I live in Central Texas and am married with two elementary age boys. We pack their lunch for school everyday and the wife and I both eat out of the fridge. 80% of the meat I eat is ground deer. Our monthly grocery bill is $1471. From my best recollection it was closer to $950-$1000 two years ago. We eat fairly healthy with lots of fresh fruits and veggies and a few speciality items but nothing crazy. Is this insanely expensive or about average for y’all?
I buy a 1/4 or 1/2 a beef every year. Last year it was half a beef. The guy raises them right. Only grains them about 2 weeks. Hangs them for 14 days. Cuts and wraps them. I got 181 pounds of steak, burger, and roasts. I paid an average of $5.80 ($1050 total), per pound cut and wrapped.
Between that and the 3-4 deer, fish, and other wild game, we don’t buy a lot of protein from stores. I usually make our breakfast sausage with ground deer, brats and other sausages with ground deer. When I catch Boston butts on sale for .89/lb, I buy 50 or so pounds and grind it. I freeze it and mix it in with the ground deer.
Every January, I thaw and make this stuff. We really don’t buy much except eggs, butter, milk, a little chicken from time to time, occasional loaf of bread, spring water, fresh veggies and fruit, paper plates, trash bags, paper towels, and plastic utensils.
That really drives our weekly food costs down. Plus, it’s just me and the wife. Neither of us has a big sweet tooth. When we do sweets, it’s homemade cookies or cake.
Last year, our weekly food costs averaged less than $105/week. $420/month. If we didn’t eat so much fruit we could easily get it to $85-$90/week.
In todays world, it’d be hard to get much lower than what we pay. But, we rarely eat out. We cook on Sunday. Breakfast, lunches, and dinner. I usually cook a breakfast casserole when cooking dinner on Sunday. I cut it into servings, store in sandwich baggies, throw it in the microwave every morning, cover with salsa and eat. We pack lunch every day. Tonight was the first night since Sunday we didn’t heat up left overs for supper. We oven roasted brats and potatoes. You get the point, We live simple in this arena by choice so we can spend the money we want having fun.
I remember raising kids. Their pickiness wasn’t something we fed. They eat what we cooked. And, we didn’t buy cases of soda or junk food. When a kid eats clean, they eat a lot. But, Whole Foods aren’t expensive. So, the savings far out weigh the amount they eat.
It’s like everything else, there is compromise. But, if you could cut out the stuff that most households with kids buy for food, you could save thousands and thousands of dollars a year.
Look at the average buggy in the supermarket. It’s stuffed full of expensive, processed foods. It certainly adds up to a lot of money. But, replace or discard a good bit of that junk and you’ll save a lot of money. Good luck.
