Muddling Through a Food Budget.
Recently, while pondering where we shop for our food, I shared that our monthly grocery budget was $550. I got a lot of comments and emails from people asking me to share our budgeting secrets. I promised I would… but to be honest I’ve been putting off this post for a while.
I am no budgeting guru.
I don’t have any amazing tips or tricks up my sleeve.
We don’t use any fancy system.
So if you are here looking for life changing budgeting tips, best you click away now, before you are disappointed.
If you are determined to keep on reading then I’m happy to share a few things we’ve done to keep our spending under control, perhaps they will be helpful to others, or perhaps not.
What’s in The Budget?
Ok, lets see what our budget actually covers…
$550 a month covers basic food for our family of six, as well as groceries and staples like toilet paper, cleaning goods etc.
It covers about half the nappies we use, the other half are reusable cloth nappies.
It doesn’t cover the occasional take out meal or after school bakery snack. It doesn’t include anything my husband might spend on snacks or food while at work (though he usually takes leftovers and snacks from home which are part of the budget). We also often buy items like laundry detergent or dishwasher detergent in bulk which is outside of our usual monthly budget.
We are also acutely aware that we can’t maintain this budget forever. Over the past 12 months we’ve upped our budget by $100 and as our children grow and eating 12 nectarines in 24 hours becomes a regular thing, our budget will have to grow with them.
How Do You Do That?
The short answer is…. I don’t know, we just do!
And the long answer? Well here are a few things that I think help us come in under budget each month.
We use the envelope system.
Put simply, at the start of each month we put the grocery money in an envelope and when it’s gone, it’s gone. I’m a visual person. I need to see it to know where I’m at, so this helps me keep track of spending, and stops me just chucking things into my basket without thinking.
We do a big shop once a month.
Once a month we drive into the suburbs and stock up on a months worth of staples at Aldi. I do a basic monthly menu plan and over time have learned how much of things we’ll need to get through a whole month. We pick up fresh fruit and veg and a few other bits and pieces locally each week, but the majority of our shopping is done monthly. My goal is to not end up at the shops every day and to use what we have. This is getting harder to do however, the bigger our kids get, the more they eat and I am struggling to fit a months worth in a single trolley these days!
We try to eat what is in season and we grow some of it ourselves.
Some years are better than others when it comes to growing our own food, but it kills me to pay big bucks for a zucchini in winter when I know that we’ll have more than we can possibly eat at the end of summer, so I just don’t. We are getting better at storing or preserving the things we’ve grown too. Last year we only bought two jars of jam, and we go through at least a jar a month! We also have some lovely friends who are happy to have our excess produce in return for things they’ve grown or have access to. One friend keeps my kid’s three minute noodle addiction supplied in return for fresh eggs every fortnight.
We don’t eat lots of meat.
We enjoy eating meat but right now our budget doesn’t stretch to a lot of it. Instead we eat a few vegetarian meals, we like tuna (a lot), and I usually use less meat than the recipe calls for and make up the difference with things like beans, lentils or extra veg. We also choose less expensive cuts of meat… chicken and minced beef are pretty much our staples. Our kids idea of a treat is a whopping great leg of lamb!
If we can do without, or use something else we do.
I don’t buy many commercial cleaning products, just a lot of bicarb and vinegar. We probably use half cloth, half disposable nappies at the moment. We don’t really buy expensive personal grooming products like face cream, or hair products, we just don’t use them (you can probably tell!). We use cloth instead of paper for things like serviettes and wipes.
I try to make lots of things from scratch.
Our shopping baskets are not 100% free of snacks and treats but I try to make at least half of the school snacks and sweet treats we eat myself. The same goes for things like tortillas, bread rolls etc. This is definitely a work in progress for me, and I often splurge on this stuff when I am feeling stretched and just can’t face having to roll out another darn tortilla.
I’m a tight-arse.
Yep, you read that right. I’m a tight-arse.
I think that is the single biggest thing that keeps our budget in check. I don’t like to spend money unless I absolutely have to. Sure… I can impulse buy with the best of them, and now and then I manage to justify splurging on things we don’t really need, but I get terrible buyers remorse and that definitely keeps me in check. I also get a strange sense of pride for being able to feed my family well and live comfortably within our budget. I dream of one day being able to buy an enormous, locally grownm, organic, leg of lamb every week, and one day, when we are not on a single income and trying to build our own house, we will do just that. But for now, our priorities don’t put expensive food at the top of the list and I think we are doing just fine.
