My husband and I are finally approaching the point in our lives where we’re seriously discussing having children. And the sticking point of every one of these discussions is money. For my husband at least. I firmly believe that babies make everything better, even money shortages. I mean, they don’t even eat anything for 6 months. They’re practically free.
The way we decided to deal with his freak outs was to write out a budget. We’re relatively reasonable with our spending, but he was right, we could and should do better. So we did the math and discovered that we should have more than enough money, but somehow, our bank account doesn’t always support that. So we looked closer, and found something surprising.
The vast majority of our spending is on food.
For just the two of us, we were spending upwards of $500 a month just on groceries and meals. To me, that number is out of control. So we’ve implemented some changes, and while the results haven’t been dramatic yet, if we keep it up for a while we’re going to have saved a big chunk of money. Since these never really occurred to me before, I thought I’d share what I’ve learned about eating for less from the perspective of a chronic food over-spender.
1. Stop buying bottled water! This was an easy one and we saw immediate changes in our grocery bill. I got a couple of cheap reusable water bottles at Target, a water pitcher, and viola. Water. A 24 pack of water is about 7 bucks, and to drink enough water, that’ll only last you 7 days. The water bottles and pitcher will last you an indefinitely long time and are really reasonably priced.
2. Freeze your bread! This may not be as useful for big households, but my husband and I cannot finish a loaf of bread before it molds or gets really stale. So I put our bread in freezer safe bags, and then into the freezer. If I’m packing a sandwich for the next day or later that day, I leave it frozen and let it thaw in my lunch box (and it serves as another ice pack!), or if I want a sandwich right away, I toss the bread in the microwave for 15 seconds to thaw it out.
3. Stop buying pre-sliced and pre-washed fruits and veggies. Seriously, you are paying way too much for a few minutes of work. Plus, frankly, you should wash all your fruits and veggies, even if they’re pre-washed.
4. Freeze your extra pasta sauce! I always seem to buy these big jars of pasta sauce and then can’t finish them before they get a little past their prime. So I pour the excess tomato sauce into ice cube trays and freeze them overnight. Then I pop my little sauce popsicles into a freezer bag or container and thaw them out as I need them. I just toss my ice cube trays in the dishwasher and they clean out nicely.
5. Pack your lunch! This one is key. Buying your lunch each day is way more expensive than making it at home. A loaf of bread is about 3 bucks and makes at least 10-15 sandwiches, that’s 20 cents of bread for a sandwich, and with reasonable toppings, your sandwich is going to cost you less than a dollar. That’s 5 bucks a week in sandwiches, compared to the 15-25 you’d be spending on a sandwich in a cafeteria or restaurant.
6. Pack your lunch in reusable containers! I just recently switched over to these Ziploc containers for our lunches. I put a sandwich in the big part, cut up fruit in one of the small compartments and carrots and hummus in the other. I usually sneak a little cookie or two in the sandwich compartment too. I can’t help myself. That saves me at least 5 baggies a day per lunch, which is 50 a week and 200 a month.
7. Buy seasonal fruits. Citrus is cheap in the winter and unnecessarily pricey in the summer. Plums, apricots, nectarines and peaches are cheaper in the summer. If you buy in season fruit, they are almost always cheaper and almost always way better tasting.
8. Stop drinking soda. Next to bottled water, this is the biggest price mark up, and it’s for something that you don’t even need. If you got rid of soda and only drank water at home and free water when you went out to eat, you’d be amazed at how much you save. And how much more room there is in your fridge.
9. Don’t buy pre-portioned foods. You get less food for more money. Unless the portion control part is totally required for you, buy the bigger, cheaper box and portion for yourself.
I’m sure that many of you have been doing this for longer than we have, so tell me: what is your biggest money saving tip when it comes to food?
Katie is a 28 year old Southern Californian, married to a doctor, racking up as much student debt as possible as a full-time graduate student in a health science. Her hobbies include abusing parentheses, baking complicated desserts that almost universally involve frosting and loving her two cats more than is socially acceptable. She’s currently balancing her first child and graduating from graduate school. So planning and timing are also things she excels at. You can read more from Katie on her blog, Overflowing Brain.
I’m laughing at your “babies don’t eat anything for 6 months. They’re practically free” remark. hahaha. I wish they were!
Where do you buy your water? I can get a 36 pk for $6! Our water tastes gross so I buy gallon water jugs.
Nice tips!
My baby takes a one million dollar formula every week. ha.
I concur…great tips
between the supplementing formula, meds, rice cereal…charlie’s quite expensive!
hope the one million dollar formula’s working!
I usually buy water at Target or our grocery store (that’s where I priced it for writing this). It’s funny, I was kind of picky about my bottled water, but our filtered tap water is totally good to me. Without filtering it, no, but once run through the filter, it tastes pretty clean.
And yea, I’m going to continue to live in my cheap baby fantasy. Shhhh.
I never do any of these things on the list, so it was weird to see them as something that could be reduced to save money. However our grocery bill as $120 a fortnight for 2 adults and a toddler, so saving money really can be easy and simple!
We don’t eat out very often, but we do often buy treats with our groceries. After a while you get used to it and all the money you save is fantastic! I always go grocery shopping with the other half and the child. That way we are in and out quickly, and he is very good at saying no to me buying expensive things,
WOW. Your grocery store must be a lot more reasonably priced than mine! Even trying my hardest, I can barely get 2 weeks of groceries for that much, but I blame our cats, whose food/litter is costly.
