Grocery Bills

MomofJandB wrote: I'm just curious...I know this is personal, but about how much do you spend a week in groceries? In another post, someone was talking about budgeting. It seems I have an extremely high grocery bill for a family of 4. (kids aged 8 and almost 5) I go about every 10 days for what I call "big shopping" and spend anywhere from $150-200!!!

kit_kats_mom replied: ummm... That sounds pretty good to me.

We are a family of 3 and I go shopping every weekend. Our average monthly grocery bill for the last 6 months, according to Quicken was $775 month. granted, I usually count everything I buy at the grocery store as groceries (wipes/diapers/shampoo etc),, we rarely eat out and i pack DH's lunches every day. but still...holy wow!

I have started couponing and making meal plans recently and have noticed a difference over the last two weeks. I have only bought things off of my list, comparison shopped (K stays with daddy on grocery day otherwise this would be impossible) and I've only gone over $100 once in two weeks. It's a lot of work though.

coasterqueen replied: We spend $300 every two weeks as a family of three. It's usually $200 at the grocery storefor food and $100 at Walmart for things like cat food, household cleaning supplies, diapers, wipes, etc. We also eat out every day for lunch and eat out a few times during those two weeks for dinner. So that's not included. Our budget went through the roof when we had Kylie and got more expensive when she started eating solids. I can't even imagine what it's going to be like with two.

kimberley replied: umm we are at about $200 per week that is groceries and household supplies. i find buying lunch stuff to be the most expensive for the boys and Jamie

ediep replied: we spend about $150-$180 a week on groceries. I go every week. That counts diapers, cleaning supplies, and food. We don't eat out a lot but we get take out about once a week. I do use coupons too. Our grocery bill went up a lot when we had Jason. The formula that he was on was the cheapest but it still added so much. When he started reg milk, it went down a bit.

5littleladies replied: We spend about $125-$150 every 2 weeks including diapers, cleaning supplies etc. And then once or twice a month I go to Sam's Club for our meat and spend another $50. Soooo, that's $250-$300 a month and we are a family of five and usually have a stray or two eating with us.

kit_kats_mom replied:
I have a pretty good tip for lunch stuff that seems to be helping the budget a bit.

Try buying regular boxes of items, chips-cookies-veggies & other lunch stuff. They are way cheaper than the individual sized stuff.

I buy a big box of the snack sized ziplocks and when I get home from the store I divvy them all up into single servings for our lunches.

I've found that time really does equal money when it comes to groceries. I was astonished to find that a head of lettuce is 69cent whearas a bag of pre cut/cleaned is 2.65...um, I get a lot more salads from a head of lettuce than a bag. We decided that my "grocery time" is my child free time and DH knows that in order to stick to our budget, I will need an hour or two after I get home from the store to make individual servings, cut & clean fruits & veggies and shred the cheese in my food processor.

MomofJandB replied:
Wow! I am impressed! What is your trick?

TeagansMom609 replied: We spend about $350 a month on groceries, and diapers.

ctymom replied: I'm pretty thrifty with shopping. I buy the snacks and some other household things at Walmart. (Snacks are 1/2 the price at Walmart!) and spend about $60 a week or so there. And then at the grocery store about $70. Some times that lasts about a week and a half. My inlaws make dinners sometimes. They like to cook. So about $130 a week on average. So that's around $500 a month or so for a family of 5.

Pamela

kimberley replied:
i do this too for most stuff but can't with everything. as a treat, the boys like fruit by the foot but only one kind (blue and red) so buying the big boxes is out because it is assorted flavors. jamie wants gatorade for work (4 bottles/ day ) and that stuff is insanely expensive. cheapest i have found them is $1.47ea on sale and again, i can't buy bulk because he only likes the blues ones and they are sold in assorted cases . the boys totally bugged me for those "lunchables" and i finally broke down and bought a couple last week and they hated them lol. see, mama does know best!

i am all about baggies lol. i always buy meat, carrots and fruit in big batches and dole them out as needed. it does take time, but you are so right about the difference in price.

ok, enough sleepy rambling for me lol.

kit_kats_mom replied:
For the gatorade...I'll admit to a major addiction to that myself...I buy the giant tub of powdered gatorade and mix it up into smaller bottles. I don't know if they sell the blue like that though, I'm more of an orange person myself.

