Three months have now passed since we started tracking just the food portion of our grocery budget. We’re trying to get our numbers way down so that we can save more towards some really big goals. Let’s crunch the numbers and see how we did on September’s grocery budget challenge!
Grocery Budget Goal
I often hear the goal of spending $2 per person per meal among the FIRE (Financial Independence / Early Retirement) community. It seems like this is may even be possible if you prefer healthy and organic foods. July was our first month tracking it. We weren’t too far off but July was definitely NOT a normal month for us. We had a big road trip and most of the food expenses came from our vacation savings. August was a much better gauge as to where we started. I think we brought our numbers down in September even with a trip to Costco towards the end of the month.
Related Post – Grocery Budget Challenge – August
September’s Grocery Budget
September was the first month that we’ve tracked that we didn’t go out of town at all. It was a completely normal month for us. I was hoping to make it through the month without going to Costco but that didn’t happen. My husband has gotten back into the habit of having smoothies for breakfast. He loves frozen berries in them and Costco has the best prices for them. Even though berries are some of the most expensive fruit you can buy, it seems to be a bit cheaper than eggs. We usually go through 3 dozen eggs every week and they are on my list of things on which I splurge. Pasture raised omega-3 eggs run us $5 a dozen. The Costco trip was a bit cheaper than normal because they were out of pork chops. I was set to buy a pack or two to stock in our freezer but they’ll have to wait until my next trip.
The Calculation
Let’s crunch some numbers! September had 30 days so we’re looking at 360 meals for our family of four. Our goal of $2 per person per meal equals $720 for just the food in our grocery budget (also not including restaurants). $2 x 4 people = $8/meal. 3 meals a day for 30 days equals $720.
September’s grocery expenses – $772
September cost per person per meal – $2.14 – Nice! Almost there!
August grocery expenses – $922
August cost per person per meal – $2.48
July’s total grocery expense – $967
July’s cost per person per meal – $2.60
Average for July and August – $2.54 per person per month
Average for all 3 months – $2.41 Yes, average is going down!
We spent $150 less in September than in August! That’s awesome! We’re really close to the $2 per person per meal goal. We were only $52 above our goal of $720. The best part of this process is that we now have an extra $150 to put towards our mortgage. We are working hard to pay it off early and we’re on track to be done with it in about two years. This is a decent chunk of change to throw at that goal.
How We Saved $150 on Groceries
Meal Plan – I’ve been meal planning for 5 years and it is such a HUGE way to save money but many people don’t do it. This is the first step to buying only what you need while shopping. Don’t try to figure out what to make once you’re already in the store! I use Plan to Eat to plan our meals and automatically generate my shopping list.
Leftovers – We did well with eating leftovers last month. For a while, no one wanted to have them and so they often got tossed. Sometimes I was the only one who ate them but at least they didn’t get thrown away!
Fresh Food First – Having a large stand-alone freezer makes it easy to stock up on items but it also makes it easy to choose a frozen option instead of a fresh food alternative. For example, my kids LOVE frozen berries and often prefer those to fresh fruit. We were composting some fresh produce each week because it went bad before we ate it. Now my kids often hear me say, “Fresh food first!” when they’re digging around for a snack. Another idea is to freeze fruit you know you won’t eat before it goes bad. Unfortunately, I often discover the uneaten fruit too late.
Buy Less – Sometimes we’d have fresh food go bad because I just bought too much of it. I’ve been trying to buy enough fresh produce to last the week but not too much that we’ll have some of it go bad. Unfortunately, September is a tough month for the garden. The summer crops are done but it’s still too hot for the fall crops yet. I did buy more produce this month than normal.
Make Due When You Run Out of Something – We used to live in a rural area so when we forgot an ingredient we couldn’t just run to the store. I’ve been trying to get back into that mindset even though we now have a grocery store just down the street. I noticed that I made quite a few side trips to the store. It’s so easy to grab an extra thing or two when you’re there. These extra things add up quickly especially when they’re not really needed. I often grabbed a package of sushi for lunch instead of just eating what we already had at home. That’s $8 for my lunch which is way off from out $2 goal!
Digital Coupons – I got back into the habit of using digital coupons again. Much of what we buy doesn’t have coupons, but I have been seeing more coupons for natural foods and produce lately.
Goals for Next Month
Meal Plan Around Sales – I still haven’t made any progress with this goal from July and August. It takes so little time for me to put together my meal plan and grocery list with Plan to Eat so I thought it’d be easy to take that extra step and look at the weekly ad. However, this is still on my goals list for next month.
Identify Cheap Meals – This is another goal that we didn’t hit last month. I found a few cheap meals but nothing that everyone likes. I need to find a few new dinner recipes so perhaps I’ll find one or two cheap options that everyone will eat.
How are you saving money on groceries? Be sure to check back next month to see how we did in October!
Related Posts
My Favorite Financial Independence and Early Retirement Resources
October Grocery Budget – 10 Ways We Saved $200 on Groceries
Grocery Budget Challenge – August
Grocery Budget Challenge – July
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