Aldi saves at least $2 per kilo - over a year that’s around $100 more in my bank account (yes, I budget for a kilo of cheese a week for my family of five).
That may not seem like a huge amount but saving 5 cents on one item and 10 cents on another adds up, not just over a weekly trolley, but over a year. When you are buying a lot of food those savings really add up and go a long way toward keeping your grocery bill low. Those little savings ensure I can stick to my $320 a month grocery budget.
For meat I shop at Tasman Meats, buying in bulk when they have meat and poultry on sale. My top price for chicken fillets is $6.99/kg. My top price for mince is $3.99/kg. My top price for roasting beef, casserole steak, and chops is $6.99/kg. My top price for steak is $9.99/kg. I wait until the meat has dropped to my top price or lower (and it often is) and then I fill the freezer. I tend to work on 20 kilos of whatever it is that's on sale. We eat meat or poultry four nights a week, with meatless meals or meals from leftovers making up the other three meals. I do a meat shop once every three months unless there is an absolutely fabulous sale I can't go past. I put aside $60 a month from the $320 so I can afford to fill the freezer. Having a freezer full of meat is a blessing when I get a dose of the can't be bothereds - there's no excuse for not having something to prepare for tea and there goes the takeaway temptation.
I don't spend a lot on fruit and vegetables. I buy potatoes, carrots and onions because I simply don't have enough space to grow enough to keep us going for a year. But I very rarely buy any other vegetables because we grow them. Fruit is whatever is in season and cheapest and I try to buy it in bulk, either by the box or case to keep the price down. Sure it means that sometimes the variety is limited but fruit is fruit and if we really want a change there's always plenty of tinned fruit to snack on (bought by the case from SPC for less than $1 a can).
Any grocery money left over at the end of the month, and there is often grocery money left over, goes into my slush fund.
Next month I'm going to talk about eating and shopping in season and how it can cut your grocery bill by a quarter (or more!).
It's time to tame the grocery budget. Many Cheapskaters are enjoying the $300 a Month Food Challenge and succeeding, cutting their grocery bill and having more cash to splash (or pay off debt, use to build savings or save for a treat).
I spend $320 a month on our groceries. That includes cleaning products, toiletries, meat and poultry, fruit and veg (that we don't grow ourselves), baked goods, paper products and the odd incidental such as a new plug for the kitchen sink (because someone accidentally threw it away on Christmas Day). That's $73.85 a week.
Most of the people I know, with fewer children (we have three, and they're not children, they are young adults) spend two, three even four times more than that and still complain they have nothing in the house to eat and that the grocery bill is sending them broke.
In this series I'm going to show you just how easy it is to eat well, spend less and keep that grocery bill under control without going without.
The one bill you have absolute control over is the grocery bill. You, and you alone, determine how much you spend when you enter the supermarket or the butcher or the greengrocer or the bakers. You choose to spend money on groceries or to not spend as much.
When disaster first struck us, I had very little in the pantry, fridge or freezer. Sure I had a lovely upright freezer, a nice big pantry and a decent sized fridge. But they didn't really hold much.
There were packets of things, jars of this, tins of that and not a lot of ingredients.
The first thing I did was do a stocktake of just what food, cleaning supplies and toiletries were in the house. I made a list of the packets, tins, jars and ingredients and then tracked over the next couple of weeks just what we used and how much of each thing we used during that time.
While I was tracking, I was also going through my impressive collection of recipe books, searching for basic meals I could make, that we'd all enjoy and that used the ingredients on my tracking sheet. I made a list of 20 meals we liked: things like chow mein, fried rice, quiche, rissoles, curried sausages, stir-fry, vegetable soup, beef casserole, moussaka, spag bol all made their way to the list (and most of them are still on rotation on my meal plan today).
Searching the recipes books was a bit of an "AHA" moment - I realised that most of what we liked to eat used pretty much the same basic ingredients and those same basic ingredients were also on my grocery tracking. That tracking became my shopping list. I multiplied it by two to give me an approximate monthly amount of things to buy and I started shopping just once a month.
I had $200 to spend. Once it was gone, there wasn't even a spare cent I could "borrow" from anywhere, it was gone. If we ran out of something (and the first couple of months we did run out of things) we had to make do. That started me MOOing things, saving even more money while expanding our variety of meals and cleaning products.
Buying in Bulk
The first thing I did after I had my shopping list was look to buy in bulk. We were living in Wagga at the time and I loved Jewel, it was my favourite supermarket. I could go to Coles or Woolworths but they were much more expensive that Jewel so I found a friend with a Campbells card and did a lap, noting prices of the things on my list. Jewel was cheaper on every item so that answered my question, and I was sure I was paying the lowest price possible for our groceries.
There are so many options for buying in bulk. The idea is to get the lowest unit prices on the items you need. Some areas have case lots sales and co-ops. I do not have those options in my area, but I do have a few other options. For me, buying in bulk means wholesale butchers, local markets and orchards, wholefood stores and occasionally supermarkets.
Aldi is my grocery store of choice for everyday items. For me, Aldi is cheaper than Coles or Woolworths for most basic grocery items. Cheese, eggs, pasta, wheat biscuits, rolled oats, ice-cream (it's a rare treat), flours, icing sugar, sugar, sour cream are all much cheaper at Aldi. We eat a lot of cheese, so buying it by the kilo from Aldi saves at least $2 per kilo - over a year that’s around $100 more in my bank account (yes, I budget for a kilo of cheese a week for my family of five).
That may not seem like a huge amount but saving 5 cents on one item and 10 cents on another adds up, not just over a weekly trolley, but over a year. When you are buying a lot of food those savings really add up and go a long way toward keeping your grocery bill low. Those little savings ensure I can stick to my $320 a month grocery budget.
For meat I shop at Tasman Meats, buying in bulk when they have meat and poultry on sale. My top price for chicken fillets is $6.99/kg. My top price for mince is $3.99/kg. My top price for roasting beef, casserole steak, and chops is $6.99/kg. My top price for steak is $9.99/kg. I wait until the meat has dropped to my top price or lower (and it often is) and then I fill the freezer. I tend to work on 20 kilos of whatever it is that's on sale. We eat meat or poultry four nights a week, with meatless meals or meals from leftovers making up the other three meals. I do a meat shop once every three months unless there is an absolutely fabulous sale I can't go past. I put aside $60 a month from the $320 so I can afford to fill the freezer. Having a freezer full of meat is a blessing when I get a dose of the can't be bothereds - there's no excuse for not having something to prepare for tea and there goes the takeaway temptation.
I don't spend a lot on fruit and vegetables. I buy potatoes, carrots and onions because I simply don't have enough space to grow enough to keep us going for a year. But I very rarely buy any other vegetables because we grow them. Fruit is whatever is in season and cheapest and I try to buy it in bulk, either by the box or case to keep the price down. Sure it means that sometimes the variety is limited but fruit is fruit and if we really want a change there's always plenty of tinned fruit to snack on (bought by the case from SPC for less than $1 a can).
Any grocery money left over at the end of the month, and there is often grocery money left over, goes into my slush fund.
Next month I'm going to talk about eating and shopping in season and how it can cut your grocery bill by a quarter (or more!).