I have a general question for you. How much do you spend at the grocery store weekly? I have been paying more attention to how much we spend, and I am SHOCKED at how much money we shell out.
We actually have three stores that we shop at weekly - Whole Foods, Safeway, and Target. This weekend we visited all three stores back-to-back. We spent a ton of money. A TON. It wouldn't bother me too much if this was just a one time thing, but we spend this much every week. EVERY WEEK! We do most of our shopping at Whole Foods. And no, I am not a snooty pompous asshole. We shop there because we are vegetarians, and they have a wide selection of foods that cater to our diet. On average, we spend about $120 per week at Whole Foods. Not too bad, if that was the only store we shopped at. However, we have to go to the regular grocery store (Safeway) for odds and ends that are simply too expensive at Whole Foods. We get things like shaving cream, toilet paper, paper towel, etc from Safeway. On average, we spend about $50 per week at this grocery store. But we're still not done! I also go to Target weekly for other necessities - like diapers, wipes, soy milk, etc. We spend anywhere from $50 to $100 per week at Target (depending on how many times I visit, how many good deals they have, and how cranky my children are).
So, when I combine everything together, we spend at least $220 per week. CRAZY! I didn't know if this was normal, or if we are spending abnormally large sums of money at the store every week. Tell me, how much do you spend weekly on necessities? And more importantly, how do you trim the bill?
21 comments:
We have a super target grocery store combo so we shop there for everything and spend between $120-$150 a week. I might go back during the week for a couple things but not over $20 worth. We have been trying to cut back. We tried cutting back to $80 a week (should totally be able to do this) we couldn't.
I am a huge coupon fan.. I cut them out of our Sunday paper, register online for printable coupons and bargin shop. Rarely do I buy a item that's not accompanied by a coupon unless it's something that we HAVE to have like milk,bread etc. We still spend $130 each week. Some weeks are a little less or a lot more.
It's usually around about £100 (around $160) a week i spend in the supermarket. Our supermarkets now offer online shopping which i find saves a whole lot of money as I'm not wandering around thinking " that looks nice" and buying things that we just don't really need.
We probably spend about $100-$150 a week. We cloth diaper and cloth wipe so we don't have any of that to buy. I avoid the store so that I don't spend money. I don't buy anything unless we REALLY need it.
We've got two kids (infant, toddler) and two adults -- plus Geeklet's godfather joins us for dinner most nights. We spend about $130-$180 weekly when I go to the supermarket, with probably another $30-$50 per week at CVS/Walgreens/etc for stuff I forgot we needed and/or ran out of.
Tried cutting down to $120 a week, tops, but haven't yet been successful. I could use coupons and shop bargains more, I know... just having trouble finding the time to shop, let alone organize that sort of effort!
Wow. That IS a lot.
I do my basic staples kind of shopping at Price Rite. It's one of those bag/box your own groceries, no frills kind of stores. It's basically the "overstock" store for ShopRite. They *do* carry major brands, but their brand is just as good I think. I can get a week's worth of groceries for our family of 4 for about $75-80 bucks. (This includes meat and snack food)
I then have to go to Shoprite for tomato sauce since Joe only likes a certain brand and PriceRite doesnt carry it and a few other little things. Usually not more than $20.00. For wipes, Pullups, contact lens solution, other bargains, I go to Wal-mart.
There is usually a trip or two per week to Swiss Farms for milk, bread,lemonade etc...so there's another 20 bucks or so.
My job has cut my hours to 32 per week(thank you economic downturn) so I'm REALLY scraping the bottom of the wallet right now with daycare costs/catholic school tuition/regular expenses. One night I was showing Joe that in July & August, after I paid daycare & tuition, I would have left from MY paycheck $44.00 for gas, groceries, etc...Thank God he works a lot of overtime.
Come on, September when BOTH kids will be in St. Mad's & I can lose that daycare expense!!
I would say we are between $150 and $200 a week on groceries and baby stuff. It used to be about $100 before we had the babies...
I spend around $110-$120 at the grocery store. I buy all of my toilet paper, washing powders, etc... at the dollar store and I spend around $40-$45 a week. So my combined total is around $165 a week.
I cook casseroles and things like that so we can carry our lunch the next day.
I don't know, sounds about right to me. Which, wow.
Well, I don't think that sounds crazy. I spend at least $100.00 a week on groceries. Probably closer to about $150 all things included. I save a lot of money by getting ALL of our produce from a local produce stand instead of the grocery store. I can typically get a week's worth of produce for $30-$40 tops and then spend anywhere from $60-$100 at Trader Joe's depending on what we need, or if I have extra money I stock up on stuff... so it varies. My husband buys diapers and organic chicken broth/canned tomatoes/etc. at Costco every few months and I have no idea how much that costs but it keeps me from having to factor some "staples" into our weekly budget.
I try to keep it at $75 a week for the 3 of us.
1) coupons! I don't do newspaper coupons, I get everything online.
2) I plan my meals around what I have coupons for.....
3) I go to the farmer's market/ethnic grocery stores for my fruits and veggies. Much cheaper than kroger's or public's.
