My spending goal for 2020: Spend less on food
I’m pleased to report that 2020 is off to a fine start. As I mentioned in my year-end review, 2019 sucked for me. I have high hopes that this year will be a vast improvement. So far, it has been.
The biggest change is that I’m not drinking alcohol. While this is meant as a January-only test, it’s possible that I’ll extend the experiment. It’s saving me money and making me more productive. Plus, it may be helping with my anxiety and depression. I like that. (Thanks to the GRS readers who sent me private notes about their own struggles with alcohol. I appreciate it.)
I’ve made other small changes this year too. While I didn’t make any resolutions — I rarely do — I’m using the new year as a prompt to alter some of my habits, to do things differently.
One area that both Kim and I want to focus on in 2020 is our food spending. In 2018, I spent an average of $1038.03 per month on food. While I don’t have complete numbers for 2019 (my expense tracking was messy in the latter half of the year), I know that while my food spending declined, it didn’t decline by much. I want to change that.
To that end, Kim and I are making a couple of changes. For one, I’m canceling HelloFresh…at least for now. Plus, there’s the whole “cut out alcohol” thing. While alcohol isn’t included in my food spending, it contributes to my food spending. It leads us to eat out more. We want to reduce our restaurant spending in 2020.
Let’s take a closer look at how I hope to spend less on food this year.
Good-bye, HelloFresh
Last year was the year I experimented with HelloFresh, the meal delivery service. Mostly, I like it. Mostly. I like the HelloFresh recipes. I like the convenience. I like the company itself.
That said, there are enough downsides to HelloFresh that starting next week, I’m dropping the service. Part of this is because of me. Part of this is because of HelloFresh itself.
On the me side, I need to walk more. I need to get more exercise, and I need to experience my neighborhood. As part of that, I want to make regular trips to the grocery store — by foot.
Also on the me side, I like greater variety than HelloFresh offers. It’s not that HelloFresh doesn’t offer different meals and cuisines — because it does. But the recipes themselves have a relentless sameness about them. Yes, you can choose Italian or Korean or American dishes, but the preparation is always always always the same. It’s boring.
Those are the problems with me. There are also problems with HelloFresh itself.
For instance, I’m sick of the never-ending push to get me to promote the service to my friends. Get lost. Every week, the HelloFresh package contains a plea to share sign-up codes with friends. Every week when I choose my meals online, there’s an additional plea to share sign-up codes with friends. Every week in the follow up e-mails, there’s a plea to share sign-up codes with friends. I’m over it.
But the biggest strike against the service is its inability to get produce right.
Most weeks, there’s at least one meal with a shitty piece of produce. It’s usually (but not always) a tomato. One meal I prepped last week had a rotten lemon. (I’ve never even seen a rotten lemon before!) It’s as if there’s no quality control.
And at least once per month, a vegetable is simply missing. Absent. Not in the bag. During Thanksgiving week, for instance, I was prepping a meal with asparagus almandine, which sounded awesome. But the package I received contained no asparagus. I scrambled to find a substitute — Brussels sprouts — but it was a poor replacement.
The Cost of Convenience
Plus, there’s the cost. When we first tried HelloFresh in June 2018, I crunched the numbers. Meals from HelloFresh cost about $10 per person. If I were to purchase the ingredients myself, the cost was just over $3 per person. At three meals per person per week, I’ve been paying an extra $175 per month for groceries that I don’t need to pay.
When I signed up for HelloFresh, I did so because I hoped it would save me money. I hoped that it would keep me out of the grocery store (which it does, actually) and that in turn would reduce my grocery spending. I tend to make a lot of impulse purchases at the supermarket, so this seemed like sound reasoning.
The results of this experiment were inconclusive. For the first half of 2019, my home food spending (HelloFresh and groceries combined) dropped from $620.92 per month to $553.45 per month. But during the last two months of the year, I spent $729.38 per month. Was that year-end spike because of the holidays? The huge Costco trip I made in early November? I don’t know. Maybe I should dive deeper.
In any event, if I did save money, it isn’t nearly as much as I’d hoped I would save.
That said, Kim and I have really enjoyed many of the meals we’ve ordered from HelloFresh. And we’re especially keen on the recipe cards. They’re a lot of fun. They make cooking simple — even if they are relentlessly the same.
