How I Reduced Our Grocery Budget From $1100 To $600 In 6 Months
Family Lifestyle And Grocery Budget Strategy To Reduce Costs
Our grocery budget is the second greatest expense, preceded only by our mortgage and I’m going to show you how I managed to reduce it by almost half.
Hi, my name is Donna a mom and wife who lives in Hamilton, Ontario, and we are on a very tight budget.
I guess we are a typical family that runs on a budget and works hard to make ends meet.
This time was different. I wanted to lower our grocery expenses and now I want to share my experience to help all of you who are struggling like I was.
Climbing Out Of Debt
My husband and I have spent most of our family years raising our kids and figured we would have plenty of time to save for retirement.
Retirement has arrived for my husband and is staring me in the face and we are trying to get our financial house in order.
Our kids are the joy of our lives but raising 4 of them has proven to be costlier than we would ever have imagined.
This is our story about how we are beginning to climb out of debt and onto the road towards financial freedom.
It is never too late to take control of your financial future.
My family is a single income family of 5 (two parents and three grown kids at home).
Last summer, I sat bemoaning my situation (out of control debt and never enough money at the end of the month) and wondering where my money, which in theory should be sufficient to meet our needs, went.
I am a professional person and make a modestly decent income which I’m proud of but had to make budget changes.
Through the wonder of the internet, I saw families with smaller incomes seeming to be not only debt-free but to be prospering.
Something had to give.
How We Began Digging Our Family Out Of Debt
During the course of my research, I stumbled upon a blog post about someone who had managed to unload $35,000 of debt.
I was intrigued and inspired.
He referred to a guy named Dave Ramsey and Financial Freedom University.
This was right up my alley.
I borrowed the book from the library and shared his strategy with my husband.
Together, we made a plan and informed the family that things were about to change.
In September, we tracked our spending to understand where we spent our money by recording our total expenses.
We have always been quite frugal shoppers and discretionary spending on non-essentials has been minimal.
This was born out by what I saw on paper because the numbers never lie.
What should we do?
Trimming Our Grocery Spending
The one area where I believed we could trim our spending was on groceries so that was the budget category I tackled first.
How high were our grocery expenses? Very high and I needed to take control back before it got too out of hand.
In September, we spent $997.86 on groceries and $112.39 on take-out food = $1110.25.
Although I knew we could not stop eating, there was no bill stating we were obliged to pay so much for food.
This was the one area I felt I could affect some significant change especially with all of the great resources like Canadian Budget Binder to help.
The question was how would I lower our grocery budget?
My sons are very resistant to rice and beans, in general, and a meat-based diet, for 5 adults, is very expensive.
I challenged myself to get that specific category of spending under control.
The Grocery Game Challenge
I began to track all my spending on groceries and played with fine-tuning menu planning and watched what other people were doing to see what I could learn from them.
For example, many people tend to have gardens and would grow vegetables and fruits to offset their grocery budget.
While I couldn’t reduce my spending at the time by growing my food, I could analyze what I did right and wrong and make improvements there.
Grocery shopping now became a game to play where I competed against myself.
The key was to create a strategy where I could maximize the buying power of my dollar, all while minimizing the number of dollars I spent.
Nothing motivates a competitive person like seeing your progress in print and the feedback one gets from Mr. CBB is like getting stickers for a job well done.
I have always created a menu plan and shopped from a grocery list but I needed to figure out how to maximize my spending power even more.
Update: The Grocery Game Challenge ran from 2012-2017 on CBB but is no longer.
You can go back and read all of the GGC weekly posts by finding the category in the drop-down menu on the side-bar or by doing a search in the search bar.
Saving Money With Grocery Coupons
I did extensive online research to learn how to shop for groceries and save money using various savings tactics.
That’s what brought me to Canadian Budget Binder where I’ve learned so much about the way I grocery shop.
Some of the key changes I’ve made:
- Purchasing items when they are on sale at rock bottom prices (not all sales are equal)
- Buying sufficient quantities to last from one sale to the next
- Using coupons and coupon apps to reduce costs even further
Related: Use Online Canadian Savings Apps To Help You Earn Cash-Back
In January, I recorded the regular price of all items I purchased along with the sale price I actually paid and all savings from coupon purchases.
I found that by shopping the flyers and purchasing only items on sale, forgetting about brand loyalty, I saved approximately 35% on average (over purchasing all items on my list at one store and receiving the benefit of sales only incidentally).
