Grocery Bill: The Most Difficult Thing to Give Up.

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chasebrooklyn1985
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Re: Grocery Bill: The Most Difficult Thing to Give Up.

Post by chasebrooklyn1985 »

Peanut wrote:
Sat Jun 29, 2019 3:04 pm
I’m guessing Jeni’s ice cream? It’s all natural ingredients that are still terrible for you. We all need vices though. You can make your own ice cream in a Zoku (very easy) and it’ll probably save you a third to half even with organic cream. (Does she use organic?)

Oat milk sounds like something one could make for much less at home.
Guilty!

Yeah Jenni's and Van Luevans ice cream is the death of me. I found some decent 365 brand last night at WF for only $4. It's good, but not on the same level as Jeni's.

Oat milk is really hard to make if you want it to be super creamy. I don't know how they do it. If you make it at home it often comes out very watery like almond milk. Gotta find a recipe.

Cheepnis
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Re: Grocery Bill: The Most Difficult Thing to Give Up.

Post by Cheepnis »

I don't monitor my food spending super closely and I come in between $100-150 a month. All of my strategies have been suggested already, but I'll reiterate.

- buy in bulk for non perishables
- bulk up your meals, there's hardly a meal I eat that doesn't have a hefty helping of rice, beans, lentils, quinoa, oats, potatoes or the like added
- just because I'm not a vegetarian doesn't mean I have to eat meat with every meal
- I also extremely rarely eat meals where meat is its own course e.g. steak at potatoes*, and I match the meat proportion with the ingredients in the dish
- drink water, it doesn't kill you
- I shop at Winco mostly and Costco occasionally
- I'm not on the organic train, but if I were I would probably opt for a local farm stand or farmer's market than Whole Paycheck

*not pertinent to this discussion, but I tend to not like meals with each dish cordoned off in it's own little corner of the plate. I'd rather eat things where your various food groups are incorporated. Soups, salads, stews, omelettes, casseroles, stir fry, and of course the mighty burrito, the pinnacle food vehicle, are all far superior to a slab of meat, some steamed broccoli, and a baked potato.

jacob
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Re: Grocery Bill: The Most Difficult Thing to Give Up.

Post by jacob »

Cheepnis wrote:
Thu Jul 04, 2019 8:29 am
*not pertinent to this discussion, but I tend to not like meals with each dish cordoned off in it's own little corner of the plate. I'd rather eat things where your various food groups are incorporated. Soups, salads, stews, omelettes, casseroles, stir fry, and of course the mighty burrito, the pinnacle food vehicle, are all far superior to a slab of meat, some steamed broccoli, and a baked potato.
That is my pet peeve. Oh, how I loathe Thanksgiving dinner. I call it "boiled ingredient"-food. Turns out there is somewhat of a historical basis for the "meal=a big piece of meat + potatoes + a small serving of some boiled vegetables" and it's deeply ingrained(*). America was literally the land of abundance, so people could choose quantity over complexity, when it came to cooking. When ingredients are sparse, like they historically were in Europe, it's necessary try to combine them in interesting ways (or reform them, e.g. pickling, baking, ... ) to create something edible. If they're not, a pound of meat and a side of boiled vegetables will make most people happy.

(*) I think this is relevant to this thread. If one grew up on boiled ingredient-food and want to save, then naturally the first but wrong question is: "How do I get cheaper ingredients?". This type of mindset also thinks that when cheap bastards like us say "rice and beans" that we're literally eating the contents of a can of beans (yuck!) next to a pile of boiled rice. Whereas the smart way to do is to go for complexity. However, switching from "boiled ingredients" to "cooking" requires unlearning a habit and learning a complex skill.

prognastat
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Re: Grocery Bill: The Most Difficult Thing to Give Up.

Post by prognastat »

@Jacob

That was pretty much what I grew up on with one slight modification in that it was over-boiled food. Mostly vegetables that were a gross mush along with some potatoes and some meat. Over-boiling vegetables seems to be a dutch tradition though.

NPV
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Re: Grocery Bill: The Most Difficult Thing to Give Up.