Because I’m a nerd, I’ve saved every recipe card from every HelloFresh meal we’ve ordered. And to get nerdier yet, I’ve both graded each recipe and taken notes on it. In other words, we have a customized illustrated “cookbook” containing over 100 different recipes. (Plus, all 2500+ of the HelloFresh recipes are available for free from their website.)
Going forward, I intend to use these recipe cards to plan and prep our meals. Instead of ordering from HelloFresh itself, though, I’m going to walk to the grocery store (carrying my backpack) to buy the ingredients. This should prevent me from buying crap we don’t need while allowing me to obtain better produce than HelloFresh tends to send.
We’ll see how it works.
Here’s another way Kim and I have come up with to cut costs on food: batch cooking. It’s nothing new, I know, but it’s new to us. We won’t do once-a-month cooking, but we’ll each pick one recipe per week and make a larger version of it.
I’ll pick one HelloFresh cards and make three nights of the meal, for example. Last Sunday, Kim prepped a big batch of pork tacos that we’ve eaten for dinner the past three nights. And so on. We think this’ll keep life simple and keep me out of the grocery store.
Rascally Restaurants
Kim and I will also try to cut back on food spending this year by reducing how much we dine out. Left to our own devices, we choose restaurants much of the time. That gets expensive.
- In 2017, I spent an average of $567.97 per month on restaurants. Kim spent some unknown amount too (but much less).
- In 2018, I spent an average of $389.63 per month on restaurants. Plus, Kim spent some. So, we made big gains in 2018, but our spending was still high.
- As I mentioned, my records are incomplete for last year, but I know I spent $288.04 for restaurants during the last two months of 2019.
From 2017 to 2019, we cut our restaurant spending in half. That’s great progress! Still, there’s room for improvement.
I spent an average of $66.47 per week on restaurants last year. My gut feeling is that this is basically dining out once per week. I know from experience that our typical check is about $55, which includes our two meals plus two beers each. After tip, that’s $66. That’s our standard meal. (And it’s usually on a Thursday night.)
So far in 2020, we’ve had one restaurant meal and it cost us exactly $34 (including tip). If we’d both had our typical two beers, that check would have been about $58. By not drinking, we saved ourselves more than twenty bucks!
Kim and I do enjoy eating out together, so it’s not something we want to eliminate. Instead, we want to be more mindful about how and where we dine out when we do dine out.
We’ve already shifted our focus from fancier places (which is where we were eating in 2017) to cheap and tasty spots. But now we’re interested in finding places that are even less expensive. And, at least for now, we want to be careful to avoid spots that might tempt us to drink. (Our favorite pub has great food and a cozy environment, but we both know it’s madness for us to eat there. It’ll make us want to drink beer.)
It’s far to early to predict how this whole restaurant thing is going to go in 2020. But we’ve thought of a couple of ways to cut costs (in addition to the “not drinking” thing.) As I said, we can turn our attention to less expensive eateries. Why go to the fancy Mexican place with “gourmet” tacos that cost $8 or $9 when we can go to the cheap place down the hill with $4 tacos? Let’s try that new ramen spot.
Plus, we might try take-out this year. Neither one of us has ever been a big proponent of ordering food to go, but I think it makes some sense right now. On my way home from the new office, I can pick up something tasty for dinner from the Thai place or the Italian place, maybe. We can have the restaurant food without restaurant temptation.
The Last Big Win
Food seems to be the last major place that I can trim my budget. My austerity measures in 2019 yielded excellent results, and I’ll continue to pursue those in the future. But I’ve cut most of my discretionary spending as far as I want to cut it at present. Food is the exception.
- I averaged spending $1176.06 per month on food in 2017.
- That dropped to $1038.03 in 2018.
- During the last two months of 2019, I spent an average of $1053.28 per month on food.
As I say, we’re making progress, but I feel there’s more to be had here. This is the last big win left in my budget. It’d be great if I could trim my food spending to, say, $800 per month (or lower!) in 2020. That’d be a fantastic drop from $1200 each month in 2017, right? I’d call that a victory.
On a food-related note, I should point out that eliminating (or reducing) alcohol could also save me plenty of money. During the past three years, I’ve reliably spent about $250 per month on alcohol — and that doesn’t include alcohol in restaurants. Going dry could help my health and wealth.