In addition, coupons netted me an 8-10% savings above 35%.
How I Slashed My Grocery Spending
I recorded every item I purchased and was thrilled to see that I had cut my spending down to $951.97.
It doesn’t sound like much of a reduction at this point, but my house was overflowing with food.
Fortunately, I had been able to purchase groceries for the same amount of money simply by changing my shopping habits.
February’s challenge was to reduce my spending to $700.00 for the month.
In conjunction with that, I decided to try cooking ahead to fill my freezer.
My work schedule involves working 7 nights in a row followed by 7 nights off.
By night 5 of my schedule, I usually am too tired, don’t want to cook, and end up buying take out because I don’t have a plan.
You know what they say “Fail to Plan = Plan to Fail”.
Well now I was a woman with a plan and I planned to succeed.
Once a Month Cooking
This time, I happened upon a site called “Good Cheap Eats”.
This blogger spoke about her practice of doing a semi-annual “clean your pantry challenge”.
Her goals include;
- Saving money
- Working through her pantry inventory (to prevent waste as food usefulness expires)
- Encouraging independence in her kids.
I was amazed!
Commit To Making Changes To Your Grocery Shopping
I committed right there and then to clean out my pantry/freezer so that I could change the way I viewed cooking.
The first chore I tackled was to inventory what products I had in my pantry and freezer.
Then, I organized the contents and made a menu plan which incorporated the ingredients I had on hand.
I am a very busy person and this took me part of the morning.
Once I was done, I had all the information I needed to create a plan (plus I was able to clean out useless items taking up valuable real estate in my cupboard).
All inventory lists were fastened to the refrigerator door so that they would be easily referred to and I was in business.
Menu plans were based primarily upon what was in stock already and the grocery list included only filler items needed to complete a meal (milk, fresh produce, etc.).
Of course, the decision about what to buy was made referring to flyers, coupon matching, and price-matching.
Food Prep In Advance
I spent most of one day cooking and ended up with 30 meals either ready to go into the slow cooker/oven or cooked and ready for reheating.
Although, it is a tiresome process when you do it, freedom from cooking and major clean-up for many days of the month, more than compensates.
I also decided, 1 week into the month, to cut another $100 from my budget and challenged myself to spend $600 or less.
The official amount spent for the month of February was an incredible $605.95.
What I’ve learned about Grocery Shopping
The most important lesson was that reducing my grocery budget, in the face of a lot of resistance from my kids, was possible.
By learning the best possible prices for meat and other grocery items in my area and refusing to pay more than that price, I was able to slash my spending.
By using coupons, I was able to push my savings even further. To date, in the first two months, I have saved $180.03 by using coupons.
Over the course of the year, that could reach more than $1000.00 in savings.
If I won $1000, I would dance a jig around my living room.
Planning Is The Ultimate Guide To Grocery Savings
By having a plan of attack and taking the time to prepare things ahead of time, I avoided the temptation to blow my budget with expensive take-out meals of convenience.
I also managed to find a rice and bean dish which my boys will eat and have begun to serve that dish once every 2 weeks.
I will continue to search for budget-friendly menu items to reduce my budget even further.
Further, because they see that I am so excited about my successes, they have realized that “resistance is futile”, to quote the Borg, and have come on board with my program.
This process has been a lot of work but I have effectively trimmed $500 from my monthly grocery budget.
That is equivalent to working an extra 20 hours per month (net after taxes) for me and since this project has not taken an extra 20 hours per month, I am ahead of the game.
Saving For Retirement
I plan to maintain my grocery budget at $600 per month.
Now that I have a sustainable budget, I think the next phase of the plan will be to roll all grocery savings directly into debt repayment.
Ultimately, my husband and I plan to be completely debt-free by December 2015.
We will have trimmed our budget to what we will be able to live on in our retirement years (hopefully our kids will be independent and feeding themselves by then).
All of our extra income will be directed to fattening up the nest egg until I can retire in 2021.
Lowering the grocery budget and digging my family out of debt first then focusing on saving will be well worth it in the end.
You never know, we might even be able to squeeze in a few trips before then.
Post Contribution By Donna R.
Hi, I live and work in Hamilton, Ontario.
My family consists of 4 mostly grown kids in post-secondary school (three of whom still live at home), my husband who is retired, our pampered pussy-cat, Sarah, and me.
