When working on budget trimming you can focus on cutting unnecessary subscriptions, change your phone plan provider, and limit your energy usage at home. Although, have you thought about how your food choices can impact your frugality?
Find your way around:
A few years ago, we did an experiment.
One trip to the grocery store we decided to not buy any meat. This was a first for us. We had been learning about the health benefits of limiting meat consumption and wanted to introduce new fruits and vegetables, but wasn’t sure how to fit them both in our budget.
So instead of buying our typical roaster chicken, pack of sausages, and few pounds of ground beef, we bought extra vegetables instead. We tried adding some of the “exotic” fruits and vegetables like blood oranges and yuca to our cart. To our surprise, even with buying some organic options, our food bill was $20 cheaper than normal! Imagine if you could save $20/week over 52 weeks, that’s a total savings of $1,040 just in one year.
Cost per Pound
There are many ways to get your nutritional requirements met, however from a strictly financial viewpoint, eating plant-based provides the most bang for your buck. Although rice and beans have been known as the poor mans food, together they provide high quality protein and all the essential amino acids, and are close to $1/lb each.
From staple foods to fresh fruit and vegetables, the cost per pound of plant-based foods is often budget friendly.
The cost of animal products, meat, eggs, fish, milk and cheese, typically aren’t the cheapest items in your cart. They may occasionally be on sale (via subsidies or “loss leaders”), but can range widely from $1/lb to $10/lb or even more depending on whether it was organic, free range, and/or “hormone free” (which isn’t technically possible because all animals have hormones circulating through their blood).
The more “environmentally friendly” your purchases are, the more that grocery stores, restaurants, and butchers charge. The best environmentally friendly choice when it comes to animal products is to limit or eliminate consumption altogether. However, if you do still choose to consume animal products they should be from a small local farm, in which you pay a fair price for the animals life.
Plant-based meats:
While they are better for the environment and can be better for your health, they aren’t always better for you budget. These products can be similar in price or more than meat products due to the lack of subsidies supporting them. Plant-based meats should be used sparingly as a special occasion or as a treat, but not for every meal. They tend to be highly processed and don’t pack in as much nutrition as a whole plant food would. So save them for your occasional grill out or taco Tuesday, but try not to rely on these heavily as they are great transition foods.
Plant based meats and their animal based counter-parts, similar in price they both are not as friendly to your budget.
What is your food budget?
To determine your food budget there are two main categories that you need to include: “Eating in” (Groceries) and “Eating out” (Restaurants, Coffee shops, Fast food, Take out, Delivery). If you only spend $50 a week on Eating in, this is great! But if you then spend $5/day for breakfast and $10/lunch during the weekday, then Eat Out for $40 on the weekend, that’s an addition $115/week for a total spend of $165/week. Vise versa, if you only spend $20 Eating Out each week, but spend $200 a week Eating in, that’s even more for $220/week.
Everyone’s budget will be different, but to give you an idea, here is our budget for two adults. Eating In: Groceries ($90/week) and bulk food purchases ($100/month) + Eating Out: $60/month. Based on a month with 4 weeks worth of purchases, our Total Food Budget = $520.
How do you stick to a food budget?
Break out your calculator!
Simply download a calculator app on your phone and start your grocery run by entering in the price of every item as you shop. This works on multiple levels. It prevents you from being surprised about the price of your groceries at checkout when you will be less likely to put items back to stay within budget. You will also be able to see in real-time what the expensive items are in your budget.
For our grocery trips, frozen berries are $9 for 3lbs, that translates to 10% of our budget for the week. This allows us the opportunity to reflect and see if the item is worth it’s weight financially. In this case the answer is “Yes!” The berries are for our oatmeal every morning, for smoothies a few times a week, and to us are well worth the 10% of our budget.
Give it a Try!
Next time you go grocery shopping: enter with a list, budget, calculator, and make it a challenge to see if you can make it under your normal spending.
The three largest categories of a budget are typically housing, transportation, and food. Looking into how much you spend on food every month may help you make some small changes, which can lead to surprisingly large savings over time.
Stick to your budget:
Put the essentials in your cart first! We always start in the fresh produce section (fruits and vegetables), then move to dried goods (rice, pasta, beans, canned vegetables), followed by plant-based milks and frozen berries. After the essentials are in our cart, if there is any money left in the budget we will pick up special treat foods for recipes we want to make that week or maybe even a desert.
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Shopping at Aldi’s is a great way to stay in budget. Their store brand is excellent, produce is economical (often organic for the price of regular elsewhere) and not too many items to tempt the budget if you avoid the AOS. (Fans call the Aisle of Surprises or Aisle of Shame). 😉
Nicely done and well thought out. Defiantly good food for thought! Keep up the good work.