We go to a Philippine store sometimes but have actually found that the food there is more expensive. I think this is due to them passing off the importing cost to the customer...my wife is Filipina so the food that is bought is more for nostalgic reasons than strategic reasons.Hobbes wrote: ↑Thu Aug 23, 2018 3:36 pmYou earlier mentioned you were having issues with controlling food costs: have you considered going to ethnic markets? There's an Indian store nearish me, and I've found that their prices for spices, rice, dried beans, and whatnot is just stupidly low in comparison to more mainstream stores.
Because of this I've more or less adopted an Indian diet , but it's reduced my personal food expenditures significantly.
Just today, for instance, we had to take care of some errands in the morning. We strapped our kid, hit our errands, and then we saw this Chinese place that just opened up. Not even thinking about it we went to go check it out. $25.34 some later.
Most of my issues especially are impulsive. Also energy drinks...Bad! Need to get back on coffee. Just got some bad habits I guess. The good news is I have no energy drinks in my fridge so going forward its going to be home-brewed coffee only. I also bought some whey protein which is pretty economical as I am trying to increase protein intake (on a cutting diet at the moment...down to 177lb from 182lbs but have been eating much lately due to job stress).
I will look into indian based foods. I do like beans which I've not eaten in quite a while. I also used to make an indian style cabbage that was pretty good. In any case, if someone asked me how much I spend on food I really could not give a straight answer. I just know its "too much." By too much...by ERE standards for sure. By average american family standards, we're probably spending slightly less than average.