At MSN Money, Liz Pulliam Weston has an article about fighting what she calls food-budget killers, those items at the grocery store that can put an extra strain on your pocketbook.
Weston’s story gives tips for how to save money on the five foods with the biggest price jumps in the past year: flour, eggs, sweet peppers, milk, and dried beans. But the article got me thinking about food-budget killers in a different way. High costs on staple foods put a dent in everyone’s budget, but often the real culprits are the foods we splurge on to treat ourselves.
I picked up a bottle of maple syrup the other day, for example — real maple syrup, not the imitation stuff — but I was so fixated on the nutrition information that I didn’t notice the price until I got home. $10! For a bottle of syrup! That, my friends, is a budget killer. Fortunately, it’s not a regular occurrence (and that bottle of real maple syrup will last me a year).
We do have a few recurring weaknesses, though, such as:
- Fancy cheeses. Kris and I like good cheese. We often treat ourselves to fancy cheeses we find at Costco or natural food stores. Not cheap. We control costs a little by buying only what we know we’ll use, so that nothing goes to waste.
- Juices and protein drinks. Since starting to focus on fitness, I’ve tried to cut back on soda pop — I mostly drink water. For a bit of variety, I’ve been picking up protein shakes and juices from Naked and Odwalla. These are expensive, so I make a point of only buying them when they’re on sale.
- Coffee beans. Quality coffee beans are expensive, but Kris isn’t willing to settle for second-best. She doesn’t make coffee very often, but when she does, she wants it to taste just right.
- Dinner parties. When we entertain, we spare no expense. We just spent a small fortune on six pounds of fresh halibut for our book group tomorrow night (at which we’re discussing M.F.K. Fisher, who believed that eating well was one of the “arts of life”). Fortunately, this only happens a few times a year.
The costs are high when I make clam chowder, too, but it’s worth it. (It’s delicious, and it produces a huge batch.) I stock up on clams and clam juice if I notice them on sale, which doesn’t happen very often.
If these examples were typical of all our food purchases, we’d have a problem. They’re not. Most of the time, Kris and I are pretty good about shopping for bargains. Kris, especially, makes a habit of planning her purchases, waiting for sales, and finding coupons for products we use often.
I suspect that even the most frugal shoppers have certain foods that put a dent in their grocery budgets. What are your weaknesses? Do you have any strategies for keeping costs down, even on the things you splurge for?
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I shop with a food diary and monitor prices.
Keep plenty of staples at home and cook from scratch.
Buy the loss leaders such as boneless skinless chicken breasts when they are $1.89/lb and get a ton of it. Once home, I separate and freeze 1/2 of them and cook the rest before I freeze them. After a long day at work, I get the diced chicken from the freezer and throw it in a pan for a cheap stir-fry meal or another quick meal. As are result, we end up eating less meat overall, cutting costs.
We have more whole wheat pasta meals with less meat and more veggies.
Cutting out the processed and prepared meals saves more money than anything else.
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For budget minded coffee drinkers out there, I have to recommend Deans Beans (www.deansbeans.com). Fair trade, organic, excellent coffee at $7.25/lb. Hate to sound like a commercial, but it is hard to beat.
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I just want to chime in about coffee for a minute. I’m a bit extreme with coffee according to my co-workers and friends, but it’s something I enjoy. I went from a drip machine (don’t care how spendy it is, they all junk) to a French press (best way imho to make coffee) to an Italian lever espresso machine and primarily drink Americano’s (espresso with hot water added). Because I go through coffee much quicker now, and my espresso machine is sensitive to coffee freshness, I keep very little on hand, only what I know will be made within 2 weeks or so.
Find a local roaster, quality coffee can be had at almost any place in the US for about $10 a pound for single origin or blends. I don’t care how fancy that can of Illy looks at the grocery store, it’s junk and could have been roasted 6+ months ago. If you can’t find one locally, there are a dozen or so sites online that are worth buying from.
Consider buying green coffee beans and roasting yourself. Green will last, in some cases, years until you roast it. Roasting isn’t hard, it can be done with a heat gun and metal dog bowl, often called the HGDB method, old popcorn makers can be converted or you could buy a dedicated roaster. Green coffee beans can be had for around $3-4 per pound online and shipping isn’t anywhere as bad as you would think. That is again for single origin coffee.
I’m lucky in that my boss shares the same passion (his is a bit more intense) for quality coffee and has bought / pieced together / made a 6lb roasting drum coupled with a 45,000btu grill. I can get fresh single origin or blend coffee anytime I want for a great price. But he saves money by buying green coffee in 60lb bags from buying groups (free to join) that run specials depending on what is in season around the world.
I don’t drink alcohol, but I will spend money on good coffee, but do get the most bang from my buck. He’s currently working on a site, but if you are interested drop me an email and I’ll pass his info onto you if you wanna try his coffee out.