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There are 39 comments to "My spending goal for 2020: Spend less on food".
Hahah—Goodbye Fresh!
Glad you’re ditching paint-by-numbers cooking as I said in a previous post. I don’t think you have to make so many apologies for it, but I guess it’s a kind of review.
I could help you a bit to achieve cooking self-sufficiency if you want. I mean I’m the sort of person who feels almost scammed when going to a restaurant because I could eat much more, much better, for much less… So I only tend to eat and places that make things I can’t make at home, or when I’m on the road.
And at home, even if I can’t make something like a restaurant, I know cheats and hacks and shortcuts to get close-enough results for little money.
Sometimes I’ll be having a meal with my wife and we try to figure how much would we pay for the same eating out. The ratio of home to restaurant might be something like 1/20.
I do have a different perspective on eating though. It’s not about “cuisines.” I start from nutrients. Know what I mean? What does my body need to eat right now, and day in/day out, to stay happy and healthy? How do I fit those needs in a tasty and interesting way that doesn’t take up the whole day?
If you focus on fundamentals, then it becomes more of a… logically deducing from principles, rather than getting lost in minutiae. And yeah you can learn to riff the elements to achieve different flavor profiles. But you gotta start from the beginning, the building blocks of nutrition and flavor elements.
Then it’s a lot of play and experimentation and adventure and learning from failure and laughing it off and trying again and having a good time.
Doing the dishes though… ooof! Hahaha. Fortunately we have a dishwasher.
But anyway yeah. I’d start by looking at your daily macros, and micronutrient needs, and figuring out what ingredients fit those needs.
E.g if you need 100g protein a day, how will you fill that? Dairy? Eggs? Legumes? Grains? Meats? (which meats?) Vegetables?
Yes yes, it’s not an instant solution, it takes time and some learning, but that how you get rich slowly ;P
Anyway, more on this if you have questions.
100% here with you.
Awesome! We do many of those same things – and sometimes our home cooked meals are so good, one of us says, “I wonder what the President is eating tonight?”
For those who would rather not have to begin with figuring out their daily nutrition needs, I recommend lots of fresh veggies and fruits, lean protein sources, beans/lentils, whole grains (look in the bulk section at the grocery store), and nuts. Cut out or reduce anything processed, sweets, and fatty foods.
Read science. Fat doesn’t make you fat. Insulin does. Don’t recommend “lean” protein. Recommend “quality” protein. Agree on cutting out processed crap. Eat plenty of healthy fats, protein and veg. And hey, wanna save money? Fasting is free and good for you.
Dan Shigley: YES! EXACTLY THIS.
Check out Budget Bytes. Most of my recipes come from there and she has lots of dishes that work well for batch cooking.
We like to make meals out of what’s on sale. So a $6.00 6 lb whole chicken can be roasted, leftovers made into a bunch of casseroles and the bones boiled and made into soup or bone broth for later use. If you get tired of chicken meals, just freeze leftovers. We always like to have frozen leftovers around to avoid the urge to go out when we dont feel like cooking.
Good spices makes all the difference in the world. Spice House in Chicago sells jars or pouches. We enjoy their blends.
We still do an envelope for dinners out.
Thank you for your honesty in the actual struggle in getting good food at a reasonable price. It is work.
I’ve found the best way to enjoy cooking at home is to light candles and turn up the tunes. We have a lot of fun cooking and dancing around the kitchen, which makes the experience more fun than simply going out to eat. Plus the house smells so yummy when we are finished. I love how you are wrapping food prep into your plan to exercise more. I don’t know how you feel about going to the grocery store, but I love walking around picking ingredients. It’s one of those pleasures that I don’t want to give up for convenience.
My wife and I are lucky in that we enjoy cooking. Certainly we paid for a number of cookbooks and still subscribe to America’s Test Kitchen, but for us, it’s very worth it.
But I also understand it’s not necessarily everyone’s favorite thing to do. The supply of spices and if you eat meat, the meats, really matters. Our local butcher has some things which I still find are better than just about any restaurant when I grill it at home. Anybody could grill the meat and make it taste great.
Good luck for this year’s reduced food spending!
I’m a fan of America’s Test Kitchen as well. I read the digital version of Cook’s Illustrated “free” from my library.