Post by NPV »

Dave wrote:
Wed Jun 26, 2019 6:01 pm

A lot of this will vary based off your approach to nutrition (i.e. someone following organic Paleo simply cannot compete on cost with a non-organic whole food plant based eater)
This is a difficult one for me. My paleo-ish pescatarian-ish keto-ish diet seems just structurally very expensive. Fatty fish (such as salmon), avocados, nuts, fresh broccoli, mushrooms and berries just aren't cheap if you try to get even ~80 grams of animal protein and ~2500 calories a day from them - even without going organic I can easily spend in a week what many posters in this topic cite as a monthly grocery budget (and I don't spend any money on alcohol and almost any on eating out). Surely there are some cheaper alternatives within the same dietary paradigm - such as eggs, polish sauerkraut and lots of olive oil on everything - and perhaps ~20% of calories could be replaced with that without significant health or taste compromises. What about the other other 80% though? Any ideas (other than changing the dietary constraints specified above - let's not turn this into a discussion on comparative merits of different diets; 80+ gram animal protein is a requirement for my fitness goals, ~2500 calories is a necessity for my metabolic level, and the paleo-ish pescatarian-ish keto-ish thing gets me the best results both in terms of how I feel and the best blood tests e.g. HDL, LDL, AST, ALT I had in the last decade)?

FIRE 2018
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Re: Grocery Bill: The Most Difficult Thing to Give Up.

Post by FIRE 2018 »

I love fruits and vegetables, fresh fish and always look for the sales. I would have a hard time giving this up. At the Asian owned food markets in FL the prices are lower and most times the quality is better than the others ( Wal Mart, Publix, Winn Dixie). There is a Korean owned food market called H Mart which has locations in TX, CA, NY, NJ, MD and GA. Great stuff and a number of sample cooking food stations you can sample the food. Free is good. You can sample all the food and you can call it a free lunch.

take2
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Re: Grocery Bill: The Most Difficult Thing to Give Up.

Post by take2 »

@NPV - I’m with FIRE 2018. First try to source what you want to eat less expensively. Different markets, especially fresh fish wholesale markets are great sources for salmon. Not sure where you live but I routinely get salmon for about 1/2 the price in a supermarket by shopping in bulk at the fish market. It’s less convenient (only in early AM c. 4:30AM and requires you to descale and clean the fish) but it’s a great option. Also reduces plastic packaging which is an added bonus.

For nuts, again buy in bulk either at Costco or online. They are never going to be that cheap but you can save c. 20% that way.

I’m surprised about mushrooms and broccoli. Where I live these are pretty cheap. I suppose you could start to grow your own or forage but I don’t have much experience in that so can’t help there. Sounds cool though. Either way I would challenge that these aren’t really the issue in your grocery spend.

As for berries they are significantly cheaper if you buy frozen. Not sure if that’s acceptable to you, but unless you live in a place where they are in season at the right time it’s just not feasible for fresh to be cheap.

For reference, in general I follow a very similar diet to yours and I come in at an average of £250 for 2 people per month. I could make this cheaper if I really wanted to but it’s not that much in the grand scheme of things. The key for me was to find the most economical way to source what I want and not necessarily change how I eat. Just think outside the box and target wholesale as much as possible.

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Bankai
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Re: Grocery Bill: The Most Difficult Thing to Give Up.

Post by Bankai »

Vegetables are £1-£2 per kg. So are fruits (excl. Berries). Whole grains below £1 per kg. Beans £1-£1.5 per kg. The only slightly expensive foods are nuts and seeds (£5-£10 per kg).

Want to cut grocery budget? Go vegan. And enjoy better health as added benefit. We are spending around £125 per person per month and we waste money on things like fresh berries or organic all the time. I'm sure it's doable for £60 on a less extravagant vegan diet.

Nomad
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Re: Grocery Bill: The Most Difficult Thing to Give Up.

Post by Nomad »

A few years ago I completely changed what I ate. I looked up which were the healthy foods and the best sources of various vitamins and minerals.
Mainly of course this was vegetables and fruit. Then, when I bought it and brought it home - I just looked at it in the kitchen and thought.
How the hell do I cook that?
Then I had to learn and make up recipes for it all.
I would suggest something similar if you begin with the end in mind and that being 'put the nutrients in the body that it needs', you should get there.
None of the needed nutrients that a body needs are particularly expensive.
I used this website to show graphs of the nutrients etc.
fitday.com

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Re: Grocery Bill: The Most Difficult Thing to Give Up.

Post by FIRE 2018 »

Some people I know cannot live without buying bottled water and Keurig coffee pods. This expense adds up in the long run and they still complain how can we save $$ for retirement? Duh?

bryan
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Re: Grocery Bill: The Most Difficult Thing to Give Up.