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I have just been discussing this with my wife. We spend $700 to $900 a month on food, including groceries and eating out. We’ve also determined that eating out (or at least, ordering out and eating at home) is not always more expensive as my wife will get food for a meal at the supermarket for $15, and buying the same amount of similar food at a restaurant might be $12. We have talked about it, but we can’t figure out what is causing us to spend so much!
Also, soda isn’t really that expensive when you get it on sale. I’ll pay $10 to $12 for 3-4 12-packs,, which works out to $.21 to $.33 per 12 oz. and it’ll last nearly a month. This is pretty cheap!
Good coffee may be more expensive, but brewing it at home is going to be cheaper and/or better than anything at Starbucks or another coffee shop.
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I try to shop the sales and like most I try to find a good deal on good products. The big splurge for our family is a certain orange juice (around $6 a gallon) and a certain type of spaghetti sauce. Both of these I can get at a wholesale store, but I definitely stock up when there is a sale in regular stores. I’m not one for organic milk yet. We go through too much to make the cost worth it. However for all those folks who do buy milk by the gallon you can stock up when it is on sale and freeze it in a deep freezer. This is a little trick that some VERY frugal people taught me. Just stick it in your freezer. When you are getting low, take out a gallon the night before you need it and put it in lukewarm water overnight (~8 hours). Shake it real good in the morning and it should be ready to go.
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Olives, glorious olives … I’m quite frugal when it comes to shopping for food, and my grocery bill without the olives usually runs about $40-50 every week, even if I eat out with friends once a week (I live alone, so I shop for one). But ever since my favorite grocery store added an olive bar ($9.49/lb.) with blue cheese-stuffed greens, kalamatas, provencales, and marinated garlic cloves, I find myself spending an extra $10-11 bucks every so often to feed my addiction. I try to keep it to around $20/month, but sometimes I can’t resist. Okay, so I never can resist … sue me.
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Our weakness is Wine. Up until recently, we were spending $8-$10 a bottle at Costco. This was putting a pretty good dent in our budget since we eat (and drink) at home quite a bit. More recently, we’ve found that Trader Joes carries some excellent South American wines for less than $5. We’ve had wine connoisseurs over and conducted some informal taste tests comparing the Argentinean wines to some of the more expensive Italian/American varieties, and the Argentineans have performed well. We haven’t looked back since switching…
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Thank goodness for Costco. We stock up on meats, cheeses and veggies there and only use the grocery store for incidentals and desserts (for some reason buying oversized pies for 2 people seems extravagant while huge blocks of cheese don’t)!
We’ve cut milk out of our grocery list and limited our bread consumption. I don’t have the desire to bake right now… but I should learn. I always think we’d save a lot of money if I could buy 25# bags of grains and transform them into baked goodness. For now I think I’ll settle for learning to prepare oatmeal 10 different ways this fall and winter
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#57′s comment about wines…
For me, kosher wine is a big expense. There is *one* kosher wine the BCLCB carries that’s under $10. (Think liquified grape jelly left out to ferment.) The other dozen or so kosher wines they carry (some of which are quite decent) range from $16.99 to about $29.99. It’s preferable to have a bottle of wine each week for the Sabbath, but I’ve been using grape juice more recently (at about $6 per bottle) and only buying wine some of the time.
I also drink Bolthouse protein drinks every morning for breakfast, but they’re expensive, $4.99 for a big bottle that lasts 2 days if I buy it at Safeway. (This is for the correct amount of protein for my body weight for one meal.) Another store, slightly less convenient to get to, carries them for $3.89 each. I’m trying to go to this other store once every couple of weeks to stock up on my drink and a few other items.
Protein powder and making your own drink is a good solution for some people, but it can be hard to find a good brand of protein powder that doesn’t taste awful and not everybody has time to actually make a shake and clean up the blender, etc. If you won’t actually make it or can’t stand drinking it, it’s not a saving.
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I’ll pay more for good bread. I love bread and a really crispy baguette, fluffy wholemeal loaf or something a bit more unusual like potato bread is really worth the money.
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My husband and I are kind of foodies, but do manage to save at the grocery store (to the point that I have had neighbors ask me to go grocery shopping with them, just to show them how I shop). Our splurges:
*FRESH wild alaskan/coho salmon. For some parts of the country you can get this relatively inexpensive due to proximity (OREGON – I lived in Bandon for a while), but for us it is $12-15 a lb, and a meal is 1 1/2lb for our family.
*Good lunch meat. We pay $9 a lb for lunch meat, but rarely eat it. Usually it is more of a dinner meal and only occasionally.
*Cage free eggs (double the price, really?)