JD, as a public service to you, and all the readers of this blog, I offer my daily meals, which save money, give optimal and nearly-perfect keto/paleo-style nutrition, and require ZERO cooking.
For breakfast, Greek yogurt with berries, cacao nibs, and ground flaxseeds. Black coffee.
Lunch is mixed nuts (almonds, walnuts, peanuts, etc.) and string cheese.
For din-din, it’s always a Cobb-type salad: leafy greens (kale, spinach, chard, etc.) as well as other veggies like broccoli, cauliflower, onion, garlic, bell pepper, tomatoes. I also add half of an avocado, canned fish or pre-cooked rotisserie chicken or pre-cooked bacon, chopped hard-boiled egg that I buy pre-made at the grocery store, grated cheese, an olive oil and apple-cider vinegar dressing, sea-salt and pepper, sometimes a squeeze of lemon.
I mostly drink water and coffee, but I do allow myself 4 vodka sodas a week (also called a “skinny bitch”): Tito’s vodka, club soda, lemon, and plenty of ice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fleIq1Ar2ns
^^ This is a good example of systematic thought that uses ingredients to fit desired nutrient targets.
Not everyone will want to do keto, not everyone wants to eat the same every day, but look at the meta-model, it’s the way to go.
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Now, ez cooking hacks for dh’s menu, plus some free associations:
Making yogurt, boiling eggs and roasting chickens: a piece of cake and super easy to do in batches.
“Greek” yogurt is just yogurt that has been strained through a fine sieve to separate the whey. There is a plastic sieve for that sold in various places for around $20. Works better than cheesecloth, which is a mess.
To make yogurt , 8-12h on the instapot setting, depending on sizes etc, using last week’s old culture. There’s a bit of a science to getting a good culture, but it’s a very minor hurdle.
I make a gallon of yogurt a week for $3 but I don’t bother draining it, I like whey and pay for whey powder.
Hardboiled eggs also easily batch-cooked a dozen or two at a time in a steamer basket for 10-12min, then dropped into an ice bath for easy peeling.
I prefer my eggs fried of soft-scrambled, but in the summer I will eat tons of egg salad. By the way: French frisée salad, a winter classic, made with poached egg and lardons.
For chickens: roast a pair always, with vegetables underneath. Better chicken/tastier vegetables/less labor overall.
But better yet, pork sirloin (not tenderloin) is cheap, boneless, lean yet surrounded by a bit of tasty fat, easy to roast evenly, easy to carve, open to all manner of seasonings for all manner of dishes (eg make a sandwich or add to a ramen bowl).
Bacon in the oven is very easy to cook as well and the resulting fat a beauty for other purposes, like fried eggs.
Also, if you’re into paleo/keto/organs, chicken liver paté is delicious and supersimple to make, and mega-loaded with B12 and iron, and you can eat as a snack.
I‘m not Samuel Beckett so I’ll stop here.
Some great tips, tricks, and ideas here for sure. Personally, I’m just always trying to come at everything from as minimalist a perspective as I can muster, hence my reliance on buying hard-boiled (already peeled) eggs from the grocery store, pre-made rotisserie chicken, fully-cooked packaged bacon, canned fish, etc.
In addition to wanting an almost zero meal-prep time and clean-up time, I also want to minimize food odors lingering in my condo. Cooking bacon, for example, makes quite a stink!
I think you meant BEAUTIFUL AROMA.
I briefly attempted kitchen minimalism last year. Was great for moving, but it was terrible in the long run, and also expensive.
A $5 artisan bread loaf? I can make one for 35 cents, with little labor, tyvm.
Same thing with the cans of yogurt. 75% savings by punching a button. Of course yes.
So I am now recasting my cast irons—oh yeah, the return of the heavy stuff. Goodbye, Fumio! xD
But seriously, cooking and eating is too much damn fun to trade it for “free time”. Free time to do what? Well… cook and eat, of course!
Well, I get all my pre-made supplies at Wal-mart, so they are pretty cheap, especially when compared to eating out!
And of course I understand some of my comments won’t appeal to the gourmets out there or the people who love to cook. 😉
Is eating out included as part of the food total?
Yes. You can see a more detailed breakdown on the year-end up round-up I published last week.
Holy cats! Look at this, y’all. While going through the archives, I stumbled upon a post from 2010 in which I complained about the growth of my spending on restaurants. It has numbers from each year from 2005 to 2009. It’s interesting to look at those numbers and to compare them with current numbers. I actually spent less on restaurants in 2019 than in 2009. But there was some inflation last decade.