CBB Readers:
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This story had bigger issues than slashing the food budget, which is great that she found a way to cut costs. With one parent retired and the other closing in on it, that would say children in their 30s. Children still living at home in their 30s, 40s, or even 50s is not unusual anymore with low wages and high cost of living. The biggest issue was the lack of support Donna received from anyone else in the household. In the article she she says she’s tired and she’s doing all the food prep. No one else in the household is considerate enough to prepare a meal when mom is dog-tired from work? Kids complaining about no meat if rice and beans are on the menu to help lower the grocery bill? Even people working minimum wage jobs can go out and buy a meat product and cook it up themselves if they’re unhappy with what mom’s putting on the table. Adult children in the house should be helping out financially with the grocery bill and cooking meals and not putting that entire burden on mom. A retired husband should also take over cooking and other household chores while Donna is at work. It’s great that she was able to slash the grocery budget, but I’m more saddened by the way Donna’s family treats her and that she allows it to happen.
I have several challenges. Wish someone could offer me some advice.
Problems:
1. I live on an island on Atlantic coast. Our food comes by ferries, so our food is much more expensive than the rest of the countries because of the extra cost of shipping. And often things that are on sale in the “flyers” are not in stock because the stores are waiting on the trucks trying to get off the ferries.
2. I live in a rural community. We only have three grocery stores. Not much store competition. So it’s not like the stores are trying to get customers to come to their stores, because we don’t have much choice.
3. I cant walk or bike to work because it’s usually below freezing here and raining most of the time.
4. Can’t get ride of my home phone because cell phone’s aren’t always working here.
5. And there is no competition between service providers.
6. I already don’t go out, use only cold water washing, coupon, only shop for deals, and I have no extra’s in my life.
It seems every day that the cost of living goes up. Gas, insurance, hydro bills, government fees, etc… Very discouraging.
I think you already know the answer to your troubles but you are afraid to do it…..you have to move.
I always feel so discouraged when I get on sites about saving money on food. I never had the opportunity in foster care to learn life skills like cooking and meal planning, and I am terrible at it. I am a big fan of rice and beans as I used to eat in Central America, but whenever I cook it it is disgusting 🙁
I also don’t get at all how to do it when I have so many food restrictions for my health, and one of my kids won’t eat anything!
I don’t know if Mira cat will get this reply after so long but it may help other as well. ..loblaws have a number of locations with cooking classes that are free or cheap…this may help get you kitchen confidence.
That’s a great tip Sylvie. My wife and I often see the cooking classes and say we would love to join in one day. Have you participated in one at all?
I did get your message! We don’t have Loblaws where I am, but I have considered going to cooking classes at a community or rec centre. The only trouble there is that I don’t have anyone to watch my kids while I do it. Perhaps one day 🙂
It would be nice if they have a kids centre where the kids can play..
Donna… I just read this now… Mar 2015. Since I live in Hamilton it was fantastic to read this!!! You go girl! Maybe I’ll bump into you at No Frills someday soon!
Loved this post! Very inspiring!
Impressive! I need to re-read this. #CBB
Great article! I always thought I was pretty savvy & could freebie and coupon hunt pretty well, but since finding Cassie AKA Mrs. January late last year …Whoa! What a difference! She just brings it all together in one place so well! I was giddy when on first teensy trip out after finding her I had 1 FPC & saved $11 off my total bill. Now that woud be a slow savings day for me with her expertise!
Great article!!!! I try to menu plan, but it never works out. And we spend too much on fast food. Going back to work in 2 weeks (after a year long mat leave). I have no choice but to kick myself in the butt and get working on menu planning and batch cooking, otherwise I’ll be in the poor house! What is your recipe for the rice and beans your family likes? I love anything with beans, but my hubby, not so much!!! Thanks!
Great post. I love the idea of cooking once a month. That saves you time and money. I do the same but on a much smaller scale. I cook once or twice a week. Good job!
Donna! You are brilliant!
I am not ready to cook for the whole month at once. But I think I’ll give the week a shot. I’m really glad I dropped by today. Your story can give others the oomph they need.
These are great tips! Batch cooking sounds like it would save me some money too; I need to get going on that 🙂
This is very refreshing, it’s nice to know that people are doing something about unmanageable expenses and that you are helping them long the way. The grocery budget challenge is admirable!
Thanks! Sometimes when we start with one part of the budget and tackle that we can see the overall picture much clearer. It has worked for us and many of us that post our shops. Cheers mate!
Congrats, Donna! We’ve done a similar project with our grocery budget and have cut it from roughly $900 a month to $450 a month. It feels great, doesn’t it!
