After balancing the checkbook and making sure everything lined up, I took a glance at our food spending for the year. Astronomical spending. I sat there in a bit of shock and decided right then and there to issue myself a shop my pantry challenge.
At the end of last year I looked over our grocery spending and realized we had spent around $13 a day on food. That is less than the “thrifty plan” mentioned on the USDA costs of food reports. I was ecstatic about how well we had managed to do in that area!
Apparently I got a bit “heady” over it and wasn’t careful at all this year! By the end of September it is entirely likely we will have spent in 9 months what we spent the entire year of 2015. *sigh*
So where did we go wrong? I looked a little closer at everything and found 4 obvious reasons.
Reason #1 We ate out more. Not only that, Kolton eats a considerable amount of food when eating out as well. Jason has also been stopping 2-3 times a week for snacks at Speedway. (maybe I need to stock a few more snacks here?)
Reason #2 We ran out of chicken in January. I buy my chicken in bulk once a year from a farmer and we misfigured last year and didn’t buy enough. For nearly 5 months I had to buy chicken and while I didn’t buy the quality we normally buy from the farm, it still costs us a lot more than normal. (not buying enough chicken last year brought its expenses down and transferred some of it to this year)
Reason #3 We’ve fed more than ourselves quite a few times. Having people over and similar things.
Reason #4 We discovered Kolton’s wheat sensitivity last fall and that’s considerably changed our eating habits and both making and buying gf foods adds more cost. Baked goods used to be an easy snack, now we eat cheese or yogurt for a quick snack and that adds up as well.
Answers
#1 The first reason is the easiest one to fix. Not sure how to stop the $30ish a month being spent by hubby at Speedway, but I can definitely work on the other part.
#2 We made sure to buy more chicken this year than we did last year. Of course spending less on chicken last year and more on it this year only further widened the gap between the two year’s grocery spending.
#3 I love having people over and it that increases our grocery spending, I’m happy that we have friends and family to enjoy spending time with and don’t plan to change anything in this area.
#4 Not really sure where to cut back here. I make some gf foods and breads, but the gf flours are far more expensive than even organic wheat flour. I’m just thankful that dairy is still an option for healthy snacking!
What about the Shop My Pantry Challenge?
I’ve challenged myself to make meals from our pantry for the rest of this month. We have plenty of fresh foods in the garden and we’ve already made our monthly Sam’s club trip so we are set on most of the “staples”. I did notice we are low on peanut butter, but we’ll just make do. 🙂
The last time I picked up groceries was the 10th, so nearly 3 weeks without going to the store? It will be interesting!
After this I would really like to get back into a better schedule for menus and grocery shopping. It saved us so much when I did that. Both freezer cooking and the two week menu board that I made and used for almost a year while I was still working were very beneficial to helping us save.
Our situation changed and instead of tweaking what I was currently doing to make it work for us, I just quit. Bad plan, Kendra, bad plan!
So along with shopping from my pantry this month, I’m going to be working on a solid grocery shopping plan that works for our situation now. I really like having freezer meals available so I’m going to need to figure that in somewhere as well.
I plan to share my plans as I get them figured out. Hopefully they will give you ideas for ways to save along with ideas for making your own personalized plans.
The shop my pantry challenge has 3 parts to it for me.
- No grocery store visits. I will use what I have available.
- Work on a shopping plan where I am able to get what we need with fewer trips each month.
- Try to come up with a new menu plan that fits our family where we are at now.
I would love for you guys to share what you do and if you don’t have a plan like that, stick around because I will share mine as it is put together. 🙂
Have you ever done a “Shop My Pantry Challenge”? How did it work out for you?
Sounds kinda like the shoes we were in… Also realized we are spending waaaay too much money at the store every week and not eating out of our freezer/canning shelves enough. We decided to do a one month spending fast, (which we’ve done 2 separate times already) all except we still obviously buy milk and eggs and a few other items that you can’t stock up on for a whole month. But that meant no eating out, no grocery shopping, unless we were invited to an event and asked to bring a specific food which we didn’t have on hand etc. I will admit it was kinda hard, but also alot of fun to see the shelves emptying of some of those items that got pushed to the back of the pantry, plus of course seeing the savings was wonderful too!