I love reading your perspective on food! It’s always interesting to see how people approach the basic necessity of eating.
I had a lot of the same thoughts on HelloFresh when we did it: cost was high compared to just buying the ingredients myself and recipes were repetitive. I also really, REALLY hated the amount of packaging that each box used. I’m not a hard-core environmentalist (please don’t shame me!), but even *I* felt like the packaging was excessive and wanted to quit the service just by that fact alone.
My husband and I have also been trying to scale back our restaurant expenses the last few years, and in particular, trying to pick less expensive places. It’s made a huge difference. For example, instead of going out to a mexican restaurant where we are tempted to get several margaritas, we’ll have date night at Chipotle. Half the cost, and we still get tacos. 🙂 It’s not as fancy, but we also don’t feel so bad when we go to pay either. It’s worked well for us!
We’ve also been spending over $1000 per month on food for 2 adults and our 2020 Q1 goal is to knock that down to under $800. In addition to meal planning, we’ve been saving receipts and tracking our spending on an envelope on our fridge. It started at $800 and we subtract what we spend, mimicking the envelope system. It’s looking like we’ll make it halfway through January only spending $300, with lots in the cupboards. Good luck to you!
JD,
Serious question, an I think I’m interested in the psych part of the answer as much as (if not more so) than the $ part.
*Why* do you want to spend less on food? I ask, because for me, food is the largest discretionary item in my budget. (My rent’s not cheap either, but I live in a HCOL area, so there’s a price to be paid for that.) I could cut back on it, as my food spending is probably larger than yours, and I’m only paying for one most of the time. But you know what? I really don’t want to.
Again, I live in an HCOL area, so my numbers are higher than they would be for most, but my “break even” food costs is about $15/meal. That is, at or below that figure, eating out becomes more optimal, and above that, cooking in becomes more optimal. At least for “routine” weeknight meals anyway. Put it this way, I can eat at one of those $10/meal “bowl” restaurants and not think that I could be saving money at home. Ok, I *could* still be saving money cooking at home, but shopping, prep, and cleanup time are all factors that do need to be considered. During the week, I do not order alcohol for the sake of it. I *may* order a beer or a cocktail if it’s particularly unique or interesting, but I will not order weekday alcohol out of habit or routine.
Weekends are “going out” territory, and I’ll drop serious coin, the numbers will make your head spin. I don’t *try* to spend money for the sake of it, but out here (Wash DC) good restaurants aren’t cheap. That said, I generally go to place where I’m not familiar with the cuisine, it’s a small plates type of place where cooking that kind of variety at home is expensive and time consuming, or there’s something else about it that makes it “different” from home. Put it this way — I don’t go to steakhouses, which tend to be expensive, because I can cook a very good steak at home and get a palatable bottle of wine for a fraction of the cost. If I walk away from a place thinking, “I could have done (and would have been willing to do) this at home,” I screwed up.
So for me, I have “economized” in many areas of my life, and consequently, travel and food/booze is where I have chosen to spend my discretionary spending. I’m not on the FIRE track (FI yes, RE no) because I like my job, I’m good at it, it pays well, and I have the best work life balance you can imagine, and as such, I don’t have a burning need to cut back in every area to save every possible penny for “later”. This is my balance of being long-term responsible and short-term enjoy-the-fruits-of-my-labor.
So again, I pose the question: *Why* do you want to cut back on spending in this category? You’ve noted your struggles, but if you derive value (and perhaps even joy) from it, then so what? I’d have a different take if it was self defeating.
Thank you for sharing as always.
For us, our biggest expense and concern is the evening meal. This also is the meal where we are NOT ok eating the same thing every night.
Things we have done.
-For us eating out once a month, dinner, at a lower range place. We would save more if this was breakfast as that tends to be the least expensive meal to eat out.
-The family tends to drink water. Sometimes juice. For some reason my kids find soft drinks mostly too sweet and that is great!
-Ignore fast food as the majority is not that healthy and on the run eating tends to be eaten too quickly as well.
– Reduce meat consumption. Per pound it is the most expensive component of a meal.