4) everything else at walmart or target.
this is something i have been working on. only not so well. we budget every month for groceries and no matter what i always go over. i feel like i meal plan and am all prepared and then poof, it's time to go back to the store.
when i am being good we can usually get by on $150 for two weeks at the grocery store. but that doesn't count my trips to target - which i buy everything else at and then throw in some random food items.
my goal this month is to break up the target receipts by category (which they already do for me duh) and then come up with better numbers.
either way i know i am a work in progress.
Coupons are a life saver I dont use them for everything cause i suck but i like to use them for toilet paper, shampoo, diapers, toothpaste, all those kinds of things. I also shop at a dollar store for those kinds of items because they have name brands that are cheaper then if you get it at a walmart or target or grocery store and you can use a coupons so its a double saver. We only grocery shop once a month and we spend about 300 dollars if we shopped every week we would spend way to much. I have a money tree started in my back yard but it hasnt grown at all yet!
It really depends on the particular week. We shop at several places too... but we don't always need to go to all of them in a given week. We spent about 50 at Sams last week... but we go there only once or twice a month. HEB and SunHarvest are anywhere from 20 to 70 in a trip (normally)... some weeks we only hit one, some both. Ali Baba's.... we really push it to spend more than 30 (but has happened before). We've seriously cut down on those trips simply because SunHarvest has good sales on meat and we stock up on ground beef when we do go so that it lasts. Wal-Mart... if we have a big trip (once a month or two) 70 to 100 easy... but we try to keep it as low as possible and have cut down on those trips to a bare minimum lol. The truck incident has helped with that... We can't bring ourselves to shop at that particular one anymore. We rarely shop at Target, and don't get much there when we do. Is always specifics lol - like when we were stocking up on BumGenius diapers. But yeah, we space out our trips to help w/ that... Beyond that, stocking up on certain items helps (esp paper towels, toilet paper, baking soda, vinegar, etc.)... as does using reusable things (we still buy paper towels obviously but I'm working on phasing them out lol). We keep meaning to use coupons but hasn't happened yet lol... hitting sales does often though. We try to plan our menu around that... which is another huge help. Is easier to shop when we have a menu set ahead of time. Isn't always done, but I try.
Greg gets paid e/o Thursday so we usually on do one major grocery trip every 2 weeks... spending about $125-150 per trip. We usually go to super target and can get our tp/paper towels/other necessities there. I always buy the Target brand in anything I can since I think it is just as good. I always use coupons.
I then, on the week he isn't paid, am usually stopping at our local little grocery store and picking up milk, bread, butter... whatever we might have run out of.
We are planning to cloth diaper this time around so we won't have that expense. I'm also hoping to breastfeed for at least a year to cut the cost of formula.
I totally try to avoid any other sort of "quick stops" at Target cause I would just blow to much money on crap we don't need.
I've also started to ask myself... do we REALLY need this?
We suck at this. We do whole foods a lot and spend a ton of money. But since we are at the shore shopping at shop rite and spending so much less I am going to buy meat at whole foods and find a local farm and get the rest there, which is what I am doing here. We always are at $250 a week at whole foods. That is insane! We get the rest at BJ'S or target.
I am also going to join a local food share market that is opening in the fall. You work 8 hours a year and you buy cheaper organic/local and healthy stuff there. Why it is so expensive to eat healthy?
I spend 100.00 a week. The biggest helper was creating a weekly menu and only buying exactly what we needed to eat that week. I plan breakfast, lunch and dinner and that is ALL i buy. It has helped sooo much!
I can't get out of the grocery store for under $200. But I will be the first to admit that its because I'm a foodie. I have no problem buying sale/generic items and the majority of the stuff is that, but I also like organic and specialty items like fancy cheeses and cuts of meat. I don't go to Target unless I absolutely have to (2 times a year,) haven't been in a Walmart in over 3 years, but I will find myself in Kroger 2-3 times a week. Big box stores are too dangerous for me...all the clothes and accessories....
The way I look at it, I had to give up so many other things in my life that I enjoyed (alcohol, cigarettes, etc.) that food is more than just a necessity for me.
I do all the grocery shopping so here's how it is at my house. I usually go to Aldi to buy basics like milk, butter, veggies, cheese. They are a discount grocier that carries their own brands and don't accept coupons. But they are really cheap! You could go to their website and see if there is one near you. I usually spend $40 there a week. Then I get the rest of our groceries at Walmart and use what ever coupons I can. Typically I spend $50 a week there. So about $90 total in an average week.
Im way behind so almost didn't leave a comment but after the im so dumb post i had to join in.
Sure im in Scotland but just had to say its a rare week when our weekly shopping bill is under £100 which is almost $170 . And normally DH has to buy a couple more stuff come the weekend . I say we would spend about the same and thats with going to my parents one night for dinner and his mums for lunch
Honey we spend more than you. Promise. I would have to calculate, but we had to cut down JUST The Safeway bill by a couple hundred, it was up over $1200. We also do Walmart, Trader Joe's and other odds and ends. Shoot, you saw my Costco bill before right?
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