So there you are…. nothing earth shattering really, but that’s how we do it.
How about you?
How do you manage to stay within your budget and feed a growing family?
Got any great tips for finding grocery bargains?
Any recipes that are family friendly and economical?
Please jump in and share your ideas and information in the comments, or if you have a blog post you’ve written on the subject please include a link so we can come have a read.
We spend roughly the same, I think. It’s only for 2 adults + 2 kids, but includes ALL disposable nappies, lol! Which adds up *sigh* But I agree that buying bulk however you can is one of the key ways of saving money. That and buying up on regular staples when they’re on sale.
As for meat – my husband, being head household chef, likes to buy less good-quality cuts instead of more cheap cuts. But at the same time loves to replace meat with chickpeas (we often buy them by the slab!) and nuts.
Wow, this is very encouraging. Our circumstance changed recently so I am forced to look for saving tips. I am so impressed with how you can manage with that budget, it’s a REAL challenge as I am learning now.
I actually started writing a post like this last week, but now I don’t have to. You just described our grocery budget and shopping/food habits.
We tend to stretch out meat out with lentils and beans too. Family and friends think I am weird for it. I don’t see anything weird about it. But they all also turn their noses up at the thought of a vegetarian meal too…
Great post Kate!
We make a great lentil ‘bolognaise’ no meat in it at all and one of our staunch ‘ant veg’ friends has eaten it several times thinking it was full of meat and declared it the best spag bol ever! LOL
I need that lentil bolognaise recipe!!
Yes please share ! :)
Lauren
thanks Kate, I was one of those, oooh please tell me people. lol. The reality is you’ve probably told me what I already know. I need to be more tight arse. I know it. I just get lazy when I’m juggling three children, work, blah blah. But today my daughter started school, my son started 4yr old kinder, and my baby is going to creche on a Thursday morning. (Thurs morn I have free time). I’m hoping with no more excuses I can go to Aldi and to the cheaper meat store and be a little more concious with my spending.
I might also look at rearranging my pantry to suit our needs a bit better.
Thanks for the tip.
Hi Kate, it’s a bit of a juggling act, isn’t it? We’ve got two boys – our 13-month-old is already eating more than our 4-yr-old! Like you, minced beef and chicken feature a lot in our repertoire, but I have to balance budget with convenience. Often at the end of a long day, the last thing I want to do is cook from scratch (and that’s coming from a food writer), so rather than look to a takeaway, I make sure we have quick meals in the freezer like a pack of kangaroo fillets that we can cook quickly on the griddle pan and have with some salad leaves from the garden. Or some nice goat’s cheese that I can scatter over some leftover roasted veg. Whilst they are expensive at the time, I know if I don’t have something easy I can quickly put together, I will regret it later. Other tips: I never quick with less than a kilo of mince at a time, because it makes lunch for hubby the next day, and another meal or two for the boys. And watch out for markdowns on organic and free-range meats in the supermarket – I would dearly love to skip the big chains, but it’s not an option for us yet. If I haven’t already said it, I’m really enjoying your blog.
I think you’re spot on…. you have to do what you can do. There is no point saving $100 a month on food if you are run ragged and miserable! Life is too short to be miserable!
Thanks for sharing. I’m trying to get our budget into shape and food is one of the big areas that needs an overhaul. I need to follow your lead and shop monthly. Having two food allergies doesn’t help our food budget, but I make gluten free bread & other treats, so that saves heaps.
I think being gluten free probably doubles your food budget!
It is so cheap for me to buy flour and yeast and make bread, but when I looked at gluten free options to make bread for a friend… WOAH! so expensive!
our budget is probably not dissimilar however we are a family of 4 not 6 so… the big thing for us is not shopping at the supermarket. We go to the market for all our fruit, vege, meat and dairy and then aldi. We do about 5% of our shopping at the supermarket and it takes about 25% of the budget. CRAZY!
Oh how I miss living close to the Vic Market.