A. Cutting down the amount prepared at a single meal helps. Instead of using the 2 pound package of meat use 1.5 or 1 in the recipe. Instead of two sausages per person do one. Substitute that loss of food with more of the vegetable or prepare a second vegetable.
B. Reduce the number of dinners that have meat at all. We tend to eat much more than we really need as a society. Like skip the meat sauce and go for pesto on the pasta.
– Meal Plan.
a. I have put together something that is easy to follow for us.
Each day has something and it is the same thing each week. Monday is pasta night. Mostly boiled pasta but baked dishes too. Cracker and cheese with salad on Tuesday. Wednesday breakfast for dinner which may or may not have bacon or sausage. Friday is Pizza night. We mostly do frozen that we doctor up (spices, vegetables, or cheese- or order. Saturday is more lazy. I push for us to eat any leftovers. If not, it is simple – like sandwiches or grill. Thursday tends to be the night with fish or chicken. Sunday is the least structured. Maybe soup or bbq. Recently the kids have suggested taco tuesday as some local places have specials to eat in or pickup that day.
b. Do not worry about cost of ingredients. So yes buy organic if that is something you would like, eat the expensive vegetables you want, buy the out of season fruit without guilt, buy the fancy cheese!
c. For my sanity we tend to make familiar dishes most of the time and my creativity might extend to like max 2 dishes a week.
Hope this helps and I wish you the best!
Sure, but substitution is not as simple as just cutting out something.
Meat is pricier but it’s also the most nutrient-dense component of the meal. The price counts for something.
I can’t swap out meat for, say, lettuce, because I’d miss out on the protein, iron, B12, B6, etc.
I could eat dairy or eggs to make up for the protein, but I’d miss out on the B12 and the iron.
I could eat lentils with spinach instead of animal protein and get some iron, but still miss out on the B-12, and the protein and iron are abundant but not as bioavailable.
I could eat pasta where 1 serving (2oz dry) has 6g protein, but a 3oz portion of beef (~24g protein) would need 8oz dry pasta (!) to replace the protein. That is too much pasta and the protein quality is nowhere near as good. But pasta/wheat complements aminoacids well with dairy (mac & cheese—who knew?).
I could eat a pile of potatoes which surprisingly have protein and vitamin C and other goodies but then I would need to go outside and dig ditches for a the rest of the day to make up for the carbs.
So, whenever I cut down on meat I make sure I get enough protein-dense foods in the mix, plus I take a B12 supplement spray (or eat liver once a week).
But there are many meats cheaper than prime rib.
Pork (roasts rather than cut), chicken, canned tuna and canned salmon and canned sardines/mackerel are cheap and reasonable and highly nutritious. Turkey is boring but you can find good deals this time of year and season well (green chile turkey posole hi). Ground and well seasoned turkey makes decent breakfast sausage. Ground beef is cheap and easy to stretch with beans. Same with ground pork. Good organ meat is highly nutritious and delicious when well prepared.
Of course I’d rather eat wild coho and pastured eggs all day, but eh! $$$.
And also since I live far from the ocean I have to make sure I get enough DHA, iodine, etc.
But… meat has no vitamin C or folic acid oe other necessary things, so enter the holy vegetable, where it’s all about nutrition again.
Just like some form of budgeting does the bank account good, keeping reasonable track of macros plus essential/scarce micronutrients is great for overall health.
So rather than just focus on the money I try to maximize the nutrition return on the dollar. The food P/E ratio 😀
Ok here goes the “post comment” button, I’m sure I’ll find many errors after I click it…
A trick to save money when eating out is to split one entree between two people. Half the cost, half the calories. Portions are usually huge in restaurants, or at least pretty decent sized, so you won’t miss it. If you are still hungry when you get home, you can eat a top-off snack from your own kitchen.
I second Budget Bytes – great site for lower cost recipes that work.
Good luck, JD!
I hope you’ll see your food spending reduced, but your health increased. 🙂
Good luck JD. I think cutting alcohol out will help a lot.
We rarely drink alcohol these days, just on special occasions or social. I don’t miss it at all.
I finally got my wife to agree to a family budget. Due to over spending on eating out (1,100.00/month), we were way out of balance. Now let’s see how committed she will be. 2020 will be different!