Post by bryan »

Dave wrote:
Wed Jun 26, 2019 6:01 pm
Milk, even (especially) the non-animal type, tends to be very expensive, too. You say Whole Foods isn't more than other stores nearby, and I don't have proof you're wrong where you live. But I have to think you can find some grocery stores that may be a little further away that are meaningfully cheaper (see comments about international grocers).
At least in California, milk at whole foods is the best bang for your buck anywhere except wal-mart. It's ~$3.75 per gallon (whole milk) and just re-labeled Clover brand. I've tried so many different milks (since I drink more than a gallon per week) and settled on this one. Trader Joe's is cheaper but a lower tier of quality. Of the chain stores (FoodMaxx, FoodsCo, Safeway, Cash & Carry, Smart & Final, Lucky) surprisingly wal-mart has the best quality and it's cheap too. I'm not sure what to make of that.. However, I did notice that Grocery Outlet has an organic whole milk (Humboldt brand I think) for ~$5.50 that I might switch to (it's better than Clover).

@chasebrooklyn1985, try to make some of the stuff that you buy at home, from scratch. e.g. best way to keep coffee budget low is to roast em, grind em, and brew them yourself.

Keep hunting for ingredient sources! Doesn't help if you are in a food desert, though. I keep discovering new sources of ingredients, but I'm in a land of plenty. Whether it's beans at the Indian grocer, seafood at a Chinese monger, alcohol at Trader Joe's, or produce at Berkeley Bowl, it seems each place has there "loss-leader".
chasebrooklyn1985 wrote:
Sun Jun 30, 2019 12:26 pm
Oat milk is really hard to make if you want it to be super creamy. I don't know how they do it. If you make it at home it often comes out very watery like almond milk. Gotta find a recipe.
I would double-check the ingredients to make sure the secret is in the process, and not some thickening agent.

But yeah, you might have to share in more detail what you put in your cart if you want us to nit-pick more! :lol: :roll:

Lucky C
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Re: Grocery Bill: The Most Difficult Thing to Give Up.

Post by Lucky C »

In the Northeast check out Ocean State Job Lot for non-perishables. They are in New England, NY, NJ, and soon in PA. They are a closeout retailer with overruns/overstocks etc. so you can get a lot of consumer crap for cheap but I like them for dried fruits and nuts often cheaper than anywhere else.

They also have Crazy Deals where they give you a gift card for buying a certain item, often for 100% of the value of the item you purchased. So the other day I got the following:

- Two 1QT cartons of organic turkey broth
- 1L carton of apple juice
- Package of some quasi-healthy pumpkin seed crackers
- Package of bagel crisps (my wife loves crispy snacks)
= $10.29 and came with a gift card for $10.29 (had to buy at least $10 worth of stuff)

Now I know those aren't the best grocery items for value or nutrition but they were the best options available to get the gift card, and now they are essentially free since I was going to get other stuff there anyway. I can get all of the above plus a 28oz package of dates ($5) and a pound of walnuts (also $5), for $10 total.

Unfortunately they don't often have a lot of food as part of the Crazy Deals program but if they did you could theoretically get all your non-perishables as much as 50% off (can't use gift cards to get more gift cards). Normally their deals are not so desirable for ERE shoppers... like a $6499 massage chair that gets you a $6499 gift card.

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Ego
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Re: Grocery Bill: The Most Difficult Thing to Give Up.

Post by Ego »

Lucky C wrote:
Wed Aug 21, 2019 4:41 pm
Now I know those aren't the best grocery items for value or nutrition but they were the best options available to get the gift card, and now they are essentially free since I was going to get other stuff there anyway.
Back in the 90s we lived in a large condo complex. I would dig out the coupons from Sunday newspapers in the recycle bins and do the extreme couponing thing. It was addictive. We got our grocery bill down extremely low but we were eating terrible highly processed food. At the end of it all I was in the worst physical condition of my life. If I could go back and do it over again I would figure out a way to sell the food and excess cleaning supplies and paper products and aluminum foil and toiletries and use the proceeds to buy healthy food.

Lucky C
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Re: Grocery Bill: The Most Difficult Thing to Give Up.

Post by Lucky C »

Sounds like you were ahead of the curve doing extreme couponing back in the 90s. I've never bothered with coupon tactics but occasional trips to overstock stores like Ocean State Job Lot or Big Lots are worth it to stock up the pantry even without coupons. Dried fruits, nuts, spices, coffee, honey, and lots of canned ingredients are some of the things you can get there cheaper than at any grocery store.

Otherwise it's Aldi for me for most of my food, with Walmart coming in at a close 2nd place for prices. My wife works at a grocery store and though there is no fixed employee discount, there are the occasional employee-only coupons that get her free or nearly-free items. This time of year I can also get stuff from the local farm for only a couple extra bucks per trip, which is worth it have it super fresh and support the local community.

NPV
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Re: Grocery Bill: The Most Difficult Thing to Give Up.