One of the big costs for us is where we live… Our local supermarkets are not so much more expensive than in the suburbs but they stock a lot less, so we drive 30 minutes to Aldi once and month. We will probably visit the Vic market once a 1/4 once our renos are done and we have somewhere to store food in bulk… but that is one of the things I so miss about the city!
We’re vego (for ethical reasons) but I don’t think we really save any money that way – what we don’t spend on meat we make up for in marinated goats cheese (mmmmmm). We don’t budget for food but I think we would spend about double what you do for a family of 4. Probably a reasonable chunk of our food bill though goes on keeping us (and visitors) supplied in decent coffee, drinkable red wine and goats cheese. All of which we regard as essentials ;-) We do entertain a bit as well which I guess would increase our budget, if we had one.
PS If you can feed a family of 6 on $550 a month then you are definitely a budgeting guru
Oh I should have mentioned that we don’t drink tea or coffee nor alcohol (except for special occasions)… I think that keeps costs down too. I have a soft spot for goats cheese and often splurge when I got to one of the local farmers markets that has it (that’s not included in the budget either LOL)
Can to share your monthly menu with us?
Our monthly menu plan is a huge help in budgeting.
Also I find my family don’t notice when I do things like use 250g of meat in a recipe instead of 500g. I simply bulk it up with veggies.
We buy UHT milk and freeze bread, so I’m not having to drop in at the supermarket frequently to top up supplies.
Our food budget is going to be even tighter this year now we don’t get funding for Heidi’s therapies. Looks like we will be out of pocket at least $600 / month between her and Annie’s therapists. :(
That’s an awesome effort. We probably spend similar, but with three little boys, I’m really dreading what I’m going to have to spend in five years or so, so I’m trying to be smart about it now.
Meal planning is definitely the key for me – it means I can plan a ‘nicer’ meal each week and then budget meals the rest of the time. We eat quite a lot of pasta and rice, and I make most things from scratch – I don’t buy prepackaged pasta sauces, casserole mixes etc.
I have an Aldi phobia, but I need to start picking up some things there. I just haven’t had very good experiences with their stuff :(
Great tips, Kate :)
Oh finally someone else that dislikes Aldi!!! lol. :)
I might too have to venture there to try again & see if I can like it – or I might just buy homebrand/cheaper versions in other supermarkets :)
I didn’t like Aldi at first either but I couldn’t get over how much I could save by shopping there. I focus mainly on meat, dairy, nappies and some fruit and veg. It takes some time to go to multiple places but it’s worth the money saved
Thanks for that post. I find it really interesting that you can get your bill down that low. We used to spend that much a fortnight. I have recently reduced it down to $175 a week and am struggling with that. I am trying to grow, bake etc at lot more and we do enjoy it more when we know we’ve done it ourselves. I would love to see any recipes you have. One thing that I do that i find very useful is to buy my groceries online. We buy through Woolworths and doing it online means you can see exactly what you are buying – generally you stick to your list and if you go over your budget you can substitue or delete things from the list – on the other hand if you are under you can treat yourself. I do end up buying bulk stuff under this budget as well but don’t have nappies to contend with anymore. Might try and set up a separate budget for bulk items – though no Bin Inn or Aldi in Dunedin.
My food budget is 120 per week, which goes in a coffee cup, kinda like my permanent envelope… Not an aldi fan either, so woollies it is. (i used to shop online, till i discovered it was cheaper to go to the shop and do it myself. I take a calculator with me, and keep tabs on how much is in my trolley, never go shopping hungry either… Cause every thing looks like you need it.. )
I have 2 kids under 4, I buy them Woolworth select nappies for during the day, (which is only for one) and Huggies at night. That way I don’t have to use more than one nappy at night.
to extend mince dishes I half half the quantity of mince, and replace them with a tin of lentils and chickpeas. I tend to buy what meat is on special as well, making larger portions and freezing them in Chinese take away containers, for those days I’m not really in the mood to cook.. You can freeze anything, they recommend you don’t freeze milk products, and potato (boilt) tends to go grainy after its been frozen. We have our own chickens, n we get more eggs than we can eat in a week, so that saves us a meal to buy from the shops, quiche, omelettes, pancakes, picklets, cakes, muffins, with our home grown strawberries. Versatile they are.. I do make most of our snacks from scratch.