I haven’t tried Hello Fresh, but I have tried three other services: Blue Apron, Sun Basket, and Home Chef. Blue Apron was just ok – there were a couple of recipes I repeat. Sun Basket was absolutely boring. There wasn’t a single meal I would repeat. Home Chef has been the best. Every meal has been quite good. I only get a delivery once every few weeks because of the expense, but I recently discovered that they apparently have some meal kits at my local Fred Meyer. I’m anxious to try those. I’ve never had a problem with any of the produce from any of them. I had just one delivery where I received an entirely wrong meal from what I had ordered (I think that was from Blue Apron, but could have been Sun Basket).
My husband and I own a small business and work together. We eat lunch out every day during the week. We almost never go out to dinner. We would generally rather eat at home.
I have heard food delivery services are frequently as expensive as restaurants. I have heard of some that are less expensive, but they frequently have you pick up food instead of order it.
Good luck on drinking less alcohol (almost hands down the number one wealth killer just slightly above fancy coffee).
I have not tried any meal delivery service, but I have always thought the cost was pretty high. Maybe there are some situations where it works out. My wife order one box with fruits and veggies in it. I didn’t like most of them. I like grocery shopping with my kids anyways. We have our grocery spending for a month around $100 per person.
We have always kept our grocery budget separate from our “eating out” budget. To me, eating out falls more under “entertainment.” Yes, you get a meal while out, but for me, eating out is really about the change of scenery, socializing with friends, and trying new, exciting foods. If we are trying to cut back on spending for a few months, we can easily reduce our expenses in the area of entertainment. It is more difficult to reduce grocery expenses if you are already frugal in that area.
Good job on the alcohol! Save money, sleep better, feel better – wow! We find that going out for Asian food helps us with our temptation to order alcohol at restaurants. Many Asian restaurants bring ice water and hot tea to the table automatically, which really helps!
Agree. Eating out is in our “entertainment” budget.
If you’re looking for a cheap alternative to Hello Fresh, check out Fresh Fill Meals. They basically send you a group of recipes to choose from each week, you select what you want and then they send a populated shopping list over to your local Walmart or Kroger pickup (I think they do Albertsons and Safeway also). You then can remove items from the list that you already have. Then you just go pickup your order and they have simple steps and videos to guide you through the cooking process. To me there are three big benefits; one, you don’t have to put as much thought into what you want to cook (similar benefit to Hello Fresh), two you aren’t paying nearly as much per meal as you would pay for hello fresh, because the ingredients are coming from your local grocery store, and three you don’t have to worry about impulse buys because you aren’t going into the store, you’re just doing grocery pickup. Even if you don’t try this, I’d start using grocery pickup to avoid the impulse buys. Pretty much every one I talk to that tries it, loves it. As for Fresh Fill Meals I heard about it from a friend. I personally haven’t tried it yet, but I love the concept and want to give it a try this year.
It might be interesting to compare the numbers. In 2019 we spent 5,257 Euro = 5,830 USD for food for our family of five. This is just for the food we bought.
We don’t use HelloFresh.
Sometimes we are eating in restaurants, but not that often. We tend do eat in restaurants while travelling, but not in everyday life.
We like to have guests and to spend time with them in our house. If we have guests, we sometimes cook together, which is fun. Or we prepare meals beforehand for them. All within the amount shown above.
Try using a crock pot. I make a dish with dried beans, broth (or water) onions, carrots, celery, left over ham or bacon. I use a lot of spices. It’s low-cost, very tasty and slow-cooking the beans means much less gassiness. You can make delicious soups, stews, chili, chicken cacciatore, the list is endless. If you sign up for a site, fresh recipes are delivered to your email regularly. There are just the two of us, so each crock pot meal lasts 2-3 dinners, in keeping with your “batch cooking” method.
We also write out a meal plan week by week so we know what we’re going to make and buy ingredients accordingly. We spent $492 a month on food last year, and that includes splurges for holidays and birthdays. Good luck!
Sounds like you’re on the right track. My boyfriend and I really like restaurants so our trick is to each order a drink and split a meal. This reduces the bill and our waistlines. Just ask if they charge a “plateing fee” to split the meal onto 2 plates in the kitchen, (up to $3) most don’t but it does occasionally happen. If so, we just ask for an extra plate and do it ourselves.
Cooking is ideal but sometimes one can be too occupied to actually get down to business in the kitchen. and i totally agree with you, convenience is very expensive.