Food budget thread

Windigo

Kitchen witch
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I just saw a Facebook post of a woman on a frugal cooking group I follow that said she had set herself a goal of spending no more than a 1000 pounds total this year on food despite this years crisis. She's a budgeting expert, mind you.

But it did inspire me to create this thread to share our frugal & food saving tips and ideas, and discuss our budgets and possibly how to reduce our spending on food.

What are your best frugal recipes? Where do you shop? Does price matter to you? Etc. I am sure there's plenty to discuss.
 
I watch for sales, especially animal proteins, and buy family size packages, portion and freeze. When we shop, I also look for in store sale and clearance items. A couple of weeks ago, I noticed the store was discontinuing carrying a huge package of paper towels so they were 50% off. We bought 2 even though we didn't need paper towels that week. And we won't need any for a good while now.
 
We don't have a food budget, however I do plan the week's meals and shop with a list, so we have very little waste. That keeps the money under control, and is better for the environment. I have a work colleague who just fills her trolley in the supermarket with whatever catches her eye, and she ends up with having to spend on take aways because she hasn't bought enough, or throwing stuff out because it us over its date. That would drive me mad.
 
My mother has access to a nearby food bank and I get the things she doesn't want to eat. Then I'm going to help in a soup kitchen once a week, where we can take 1-2 meals as well and then there's the leftovers from the hotel.

I don't spend a lot of money on food as you can see
 
I pay more attention to it than I used to, but that's not saying much.

We don't really have a food budget per se, and I'd have a hard time telling you what we spend on food each month, because I go to the grocery store probably three times a week. I suppose I could go look at our bank statement, but that's just too much effort for a Sunday!

I do use coupons (digital, mainly) and generally just stick to things I already buy. I shop with a list and am better-than-average at avoiding impulse purchases. I have a somewhat accurate idea of what I have in the freezer (with respect to meats), but I always swing through the meat section, just to see what's on special that week. Items on regular rotation seem to be buy-one-get-one chicken pieces, buy-one-get-one pork loin roasts, and reduced pricing on chuck roasts, pork shoulders, and pork chops. If one of those is on special, and I have room in the freezer for it, I'll pick something up.

I'm definitely not beholden to super-saver shopping, stockpiling things when they go on deep discount, though. We go through a lot of bottled water, for example, and yesterday, Kroger had it on sale for $2.49US for 24-16.9oz bottles. That's at least $1.50 less than it usually is, sometimes it's even higher, but I still just bought one. I didn't feel like lugging more than that out to the car and into the house.
 
Both my sons are at uni and on a budget.
I sat down to write a budget menu and while looking for cheap recipes I was shocked how out of touch the writers were. Even places you’d consider to be a good resource like the BBC were guilty of saying a recipe only costs £2 per head (for example) and when you look at the ingredients list if you bought everything it would be well over £20

They seem to assume people on a budget have a large pantry like they do and so they price the dish according to a pinch of this or that rather than the total spend to make the dish. They also don’t take into account the cost of fuel and running an oven/hob for long periods everyday isn’t desirable 💷 💷 💷

For a lot of 1st year students they only have a mini fridge in their room, no freezer and very limited cupboard space in a shared kitchen so while looking not a single recipe hit the mark. They can’t even bulk cook.

I did come up with a weeks menu with each meal staying well under £2 by making sure the ingredients fitted together (rolled from over from one recipe to the another) and kept the cooking methods short so fuel use was reasonable.
It was successful (as in he did one cheap shop and liked the recipes enough to repeat it) but has now asked for a “spicy week” budget menu which I‘ve started on but haven’t test kitchen‘d yet.
 
I just read this thread and did the math: 1000 pounds sterling = $1234usd
That gives you 83 pounds sterling or $102usd per month ÷ 30 days = +/- 3 pounds sterling or $4usd per day
Now, I have three questions:
a) how many people are you feeding
b) how many meals are you preparing
c) what are you making each meal/what food products are you using to make each meal (that would really be 4 questions then :laugh: )

I just purposed this all to DH and he was shocked! And asked me the exact same questions... and he doesn't even know the first thing about cooking or feeding a family! In today's economy, both of us are scratching our heads saying, how is that possible?
I did the math for what I spend on groceries for two of us per month, and I don't come ANYWHERE near four bucks a day!
Now granted, I too do not really have a food budget per se, I just make what I make, with what I have on hand and try my damnedest to NOT run to the market for one item.
 
