Each and every day I look for areas to reduce our expenses from our monthly budget to allow more money to flow into the purchase of assets. The purchase of more and more assets will help increase our monthly passive income and allow my family to become financially independent. In the past few weeks, I have looked at different ways to cut expenses on gas for our vehicles, home energy costs, and our grocery expenses. Today I would like to revisit our grocery expenses in an effort to reduce our expenditures.
I read a very good article this week on Enginero.com called Food Budget Tight? Stretch-It-Out (Part 2), where Ralph discusses some tips on how to tighten your food budget. I agree with all of his points and plan on implementing the ones that we don’t already practice. This is actually Ralph’s Part 2 post on the subject, with the first post called Food Budget Tight? Stretch-It-Out (Part 1). In both of his posts, Ralph’s main theme is being an educated shopper, which I couldn’t agree more. If you haven’t already reviewed these posts or his site, I strongly recommend you checking them out!
Based on Ralph’s suggestions, I plan on implementing the following steps (some small) to help drive down our food costs:
- Make our food lists – In his 1st post, Ralph suggests making a list of what different food items costs before you go to the grocery store. I made an attempt to do this in the past with an Access database but never followed through with it. Now that I have a detailed monthly budget in front of me, I will be more motivated to keep track of the price of items with an end goal of reducing our monthly food costs.
- Price out our meals – An added benefit of keeping track of food item costs in an Access database will allow me to easily add up items into a total meal cost which will provide useful information when budgeting.
- Stock Up – We have always tried to do this, but I think there is room for improvement. Ralph talks about being open minded when shopping. I know we can do a better job stocking up on only sale items and using coupons to drive down the price even more.
- Take our time – While it can be difficult with children, I think we can do a better job taking our time shopping. Probably one of Ralph’s more interesting points is his suggestion to take your time shopping. I agree 100%! If you are in a rush when shopping, you are not as aware to what exactly you are paying. It can be difficult to compare prices on different brands sometimes when the size or quantities are different and you are in a hurry. I will also begin carrying a calculator with me to help with this process.
While these are a few minor steps in an effort to cut our grocery expenses, I think they will add up over time and help us meet our financial goals. I want to thank Ralph at Enginero.com for the inspiration for this post and new ideas for cutting our grocery costs! In the future, once I can start gathering enough data to track our total meal costs, I will start posting any tips I can offer to my readers on what works best for us.
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I think shopping for food is quite a bit different for me since I am a single woman (who loves to cook.) Here’s what I do:
1. I make a menu of a week’s worth of dishes I want to prepare.
2. While I am doing that, I make my grocery list.
3. I never stock up and I never shop for sales. However, I also never buy anything that I don’t need. Because I have a menu and a list from that, I only buy what I need when I need it. The “Just in Time” method of shopping if you will.
4. I eat seasonally and locally. I don’t buy any pre-made foods – I only buy base ingredients, which means that the only things I buy from a grocery store are things like: baking soda, sugar, soy milk, flour, etc.. These types of things aren’t on sale much.
5. Everything else I buy either at the farmer’s market or ethnic markets. Because I live in Michigan – this meant a lot of dried beans this winter! But now that we are in summer, everything is plentiful.
6. I buy in small quantities, but nothing ever goes to waste in my house. I have cut back on meat (again now that vegetables are in season) to lower my bills, but my average meal cost is usually between $1.75-$3.00 – and I love to cook, so I eat really well!!
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Dawn – Thanks for your insight! I am originally from Michigan. Actually lived there for the first 33 years of my life. We just moved south last year for work. I do miss Michigan in the summers. Not in the winters.
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Wow, thank you for the mention. It is so cool that my thoughts had such a positive effect. I’m planning on posting a little update on enginero letting people about your post here.
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Nice post
A budget is a spending plan that includes everything you will spend money on. A good budget is a spending plan that includes everything you will spend money on and stays within your income.
Budgeting tips, information, advice, and resources to help you set up a successful budget and stay motivated.
Budgeting is something that many of us don’t like to consider as we think it will tie us down. But if you really stop and think about it, budgeting is simply a means of looking at your income and expenditure and deciding on what is most important to you.
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passivefamilyincome Reply:
February 28th, 2009 at 12:56 am
Household Budgeting Tips – Nice point about deciding what is important to you.
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