Post by NPV »

anesde wrote:
Sun Jul 28, 2019 4:44 am
@NPV - I’m with FIRE 2018. First try to source what you want to eat less expensively. Different markets, especially fresh fish wholesale markets are great sources for salmon. Not sure where you live but I routinely get salmon for about 1/2 the price in a supermarket by shopping in bulk at the fish market. It’s less convenient (only in early AM c. 4:30AM and requires you to descale and clean the fish) but it’s a great option. Also reduces plastic packaging which is an added bonus.

For nuts, again buy in bulk either at Costco or online. They are never going to be that cheap but you can save c. 20% that way.

I’m surprised about mushrooms and broccoli. Where I live these are pretty cheap. I suppose you could start to grow your own or forage but I don’t have much experience in that so can’t help there. Sounds cool though. Either way I would challenge that these aren’t really the issue in your grocery spend.

As for berries they are significantly cheaper if you buy frozen. Not sure if that’s acceptable to you, but unless you live in a place where they are in season at the right time it’s just not feasible for fresh to be cheap.

For reference, in general I follow a very similar diet to yours and I come in at an average of £250 for 2 people per month. I could make this cheaper if I really wanted to but it’s not that much in the grand scheme of things. The key for me was to find the most economical way to source what I want and not necessarily change how I eat. Just think outside the box and target wholesale as much as possible.
These are good ideas. Bulk sourcing definitely can help move prices a bit - I do this with non-perishables, e.g. cocoa powder, coconut oil, and can get organic at below the price of non-organic at store. I did it with nuts in my home country where it could actually get me up to a ~50% discount which made nuts very affordable - less so in my current country.

I indeed tried substituting berries for frozen and that cuts the cost down by ~50%.

I would much rather pay full price for fish than wake up at 4 am or do my own fish scaling :) Life is too short (and health and happiness benefits of sleep too large).

Even at the discounted prices you describe though I have no idea how you get to 125 pounds per person per month for a similar diet. 2500-3000 calories from the diet above is e.g. half a kilo of salmon fillet, 3 avocados, a kilo of green vegetables and mushrooms, and 200-300 grams of blueberries (satisfying the dietary constraints above). 125 pounds / 30 days a month = ~4 pounds. How the hell do you get that for 4 pounds? :) The avocados alone will cost about that...

take2
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Re: Grocery Bill: The Most Difficult Thing to Give Up.

Post by take2 »

NPV wrote:
Sat Aug 31, 2019 2:03 pm
I would much rather pay full price for fish than wake up at 4 am or do my own fish scaling :) Life is too short (and health and happiness benefits of sleep too large).

Even at the discounted prices you describe though I have no idea how you get to 125 pounds per person per month for a similar diet. 2500-3000 calories from the diet above is e.g. half a kilo of salmon fillet, 3 avocados, a kilo of green vegetables and mushrooms, and 200-300 grams of blueberries (satisfying the dietary constraints above). 125 pounds / 30 days a month = ~4 pounds. How the hell do you get that for 4 pounds? :) The avocados alone will cost about that...

When I say I follow a similar diet to yours I meant I eat the same foods. I certainly don’t eat the same foods everyday (not a cost thing, I would just find that boring)

Of what you described the avocados and salmon are the most expensive. I eat avocados ~1x/week and salmon ~1-2x/week. If I lived in Mexico or SoCal I would eat avocados everyday. I live in the UK so I don’t. This is partially cost, partially environmental reasons, and partially bc the avocados I do get simply aren’t that great.

You shouldn’t even eat salmon everyday (or any fish for that matter) but the days I do it’s ~50% cheaper for reasons already discussed. Note again that while this is mostly driven by cost I also generally enjoy going to the fish market and selecting my own, absent of plastic packaging that’s so prevalent in more pricey supermarkets.

My diet also consists of rice/lentils/beans (extremely cheap in bulk), chicken, pork, and very occasionally beef (also bought at a meat market in the early morning for significantly less with beef being the most expensive), cured meats (bought in bulk in my and my SO’s home countries), LOTS of olive oil (cheap and high in calories), eggs (sometimes bought from a friend who has a farm, otherwise free range in the supermarket which is pretty cheap), yogurt (very cheap in bulk), and LOTS of different kinds of vegetables (I buy and eat fresh whatever is in season, frozen on occasion).

I think the best course of action would be to post an itemised list of what you spent in an average month. It would be easier to help narrow down what could either be sourced cheaper or swapped out with little/no impact on your diet but a big impact on your wallet.

NPV
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Re: Grocery Bill: The Most Difficult Thing to Give Up.

Post by NPV »

Well the set above is pretty representative. Swap salmon for soft cheese or eggs sometimes (a bit less healthy but cheaper and even I wouldn't eat salmon every day), and the vegetable types vary, but other than that it's my normal diet for a day.

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