My grocery budget was an absolute bloodbath this past month. I normally budget $400 each month for groceries, which still feels high, but I somehow ended up spending over $500. That comes out to about $5.37 per meal, or about $16 per day. WTF?
Now, I’m not (necessarily) here to judge other people based on their spending, but I can’t help but judge myself. How does a single person with no kids, no dependents, and extremely few time obligations end up spending this much money on food?
Several weeks ago, I started watching a YouTube channel that looks closely at the variables that play into all this, and one of the core recommendations for bringing your spending down is to look at cost per unit. This has been really helpful to me, and I’m slowly learning to consider it more often; however, it might take time before I start making better decisions this way, and here’s a little story to explain why. I was tempted one day to buy a sub sandwich from a nearby fast food restaurant, but I decided to make my own instead. The grocery store was out of normal provolone, so I had to pay extra for fancy provolone; the only meatballs that didn’t include a laundry list of ingredients were on the pricey side; and I was also too lazy to make my own hoagie buns, so I bought them instead. Using two hoagie buns to mimic a 12″ sub, I was able to replicate the sub sandwiches from the restaurant for about $7 each, compared to $12. This seems to be a pretty huge victory (and they tasted great), but I also don’t eat sub sandwiches very often, and since the ingredients I bought made about three “foot-longs” for $7 each, this meant that yes, I beat the restaurant on unit cost, but no, I didn’t exactly eat cheaply. It’s shit like this that I really hate when it comes to money.
Granted, I don’t think that spending as little as possible on groceries should be the goal. Goat’s milk usually works better with my body than cow’s milk does, but it’s way more expensive. I pay the extra, because I’m disinclined to buy things that cause me pain. I also have a habit of buying large bags of frozen blueberries for my smoothies, but they are easily $12 per bag these days (and I go through 2-3 per month). I also love macadamias, but they are almost $10 for an 8oz bag. I’ve also discovered a new wheat variety that makes amazing hamburger buns, so it greatly improves my eating experience for those meals, but that flour is almost 3x the cost of normal organic flour. Oof.
However, one clear victory I can point to is that several days ago when I was buying some poison juice at a convenience store, and almost grabbed a candy bar, since I hadn’t had one in several weeks. But the price shocked me: $3.78. In other words, 2 of these candy bars could otherwise purchase a pound of ground chicken, good for 3 or 4 meals. If I’d been really smart, I would have put the poison juice back too, but in a rare moment of sanity, I at least put the candy bar down. $3.78? Fuck that.
Another big setback has come in the form of pre-packaged meals. The beauty of pre-packaged meals is that they are one and done, and there’s no temptation to eat more from a large batch of whatever you cook up. A very expensive brand of organic meals has a frozen chili that I really love. I tried to replicate it, but have thus far been unsuccessful. They have been pushing their prices higher lately, for no apparent reason except, I suspect, to see if they can get away with it. They briefly had a deal where you could buy 5 for $5 each, but they’ve been pushing up to $6.50 each otherwise, which is just nuts. I suppose some of my budget was spent buying the ingredients to see if I could replicate these, and that’s a quick way to burn your budget, but it just seems insane to pay that much if I can find a tasty replacement and skip the spend. Another idea would be to make my own omelets or breakfast burritos, since I’m getting tired of oatmeal all the time.
You’re at a huge advantage if you have the scientific mindset to tweak recipes and find cheap ways to make your own food. My patience is limited when it comes to this sort of thing, so it’s a real struggle to be “experimenting” with numerous different recipes all at once. I kind of hate the experimentation process, and the only thing I’ve almost perfected has been my bread recipes and basic chicken burritos. So…I think I can maybe have grace on myself for not loving to spend hours cooking; it’s not some kind of moral failure, but it would certainly be advantageous from a budgetary perspective.
Cost per unit. It’s tough to argue with. If I find a quality all purpose flour on sale for $4 per 5-pound bag, how cheaply can I make tortillas if I find an efficient system for doing so? Exactly how much potato and egg do I need to make a quality, filling breakfast burrito? How cheaply could I make chili macaroni if I can fix it all up at once and freeze the extra?
One step at a time, I suppose. But how great would it be not need $500 every month just for food? How great would it be to bring that down to $300, or even less? I feel like it’s worth working toward. I don’t suspect I will ever be a chef, of course, but the skill of cooking good food can probably save you absolute boat loads of money over the course of your life, and it’s probably healthier for you, too.