MommyToAshley replied: We usually do one big grocery day a month where DH and I both go, and we fill up both carts. We usually do this on double dollar coupon days...LOL. We usually spend about $350 but we usually save about $100-$125 with coupons. (So the bill would have been closer to $450-$500) And, the rest of the month, we just have to make small trips for milk, yogurt, fresh fruit, and stuff that doesn't last a month. I'd say all together we spend about $600/month on groceries and diapers. But, I haven't had to buy pull-ups as much lately and am switching Ashley to regular undies so that cost will be gone. There for a while we were eating out quite a bit, but we've gotten back to just eating out once or twice a week.

Wow! I'm impressed with those that can get away with $300/month... how do you do it????

MomToMany replied: We go grocery shopping every other weekend (when we bring the boys to their dad's). We spend anywhere from $75 to $150 at a time there. Then we go to Sam's Club once every 2 months to stock up on staples, which is another $200 or so. So, at the most, we spend about $400 a month for a family of 7. We don't buy meat, since DH hunts enough to last from season to season (bear & deer). We don't buy diapers or wipes either since we use cloth. We do pretty good considering we have such a large family.

ETA: Ethan, Hannah, Kayla & I are all on WIC, too. So we get our milk, cereal, cheese, peanut butter, eggs & juice through that. But it's not usually enough to last the whole month, so we do buy milk & cereal once in awhile.

MommyToAshley replied: This post inspired another thread:
http://forums.parentingclub.com/index.php?...topic=12788&hl=

loveydad replied: Between 350-500 dollars! That includes diapers for all the kids except Peter and Andriana and of course Vincent, Kel, and Henry, and juice, soda, snacks, formula is a biggie, clothes (seems like im always having to buy SOMETHING), um...fresh fruit and veggies.... frozen stuff, ice cream...I know, we're bad! Luckily we can afford it or we'd be out of house and home! These kids eat a LOT. Oh and baby food- we're still buying baby food.

Henry's is whatever it costs to buy formula for one baby and baby food, and diapers for two babies.

Boys r us replied: Wow!! I'd say you're doing pretty good! We're spending insane amounts on groceries. At least $300/week..now that does include cleaning stuff, laundry detergent and so forth. We tend to not skimp on the grocery shopping...I have started looking at the sunday coupons though..there are some good ones out there, now if I can just actually clip them and keep up with them and remember to take them with me on grocery day, we'll be in business!

Kirstenmumof3 replied: Well we have a house of 8 right now! 3 teenage male students, 3 kids (ages 2-9) and DH and I. We spend about $250.00 a week on groceries! But when it's just us without the students we spend about $175 every 2 weeks.

Isabellasmom replied: I spend $250/month including diapers/wipes/toilettries/pet food etc... That's for a family of 3 plus 3 dogs and a cat. I do alot of bulk shopping and storing in my freezer. I buy a ton of whatever meat is on sale and use my extra freezer in the basement to store it all. sometimes i can go about a month without having to shop except for milk/eggs/bread.

My2Beauties replied: We spend anywhere between $200-300 a month on groceries for a family of 3 (well 4 when DSD stays the night)! I do admit we eat out a lot though I am on the WIC program (this is my last month though) so I get Hanna's formula, juice, ceral etc..for free and it usually lasts all month. Since she is almost 11 mos old I am going to start introducing cow's milk into her diet though, so our grocery bill won't go up too much, we'll just be buying 2 gal of milk instead of 1 at a time probably!