How do you do it??

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-26-2004
How do you do it??
14
Fri, 03-27-2009 - 1:34pm

I've noticed that some of you are only paying 45-75 per week on groceries. I have a family of 5 and spend AT LEAST $150/week. How in the world do you do it? Are you getting healthy foods or convience foods?? Please shed a light on this! I do shop with a list every week as well and don't need a membership to Sam's Club or Costco (for us it wouldn't pay)

Help me understand

Kelly

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Avatar for meandmypea
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
Fri, 03-27-2009 - 11:27pm

We have a family of 5 and spend $95 a week - and that INCLUDES household items like toilet paper, soap, laundry detergent.

Our key is that we shop at Aldi. Aldi's prices beat Wal-Mart or Sams or Meijer's or whoever, 99% of the time. And while sometimes their produce can be a little touch and go, I have no complaints with the quality on everything else. In fact, a lot of their items I actually prefer to brand name.

I rarely buy convenience food. I try to make as much as possible from scratch. I plan out meals. I go through the ads in the Sunday paper to see if there are any deals that beat the Aldi's price (which is rare, but usually I see it with milk or meat), and then I'll stock up. Just last week, there was a sale at Kroger on whole chickens, and they had some marked down managers specials as well - the ones that have to be sold by that day or will be tossed. There were whole chickens for less than $2.50, and I bought as much as I could. One whole chicken for us will last at least 2, sometimes 3 meals.

Last summer, my husband and I were paying around $900 PER MONTH in groceries/household items. Now we pay $450 or less. If we can do it and do it healthy, you can do too. You just have to shop smarter. :)

Bridget




Bridget
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-30-2005
Sat, 03-28-2009 - 12:23am

I spend about $100/week for our family of 4 (although my kids are little). We eat almost every meal at home - DH brownbags lunch, and me dinner (I work evenings). I used to spend quite a bit more, but I've cut my bill considerably in the last few months.

The biggest thing I do is shop the sales. I usually go to 2 stores/week to buy sale items. It takes me about 20 minutes per store to plan - make a list and dig out coupons. I stock up when things are cheap. Today, I bought 4 jars of peanut butter at $1.25 each. That will last us a few months until they are on sale again. I bought 4 boxes of Life cereal for $0.50 each. Both items were on sale, and then I had coupons to get the price even lower.

We eat a lot of fruit, but I choose based on what is cheap. This week we have apples ($0.68/lb) strawberries ($0.99/lb) and watermelon (1.99 each). Next week it will probably be something completely different.

We eat meat at every meal (like pp). DH is a meat and potatoes kind of guy. I stock up when meat is on sale. So, I never pay more than 99cents/lb for chicken thighs. Since I pay attention to the prices, I know when something is a good deal (like a couple of weeks ago when I got some for 88cents/lb :)

I am working on making fewer pre-packaged items. Like rice pilaf - $2.99/box, but can be made for a LOT less from scratch.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2005
Sat, 03-28-2009 - 9:20am

I've noticed that some of you are only paying 45-75 per week on groceries. I have a family of 5 and spend AT LEAST $150/week. How in the world do you do it? Are you getting healthy foods or convience foods?? Please shed a light on this!


I have a family of 3 adults.

iVillage Member
Registered: 11-14-2008
Sat, 03-28-2009 - 5:29pm

Wow,

You guys are all so good at this! I am better than I used to be but still bad apparently after reading all those posts!

We live rurally now so we don't eat out very much. I only have my kids half of the time but boy do they eat when they are with me. I try to make decent meals when they are around with the meat, veg and starch. I like to make cookies and banana bread for lunches and that makes the prepared snacks in the snack cupboard go farther. They also like to snack on popcorn which is cheap.

When they are not around we tend to raid the freezer because bf and I get lazy. By lazy I mean working long hours and not having time/energy to cook. So when I do have time I make extra. There is nothing better than coming home from a long day and taking spaghetti sauce with meatballs out of the freezer. I make up some fresh pasta and there you have a home made meal. We also tend to do soup and garlic bread when the kids are not around or bbq something tasty in a smaller portion(1 steak for two of us) with lots of sides.

I never let bread go bad making croutons or using it as bread crumbs in meat loaf.

We love left overs for lunches and often fight over them. If there is left over meat I like to make stir frys with it.

It is not very often that things go bad in our fridge. That i am getting better at.

The Bf likes to go to Costco once a month or so and get a lot of meat. We package it up into enough for four of us and some for just two of us and into the freezer it goes.

I would like to get better at making soups and different kind of salads as meals. I think that would be cheaper and lighter meals for us.

I buy a lot of generic brands for cooking and do not notice a difference. I don't use a lot coupons as I find I never really buy the things the coupons are for.

So sometimes with all the meat we have we just need fresh things like dairy and fruits and vegetables, and that is how some people keep their food bills low at certain times of the month. If I just spent $40 to $75 a week as a rule of thumb I would run out of everything by Wednesday morning and then starv LOL.

Good luck!!



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