Well done! For us the hardest part about making our grocery budget is actually eating the food we buy (sounds weird I know). What has been happening is we buy a bunch of groceries then come home and are too tired too cook, so we end up ordering takeout. I’ve vowed to stop this bad habit and cook at home at least Monday-Friday evenings.
When my mother lived alone, she used to cook a meal for 4 servings. She would eat one the day she made it and another the next day as planned leftovers. The other 2 servings she put away to eat once each of the following 2 weeks. That way she didn’t have to cook every day nor did she eat the same item until she was sick of it. Maybe you could try something like that – cook twice a week and eat 4 days a week. Then do restaurants or whatever on the weekend.
Great job Donna! As your pantry builds up, your expenses will also go down.
Try to enlist the help of your husband with the cooking , if he is retired. My father never helped my mother, until he retired. I think it made him feel useful.
If the kids complain about not having a certain treat, just joke and tell them Xmas/easter bunny/ birthdays are coming 🙂
I am very lucky because my husband is a good cook. I tell him I married him for his raisin bread. If my kids want a certain treat they know the way to all the stores and the biggest shopping mall in the city is a 10 minute walk from our house. In fact, ultimately, if they refuse to eat what I offer, there are fast food restaurants within 10 minutes in every direction. They will not allow themselves to starve, poor kiddoes.
Great article! Meal planning has definitely been one thing that has really saved our grocery budget. That and I would say bulk cooking have probably saved us the most. Kudos to you, Donna, for getting your financial house in order!
I’m trying.
We are a family of 6 and spend around $600-700 a month as well! It can be done… Avoid “easy” foods & you’ll save money! So bypass the chips, muffins, cookies, TV dinners, prepared freezer meals etc… I base my meals around what’s in the freezer & pantry and what’s on sale that week! 🙂
I agree completely. That stuff is so expensive and NEVER tastes as good as homemade.
Donna… this is an awesome article!! You are an inspiration to those of us struggling along, I’m going to look around at the library for that book by Dave Ramsey among others on my look to find list…I’m not sure how well batch cooking would go over here as my hubby tends to be worse than a toddler for food jags. Right now his kick is hot sauce and it goes on everything!!! I can work magic on leftovers… so I tend more to planned leftovers to stretch food.. But I will admit the concept of batch cooking does interest me…………Keep up the great work!!!!!!!!
I commiserate with you on the hot sauce issue. My sons love Frank’s hot sauce. They put that s#@t on everything. I did a coupon swap for about 10 hot sauce coupons a while back and bought piles of hamburger helper on sale to get the coupons on the back (one of which was Frank’s). I now have a nice little stock pile of it. Try just making a double batch of whatever recipe he does like. It doesn’t take more time or energy to bake 2 lasagnas, for example. Then you have 1 day you don’t have to do anything.
Hey Donna, just wondering why no one else in the home is contributing.
You say its a single income family, but there are THREE grown children in the home?
Perhaps things would be easier, if it was not only you who had to do all the income-earning
Two of my kids are in college/university. I do not pay their tuition, that is up to them. My contribution to their education is to provide them with a roof over their heads while they are in school. My oldest child is about to finish university with practically no debt. My third is 16, although he eats more than my husband. I can’t imagine anyone charging their 16 year old for room and board. Once they finish school, they will be expected to pay their share or get their own place.
I love stories like this. Congrats, Donna. As a former grocery overspender, I certainly appreciate your efforts. After a few months, it just becomes a way of life. We still have slip ups, but I think the most important thing is to get right back on track and keep up with your savings. It certainly adds up.
My eyes have been opened and can never be closed again. I will perservere.
Great post! We are really working on lowering our food budget. We just spend too much! Of course I say this as I’m about to go to a restaurant though :/
For a little while we will pass on restaurants, although I plan to use a gift card to my fave thai restaurant soon. Once our consumer debt is all paid off, we will likely loosen our belts a bit and allow ourselves a treat. Life can’t be too spartan, after all.
I should join the challenge. We finally made the switch to meal planning from buying foods necessary for preparing a variety of meals and even after one trip, I’m seeing considerable savings already.
That’s awesome news mate!! It’s more about accountability with the grocery game challenge that helps us all. We fall off track and everyone helps us back on. It’s helped us cut our budget big time! Cheers mate
A great book for slow cooker prep ahead meals is the big cook or big cook 2 they are great
I will check these books out. I love, love love my slow cooker.
What a great article, Donna! Good for you for sticking to your goals, all the best.