Mainly, I try to set good, healthy eating habits for my family. I have a toddler who will eat almost anything fresh. (Regularly requests sushi, loves asparagus spears, thinks raw broccoli is a snack food, and will steal tofu out of the pan if I let her). So I make it a point to illustrate that no matter how many kids think that an Oreo is really a snack food, she has lots of great, healthy, REAL options at home. (But let me tell you, we really have to be careful in other areas…)
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COFFEE SAVING TIP: Regarding saving on coffee (which we both love) what we do is during the week brew up Folgers Gourmet or some other low priced brand and then on the weekends when we really have time to sit and enjoy the coffee brew the high end coffee that we love. It has saved quite a bit over the last year. We have found that during the week when we are in a rush that you don’t really miss the good stuff, plus we enjoy it even more on the weekend.
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Budget buster? Having a teenaged boy in the house! While no one category of food we buy is that expensive — and I meticulously match coupons and sales each week — he eats such quantity that it’s hard to keep up. Our food bill was cut by 50% when he was gone during the summer. He’s not overweight, he’s fairly sedentary, and he’s short for his age; I can’t imagine how much our neighbors with several tall, athletic teenagers spend on food!
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#32 said: Perhaps I’m interpreting it incorrectly, but the frugal philosophy seems to me to say “why buy one thing if there’s a cheaper alternative?”.
Merriam-Webster says that “frugal” means “characterized by or reflecting economy in the use of resources”, where “economy” means “thrifty and efficient use of material resources”. Digging deeper, “thrify” means “given to or marked by economy and good management” and “efficient” means “productive without waste”. (Tried to avoid circular definitions, but it was hard!)
So putting the definition into the original question: “Why buy one thing if I can satisfy the same need less wastefully?” Of course, needs are different for each person, and one persons “waste” is another person’s necessity. “Good” cheese, coffee, meat, beer, produce, milk are frugal choices if you savor them. If you can’t appreciate the difference, then that’s not frugal.
My most unfrugal grocery area is fresh produce. I love local, seasonal fresh produce, and I tend to go nuts in the farmer’s market and produce aisle during the summer and fall. Some of it doesn’t all get used before it goes bad. However, I’ve found that my family tends to eat a lot more produce when it’s around in (over-) abundance than in moderate amounts. That dietary area important enough to us to risk the waste.
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My weakness: Fresh berries, when they’re in season (June to August). Antidote: Bring only a limited amount of cash when going to the farmers’ market.
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We purchased a half cow and whole hog last year for the meat. Since we have switched to free-range/organic meats, this was much less expensive than grocery store prices.
I’m with you on the cheese…love a good extra-sharp Cheddar!
Free-range eggs and organic dairy tend to be budget busters for us.
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Here’s what Jeff Smith, the original Frugal Gourmet (and host of the TV show) said in his book of the same name:
“The term frugal does not necessarily mean cheap. It means that you use everything and are careful with your time as well as your food products. And the term gourmet does not mean ‘food snob.’ It means a lover of good food and wine and, as far as I am concerned, of people. So we can all qualify by preparing meals for one another. We know deep in our hearts that the table is the proper place for understanding.”
I recommend all his cookbooks, by the way. They’re easy to understand, the meals are affordable and delicious, and he always has sweet and insightful comments about the meals, such as their history or how they fit into his family’s traditions.
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Good coffee and good cheese are our budget breakers too. But I tend to put the fun food, entertaining and eating out in our entertainment (fun) category, rather than groceries.
Groceries are the food (and other things) i buy to keep our house going day-to-day.
Having said that, we entertain often, and find that it’s usually simple food that goes over best. i cooked a three course dinner for 4 last week, and it cost $27 -including fancy cheese.
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I kind of agree with what Richard said about apples.
I look at two of my favorite things: pizza and ice cream. They’re not really the best thing for you to have all the time, but one has them occasionally, because they’re *enjoyable*.
My dad’s approach: buy the cheapest ice cream, and have it in the freezer at all times. Wouldn’t it be better to not have ice cream most of the time, and then when you’re in the mood for it, get the best, most tasty, and nutritious kind you can? This is supposed to be stuff that’s ok once in a while, when you’re in the mood for it.
Dad likes to have pizza sometimes once a week, but he gets the el cheapo kind. I’ve worked in a couple of pizza parlors, and I know there is pizza that is so over the top good it’s *worth* splurging on occasionally. You can even get dough at the store and make your own–and that’s also delicious.
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I just feel like food is a reasonable thing to spend money on. We’ve got in the mindset that the proper way to live is to spend practically nothing on food so we have lots left over for flat-screen TVs and enormous pickups and stuff, because it’s very profitable for a lot of people for us to think that way and they spend a lot of money on advertising trying to get us to.
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My cohabiting boyfriend and I have a weakness for prosciutto, fine cheeses, and wine with meals.