I just read this thread and did the math: 1000 pounds sterling = $1234usd
That gives you 83 pounds sterling or $102usd per month ÷ 30 days = +/- 3 pounds sterling or $4usd per day
Now, I have three questions:
a) how many people are you feeding
b) how many meals are you preparing
c) what are you making each meal/what food products are you using to make each meal (that would really be 4 questions then :laugh: )

I just purposed this all to DH and he was shocked! And asked me the exact same questions... and he doesn't even know the first thing about cooking or feeding a family! In today's economy, both of us are scratching our heads saying, how is that possible?
I did the math for what I spend on groceries for two of us per month, and I don't come ANYWHERE near four bucks a day!
Now granted, I too do not really have a food budget per se, I just make what I make, with what I have on hand and try my damnedest to NOT run to the market for one item.
You did realise I wasn't talking about myself?

But either way, here's her blog: Food Recipes at Home — Family and Food — Pats' Food . How she does it? What she wrote on her FB post was that she has a pantry she built over the years and uses things like olio, too good to go, and free food pantries people have in their gardens (that's something else than resources for people in poverty). And I am sure her website will inform you of more.
 
I had to work out a frame budget, and it had to rise with the prices. I follow sales, markdowns, and try to be very frugal. Some things, which are not necessary, and just a desire, will rarely be bought. On occasion, but not regularly. Minimize food waste. I watch a lot of food budgeting videos, and try to learn as I go. I try saving on takeouts and bakery, so I might splurge (a bit)with the saved money on things we want.
 
I wish I could have a garden! I've tried and it just doesn't work where we are.
Something else not mentioned yet, is Club Warehouse memberships.
I've belonged to Costco since the late 80's.
Another great tip towards "shopping smart": comparison shop.
I'll be standing in Store A and check the price of the same product that I'm about to buy at Store B on their app or website.
Like this afternoon, I was just about to order online a product that I use all the time and knew that I needed more.
The 1st store I was looking at was TWICE the cost of the 2nd one I looked at!
 
Something else not mentioned yet, is Club Warehouse memberships.
I've belonged to Costco since the late 80's.
We’ve been members of Sam’s Club for over 30 years, but we don’t buy much food there, mainly paper towels, water, toilet paper, dishwasher pods, things like that.

We used to buy cereal there, but their selection wasn’t great, and I’ll sometimes buy a big container of mixed nuts, but that’s about it. We don’t buy a lot of the frozen convenience foods, and they have a lot of that stuff.

I'll be standing in Store A and check the price of the same product that I'm about to buy at Store B on their app or website.
I’ll do that, using Kroger as my base. I use the Kroger app as my master list, then go to other stores first, like ALDI, because Kroger is generally more expensive.

What I don’t have the patience for is checking a lot of stores against each other. I routinely shop at five places, and each one makes finding their prices (including available digital coupons) varying levels of difficult, and I have neither the time or patience to compare Kroger to ALDI to Dorothy Lane Markets to Meijer to Jungle Jim’s.
 
I have neither the time or patience to compare Kroger to ALDI to Dorothy Lane Markets to Meijer to Jungle Jim’s.
Just think, when you're retired, you'll have all the time in the world to do just that! :okay:
Now about the patience part, well, I can't help ya there. :laugh: My SIL's, Gal Pals, everyone, says that I have the patience of Job so there's that.
 
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No budgets here, I buy all big stuff.
Whole lambs and slabs of fillet steak and porterhouse slabs as well.
We shop on a Saturday here with me doing a list of food for me to make during the week.
Seafood I buy because wife hates seafood. 1kg bags of prawns .
swaps for crays abalone etc
I trade my goods for seafood .
I buy 5kgs of jasmine rice as well.
We eat cheaper but real quality food.


Russ
 
I watch for sales, especially animal proteins, and buy family size packages, portion and freeze. When we shop, I also look for in store sale and clearance items. A couple of weeks ago, I noticed the store was discontinuing carrying a huge package of paper towels so they were 50% off. We bought 2 even though we didn't need paper towels that week. And we won't need any for a good while now.

This.^^^^^ I rarely pay full retail price for meats. Kroger and Walmart mark down meats that are a day or two away from the sell by date. I've gotten some killer deals on perfectly good meats that I vacuum seal and freeze.

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CD
 
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