Yes, we too need to do a better job eating out of our canned goods and stuff.
I’m looking forward to seeing a few things moved out and hopefully getting on a better schedule 🙂
I sense your pain! As your family grows so does the food. I have an Excel spread sheet for Aldi’s Sam’s Club, and My local grocery store. IF I remember I like to keep it posted in my pantry to check off when I need something. I just need to remember to take the sheet with me when I go shopping. I can share that spread sheet if you would like me to do that.
At one point we had 11 people in our house hold and we would squeeze our food budget at $400 a month. But we had a lot of deer meat and we raised our own chicken. In the summer when I had to buy fruit we spent more. Now we are down to just 6 in the house hold but I have to spent a lot more because we do not have the deer. Hoping to buy a beef next spring.
I have the challenge of the fact that we changed our eating habits to reflect “Metabolism Miracle”. It is a lot of proteins and low carb. So that is a challenge to eat good lean meats and very little carbs. That is including potatoes, rice, and pasta. WHEW! A challenge!
Bless you on your challenge. I hear you.
$400 for 11 people is amazing! But having your own meet definitely helps I’m sure. We no longer have good hunting places since we moved and and I miss game meat. Growing up we ate a lot of rabbit, dove and deer.
We typically buy 1/2 hog, 1/4 cow and I forget how many chickens we bought this year. We are picky about the source of our meat which adds to the cost a bit, I know it averages out to at least $100 a month.
As for the spreadsheets, that’s a pretty good idea. We already make one Sam’s Club trip a month and I have a pretty good routine of what we buy there each time. I want to do better with Aldi and just plan on 1 trip a month there as well. Their cheese and nitrate free lunch meat is the cheapest around.
If you need a farmer to buy your beef from check out localharvest.org. I’ve had great luck finding farms in our area on there. My mom also uses Craigslist.
Fortunately my son is raising the beef that we hope to get next Spring. I have been buying my cheese at Sam’s. We go through A LOT of cheese.
Nice! I’ve looked at Sam’s for cheese, but it’s still cheaper here at Aldi.
I read an article when searching for different ways to use zucchini about dehydrating it then grinding it up to make your own gluten-free flour. Might be a good idea for using garden produce and saving money on trying to eat gluten-free!
I love that idea! I’m going to see what I can find on doing that 🙂
HI Kendra, Sometimes I will just go on a moratorium of buying groceries and try to use up the bulk of what I have in the frig, freezer, and cupboards. It is hard to keep within a budget and we too have people over regularly. Good luck with your new plan. Blessings, amy
Hey Kendra! Long time no chatty 🙂 Great post as always! I’m wondering if you could save by giving Colton veggie and fruit snacks instead of all that dairy. Oh, and we are Latino enough to love beans and it sure stretches the budget too!
Yes, we love beans!
As for fruits and veggies, we do those a bit. Bananas for sure but other fruits are often just as expensive as cheese lol. Apples are still too hard, he didn’t get his 1yr molars until nearly two and he’s still getting used to actually chewing stuff and when we give him harder foods he oftens bites his cheek. Of course for that reason veggies aren’t really an option unless I cook them first.
We will get there though!
I’m about to embark on something like this. My grocery spending has been on budget so far this year, but I am moving at the end of September. Not far, about 20 minutes, so it doesn’t make sense to give away food that I will use, but I would rather not haul a bunch of perishables to my new place. I plan to eat from the pantry as much as possible & lighten the load!
Stopping by from Wake up Wednesday Linky!
Wow, that would be such a hard challenge for me to not go to the grocery store. I’m always in and out picking up random things. Good luck with the rest of the challenge. #HomeMattersParty