But probably my biggest budget-killer, in the sense that I know it’s really stupid to spend this money, is making homemade cheesecake with my Jewish-New Yorker mom’s perfect recipe.
There are only 8 ingredients, but 3 pounds of full-fat high-quality cream cheese is NOT cheap; I usually spend at least $50 every time I make it, plus 5-6 hours prep, baking, and cooling time. I’d easily spend half of that buying one at a high-end bakery. But it wouldn’t taste as good. And it wouldn’t be mine.
So it’s totally worth it for me. Luckily, I rarely bake one more than once a year.
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I sometimes make recipes that call for mascarpone or chevre, and I’ve discovered you can freeze both! Apparently they may “shatter” when defrosted, but I figure that’s fine if I’m stirring them into a sauce anyway.
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Those occassional splurges such as maple syrup or good dark chocolate are my biggest budget busters though I’ve cut down on the chocolate to reduce the sugar I’m eating.
Have you looked into the Grocery Outlets? They have lots of great cheeses and high quality food items at reduced prices. Sometimes the expiration date may be nearing but most of the foods can be frozen or refrigerated. You can find some amazing cheese at rock bottom prices (cheaper than TJ’s).
Naked and Odwalla are pretty expensive and it’s healthier to make your own. I made an heirloom tomato smoothie with apples, peaches, plums and silken tofu in the blender. I was surprised it tasted better and lighter than the big name brands. What I couldn’t finish I put in the freezer. And the ingredients were local and fresh.
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Someone mentioned that they don’t know how to make their food bill go down. If you plan your dinners for 2 weeks on paper, make up your grocery list and try to go grocery shopping once every 2 weeks, it’s a big savings. I have 6 kids and I always run out of milk/fruits/vegetables but I can dart in and out for that or stop at a roadside stand.
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I’ve got cost-cutting tips for the protein drinks & coffee – a little DIY saves a lot of cash.
DIY protein shakes/smoothies: if you’ve got a blender, this is a no-brainer. Protein powder costs 66 cents per scoop (I buy Wegmans brand whey protein) and then you can mix it with milk, fruit, juice, whatever you like.
For coffee: there is a great solution for someone who doesn’t make a lot of coffee but wants to have it on hand and wants it to taste great when they do make it. Ground coffee goes stale and bitter within hours, roasted beans within about a week. The unroasted beans, however, last basically forever.
With a certain type of popcorn popper (got mine off ebay for $10 including shipping) and a coffee grinder, you can roast the beans the day before guests come, then grind them just before brewing. There are some tutorials on the process at sweetmarias.com
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What really kills us, is that I have gone almost totally organic in our shopping list for food. So basically our grocery bill is now doubled. The reason for the switch was since before I had my son 3 years ago, I became aware of all the pesticides and hormones in our food, meat, wheat, and dairy products. And I never realized that a lot of products is made from wheat. So even this scare of what we are putting in our bodies may be hype for all the organic companies to make money, I decided about 4 years ago not to take that chance. We already do, when we decide to eat out or at someone else’s home. But now we have to cut back on other things so that I am able to spend more on the quality food. I decided that I would buy less clothing for myself and cut back on impulse shopping. This was my thought long ago: if I had to spend more money on anything, it would be to spend it on what we are ingesting. Hopefully we are healthier because of it.
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Food and wine are weaknesses of mine, and I know that my monthly expenditures in this area are above average.
However, as is the case with other posters here, I don’t spend much at all on clothes, housewares, and many other categories, so I don’t mind spending a little more money on quality food. I love good cheese, olives, crusty bread, berries, artichokes, and many other relatively expensive items.
My spending on food could potentially be extremely high, but I’ve developed habits to help me balance my spending somewhat. For most of the week, when I’m working, I eat a standard fiber/fruit breakfast, pack my own lunches, and have simple and healthful dinners. This routine, extending from Monday through Thursday, costs me hardly anything. From Thursday night through Sunday, I let myself spend a bit more at the market and on a couple of meals out. Ultimately, it’s a standard dollar-cost-averaging strategy: a frugal and healthful diet most of the week allows me to indulge a little on the weekend.
I also used to spend lots of money on books, but I’ve managed to take care of those urges. For the most part, I use libraries now, and only occasionally buy a book (usually at discount stores).
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+1 for all the suggestions to roast coffee.
I am a total amateur when it comes to roasting coffee, but EVERY batch I’ve produced (minus the first charcoal test) has been better than all other pre-roasted coffee I’ve had, and has not turned me into a coffee snob. I used to buy coffee at $15-20/lb in the dark days, but now I get my green beans from Sweet Maria’s at ~$5/lb (and Fair Trade Organic at that!). Just haul out the popcorn popper (hot air and Whirley Pop both work great) and you’re in business!
One tip: if you’re going to use the Whirley, do it outside on a Coleman camp stove. The smoke around second crack will is intense!
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