I think not eating out is another big money saver. Good thought!
I have a dog too, yep those babies suck the grocery money away! I buy him his meat, but we also give him a lot of scraps from cooking and he usually eats pretty much all of my sons meal (Who loves to throw!) so we save a bit of money that way too, by factoring in the extra food he will get and not buying it.
I am also in Australia, so that could be the difference, but I know of people who easily spend $300 p/w on groceries.
We rarely eat red meat. And instead of buying boneless, painless chicken breasts for $7 a pound, now I buy whole roasters and roast them in the oven, and then pull all the meat off and use it in all my chicken dishes.
Good tip! How long does it usually take to roast the chicken whole?
Sorry, replying to someone else’s comment, I know, but I roasted a 4lb. chicken the other night and it took about 55 minutes — not for nights you need something on the table quick, but really nice for Sunday dinner.
Do you have a Sam’s Club nearby? They have bonesless, skinless in our area for 1.97 lb, which is pretty reasonable. To avoid having to repack, I usually buy a ten lb bag of frozen boneless skinless for about 22,00 a bag. Its a bit more expensive but I don’t have to go throught the trouble of dividing/sealing the meat. We eat tons of chicken so we always have a bag on hand.
I’m just cooking for two, but I’ll buy the “family packs” of stuff like pork chops and chicken breasts — each pack has 5-6 pieces, so I’ll use two for dinner that night and freeze the rest for later use. The cost per pound is so low it’d be silly not to (we’re talking $4.99/pound for a two pack, and $1.99/pound for the family pack).
And I agree with buying whole chickens to roast as well — you can eat the leftovers in sandwiches and casseroles, and use the bones to make stock for soups.
I have bought the family packs, but I always have a hard time defrosting the meat without half cooking it in the microwave. How do you defrost without totally ruining good meat? In the fridge?
Yup! I either put in the fridge before I leave for work in the morning or, if I forget, I put it in a bowl of cool water that I change every ~15 minutes (this takes anywhere from15-60 minutes, depending on the thickness of the meat).
My first thought was HOLY CRAP what kind of diamond water are you buying? Secondly, these are excellent tips. The only veggie I will buy already cut up is green beans, because they are already snapped and in a perfect portion bag. If I have to sit for 45 minutes snapping the ends off, I won’t go through the trouble of making them. My boyfriend and I are saving for a trip and the first thing we did was institute a no eating out policy for two weeks. It’s amazing the kinds of meals you can come up with from the stuff you have in your fridge and pantry.
Bahaha. Okay, I went back and reread, perhaps I meant to say 7 dollars instead of 17? Either that or I must have priced really big bottles of water. It sure made my point seem better though, right?
I’ve been doing the fridge/pantry leftover thing lately too. It’s amazing that I have WHOLE meals in there.
Finally! I’ve been waiting for Ziploc or Glad to come up with these. Now to find them in our small-ish town. With 3 kids who refuse to touch cafeteria food these will save me (& the environment) a lot! Thanks for the fantatic tips! I read this in Google Reader originally and almost choked at the $17/ 24pk water…then clicked over to the site and saw it had been corrected.
I LOVE the containers, I got mine at Target- you might be able to order them online if you can’t find them anywhere else. I believe Amazon carries them.
Man, you guys are quick to catch a typo, aren’t you?
I’m a big fan of packing my breakfast & lunch for work, it really is a huge money saver, even with my work subsidized cafeteria. I make big meals (just me and my husband) and our dinner leftovers serve as lunches during the week.
I puree fruit that is getting past its prime (pineapple, strawberries, blueberries, etc) and then freeze it in ice cube trays. I use the cubes to make fruit smoothies. I also quit buying bottled water and we just use the filter in our fridge for water.
If I forget to defrost in the fridge or don’t have time for soaking in water, I put meat on the microwave and defrost based on the weight. However, I usually take it out when the time is halfway through, and pop it in some cold water, and massage it a bit.
Saving money – I keep an eye on when ground beef is on sale, and I buy a lot. Then I portion it into one-lb hunks, stick it in a ziplock and freeze it. You might use smaller hunks – we have three kids and have graduated to two lbs when making something like tacos.
Also, cook beans more. They’re cheap, nutritious, versatile and filling. My friends swear by this, I haven’t gone much in this direction.
Oh! Shop at Aldi, Food for less, etc – their stuff is good quality (often the same brands as premium stores have) but much less expensive because they don’t pay for all the marketing and employees as the other stores. Shop for fruits and veggies and sometimes meat at the smaller Asian, Hispanic, Middle Eastern, Polish (insert local culture) markets. In my experience, the dry goods are outragrously expensive but the produce is cheap, varied and sometimes organic/local.
I think these are all good tips. You can also go through the coupons and just pull out the ones you think you will use. I try to remember to do that, but I’m not always successful.
But on your first point. If you wait until you can afford a baby then you’ll never be able to have one, but once the baby comes along you just find a way to make it work.
Cook! Cook all the time! Make your own bread (I found a recipe that makes burger buns in an hour. I’ll never go back). Roasting chickens was a great one. I stopped buying dessert items. If I didn’t bake it, we don’t eat it.
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