Controlling Grocery and Dining Budget

[hamchan]

Most of the time it's just my husband and I. We don't use the envelope system and we don't really meal plan. What we do is we have a set budget for all discretionary expenses. This includes groceries, personal care, household, gifts, entertainment, taxi fare, clothing, etc. We use the same joint credit card for all these expenses, and every day I check the statement online and keep track of where we are.

For meals we go to the store every few days, see what is on sale, and plan out a few days of meals based on what is one sale, what we have at home already, what needs to be used up. It's not a rigid plan by any means, and often changes for various reasons, but we try not to buy anything else when we have food that needs to be used up. I also will usually keep a frozen pizza or something like that on hand. It's kind of an emergency pizza. If dinner gets ruined, or we get home much later than we thought we would, or something we we needed has already molded or gone bad, we break out the emergency pizza rather than going out for food.

[disneysteve]

It's really what you consider to be normal

Great comment! I think this is worth emphasizing. If you consider it "normal" to eat out frequently at nicer restaurants including alcohol, it isn't hard at all to blow through $1,000. If you make eating out a special treat and make eating at home the norm, your bills will drop.

That's impressive, $100/month?! How do you even manage that? And you live in NJ, which also has a decent food scene, plus you're in close proximity to NYC. You are probably not foodies, and direct your finances towards something more substantial.

Let me clear a couple of assumptions here. First off, we live in southern NJ so we're nowhere near NYC. We do have a vibrant restaurant scene in our area though and we're only 15 minutes from Philadelphia so same issue essentially as if we were close to NYC.

How do we do it? We just don't go out to eat that often and most of the time when we do, we stick to more modest options. Make no mistake, though. We ARE foodies. We both greatly enjoy fine dining and have been to many of the best restaurants the area has to offer (and of course "best" tends to mean "most expensive"). We almost never order alcohol when we go out, though. That will sink your budget very quickly when a martini is $12 and a decent glass of wine is $8. The town with the best restaurants around happens to be dry so all the restaurants are BYOB so that helps a lot. We can bring a $6 bottle of wine.

Something else you said is also very true, though, and really needs to be part of your solution. We direct our money toward more substantial things. If you are going to successfully cut your food spending, their needs to be some sort of payback. Maybe it is funding retirement. Maybe it is being able to afford a vacation, or a new TV, or paying off debt, or whatever. You need to have goals and be working to reach them. Just a vague "we want to save more money" won't be enough motivation.

Is it the two of you or do you have kids? If you don't mind my asking, how much do you average out a month on groceries?

We have an 18 year old daughter.

I honestly don't know what we spend on groceries. We don't track that but I can assure you it is not $500 but we don't shop at Trader Joe's. We don't buy organic. We eat a primarily vegetarian diet at home (I don't eat red meat. My wife is allergic to seafood. Our daughter is fully vegetarian.) so we aren't spending on meat, poultry, and fish which helps a lot. Produce and grains are a lot cheaper.

[snafu]

I hope it's ok to mention that the restaurants are using more and more processed, packaged, convenience foods with so many unpronounceable chemicals. The rules have changed to allow so many food components packaged in the USA to have several components from 3rd world countries who don't follow the rules. China manufacturers were adding bleach to baby formula to make it more appealing to mothers while it was causing new borns to 'fail to thrive' for example. Dtr. Steve is right on pointing out the cost differentials between restaurant and grocery meals and booze.

I enjoy the creative aspect of cooking and food presentation but make and use a menu plan. It needn't be written in stone and if we don't feel like chicken I substitute fish or homemade pizza but the chicken will be used within two days. All the research confirms the more time you spend in the grocery store the higher the tab. If you go without a list you will buy more - spend more. If you return for one forgotten item you will buy a bag full etc. I found it beneficial to buy and use fresh produce Sunday - Thursday and frozen Fri/Sat/early Sun.

Our country's definitions and monitoring of foods make it too difficult to feel confident about "Organic' pasted on the package.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

The eating out is killing you. Try cutting that by $100 a month until it gets really tight feeling then stop.

To eat out that much I a guessing often and lots of beers out and stuff?

[TheKayla]

I'd also like to add -- what's with all this Trader Joe's being expensive stuff? It's the cheapest place I shop at for mostly organic foods! Much of the stuff I buy just happens to be organic, and it's cheaper than a frozen meal at Wal-mart. Sure, you can get alcohol there and specialty foods that are priced higher..but go into the frozen section and price compare. Go into the produce section and price compare. There are more healthy cheap options than anywhere else I've found, and like with any more specialty chain store, they have higher-priced specialty items here and there. What types of things are you buying in Trader Joe's? I can only assume they're the more expensive options that are going to be expensive anywhere, maybe you can do some swaps and use more produce to cook with, instead of purchasing pre-made foods.

[top32]

Grocery and dinning tips

I think you should have a a week/monthly budget and stick to it. That will do you a great good deal.

[97guns]

I think you should have a a week/monthly budget and stick to it. That will do you a great good deal.

buy it cheap and stack it deep is the best way, i utilize my freezer and ONLY buy meat when its on sale

[gogirlanime]

Best tip I can give you, once a month cook a ton of delicious inexpensive meals that you can freeze and eat later. You just have to plug in your will power and cook at home instead of eating out. Depending on how much you need to start saving, if it's as much as possible, buying extra of things that are on sale is essential. You can also go to thecouponclippers.com to help you save some money as well. I've saved (with the coupons alone) $3000 on food in the past 2 years.

[llckll]

My wife and I use the envelope method and store $500 per month in the envelope just for groceries. And money left naturally rolls over and if we use it before months end, that forces is to be creative and eat what we have. Definitely give yourself a budget and stick to it which is the hardest part. Good luck.

[dojo]

We don't eat out, so at least this doesn't ruin our budget. We're cooking from home for 2 reasons: we can control what's in our food and we can eat healthy, as we like to.

But our groceries bill is not too small mainly because we don't accept to purchase anything that's not 'top notch'. The cooking is done solely with extra-virgin olive oil (which is 5 times more expensive than the 'regular' one we can find in our stores), we don't buy anything but very fresh meat and produce etc. So the items that would save us money are not in our list anyway, we'd rather pay more for something fresh and of good quality, with little to none preservatives/'chemicals'.

I usually tell my husband we should save more in this area, but on the other hand we don't want to compromise on the food quality we're eating. We're clearly NOT strapped for money and healthy eating is a priority for us. Well, you can't have that and save a lot of money, unfortunately, so we're rather 'lose' some with our groceries than have to deal with health issues.

You'll need to ask yourself where would you like to compromise .. sure, you can dramatically cut food costs by not eating out too much (cooking at home is good for your wallet, too), but, if you're as picky as we are with the ingredients you use in your meals, you'll still have a bigger groceries bill than other families who have found ways to save on it more.