Grocery Budget Experiment: Two Week Check-In

June 19th, 2008

Filed under: Adventures in Frugality, Frugal Living

We’ve finally reached the two-week mark on our grocery budget experiment, so it’s time to check in and see how we’re progressing.

Last time, I mentioned how we were averaging $77 for food and groceries each week. (For the purposes of my experiment, I consider “food” to be any junk, fast, or pre-prepared meals and “grocery” to be all else.) Nearly two-fifths of that average was from eating out, so there was definitely a lot of room for improvement.

In the first two weeks of the experiment, we spent just $98.23 on food and groceries. That means we averaged $49.12 each week since June 5. Surprisingly, only 28% of that was on fast food, even though it felt like more. We probably could have spent less, but I have a real hard time saying “No” to my pregnant wife when she’s having a craving. (Love you, honey!) Seriously, though, when a pregnant mom wants to eat at Panera Bread, you do whatever it takes to deliver for her need.

Our average may look good so far, but keep in mind that two weeks worth of data isn’t really enough to start noticing any trends - especially since we haven’t made a Sam’s Club trip since the experiment’s start. I know that the average is going to shoot up as soon as we can make our way to the club warehouse.

Changes

As I mentioned yesterday, we started using a meal plan to reduce our fast food expenses and to guide our shopping trips. Before the plans, we would wander through the store with a very generic list, letting our stomachs guide the way and make bad decisions on our behalf. Now, we go in with a plan and we get out as soon as we’ve gathered every item on our list. It saves a lot of time and money.

As a side effect of making the meal plans, we started scouring ads for stores that we normally haven’t shopped and finding deals we were missing out on. This allowed us to track down the true deals and find bargains we wouldn’t have found otherwise. For example, my wife visited the Wonder Hostess Thrift Shop for the first time this week and found cheaper bread that she had seen anywhere else and took advantage of a coupon that promised “Buy 3 - Get 1 Free.” She walked out with 4 loaves for just $2.47 - just under 62 cents per loaf! These kinds of deals help us stock up for a long time: Three of these loaves are sitting in the deep freezer, which will last us about a month.

Thoughts

So far this has been a lot easier than I expected. I figured we would be cutting back and cutting corners. I was anticipating having to trade tasty meals for frugal “gruel.” That hasn’t been the case. Actually, I think we’ve only been eating better - tastier and healthier - since we implemented the meal plans. I wholeheartedly recommend setting one up for yourself and seeing how much it can save you.

We will be shopping at Sam’s Club this weekend in our monthly stock-up, so I know I will be sharing some bad news through my data in the next check-in. We are really trying to cut down our expenses from dining out; hopefully these cuts will be enough to offset the grocery expense.

Have any of you changed your shopping and eating habits lately? Anyone have suggestions for other changes for us to try in our experiment? We definitely want to hear from you and incorporate your ideas!