Melissa
Thank you. It was fun to write this article. I have been thinking about what I might like to do to earn money/keep my mind busy once I retire. I might have a clue now and It won’t involve greeting anyone as they enter a shopping monolith.
Lovely post Donna, and so honest. You speak of many families out there. I am shocked at what people pay for groceries, but when I look at how they spend it I understand.You have done a wonderful job of researching and allying what you have learned. I comend you and your on-going efforts. Thanks for sharing.
Farmgirl
I have tried to reduce my budget by growing some things but I definitely DO NOT have a green thumb. I do have a lovely asparagus patch and grew garlic for the first time last year. The largest cloves went back into the ground last fall and I savoured the rest. With any luck at all we might get 50 heads of garlic this year.
That’s pretty cool CBB. I know that if we stopped throwing away food every week because we didn’t get a chance to cook it / eat it and did a better job of tracking it, we’d probably save a whole lot more.
This is definitely a problem in my house as well, particularly with the vegetables which seem to crawl into the back of the fridge to die. I try to make a pot of soup once a week which cleans out my fridge and uses the “less than beautiful but not ready for the composter” selection of veggies and whatever scraps of meat have not been picked over by the buzzards I live with. It works fairly well.
First off, any article that contains a quote from the Borg automatically gets a plus from me. Grocery shopping is an area of like to get a better handle on. I don’t think we spend a lot (we buy what’s on sale, generics, and use coupons), but it always seems to really add up.
HAH! All things sci-fi are welcome in my house, if not actually by me. My family was given the complete series of Stargate. Although I have never sat through an episode, I have seen every part of every epidsode at least 5 times – no exaggeration here!
Congratulations Donna, very impressive! If that is your pantry today, you still have a lot to go through and can keep the budget low for a while more! I used to stockpile a lot but have been going through it lately and using what was there has saved me a lot.
I agree. I am going to hunt for some really budget recipes to try. I want to see next what it actually costs to make the dishes I serve and the difference between that and what I spend. I would bet I can trim some more. I plan to make lentil sloppy joes 😉 this month and serve it on rice instead of buns and see how that goes over.
You don’t have to hunt too far… I have lots of recipes you can start with here under Mr.CBB’s Kitchen!!! 🙂
We make lentil tacos here.
I have a ton of super inexpensive recipes on my site if you’re intererested. I’ve been feeding my family for .40 per person per day (U.S.$) for the last two years. I think you’re just getting started on the budget trimming. I went from 3 children and spending $800 a month (this included toiletries and diapers for 3 children) to spending $100 a month with 7 children (plus $65 a month for diapers and toiletries). My experience has taught me that if you want to and need to, you can cut even more, especially as you learn new recipes!
That’s awesome that you can feed your family for less like that, good for you. Lentils are great and we love them in many recipes. I’ll come check out some of your recipes as well. If you ever want to share your story in a contribution post on CBB I would love to share your concept of cutting your budget if you need to. Cheers!
Are you buying fresh fruit and vegetables for that .40 per day? You can’t buy and apple for that were I live? Such a challenge to budget for food and eat well.
I haven’t tried batching yet. I wouldn’t mind, but I really like cooking. So, only getting to do it every so often would be a negative for me 🙁
Good post Donna! Congrats as well for working on getting that debt paid off. I know it might feel like a long way off, but it’s only a little over two years away. I think decreasing a grocery budget is one of the most overlooked ways to help bring spending down. It really does not require that much in terms of extra work, but it really comes down to making wiser choices so you can make your money stretch further.
Thanks. We are making good progress on the debt front. The snowball effect may only have psychological value as a debt reduction tool but I believe the psyche is central to all things, success or failure, and it is working for us.
Awesome job on reducing your grocery budget so much! Ours is getting under control after years of trying to reign it in! Great job!
Mine will slowly go down as my kids grow up and become independant. My oldest finishes university in April and already has job interviews (she studied nursing – a profession in hot demand) and I am hopeful she will get her own place before too long.
Good for you Donna! I had some major expenses in December and January while I stocked my pantry with a few Gluten Free necessities but we are back on track now that it’s simply replace what we use when it is on sale. Thanks for sharing! I know if you can do it, so can I! 😀
I have a friend who has Celiac Disease as well. When I cook food for her, I am always ow much anything labeled “Gluten Free” costs. Many of the baking mixes don’t taste good enough to be worth buying, in my opinion. I feel your pain but with planning, it can be done.