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I hope this is not too personal to ask, but as a person who must live on a tight budget I was curious as to how much per month you spend on food/toiletry items. DI hope this is not too personal to ask, but as a person who must live on a tight budget I was curious as to how much per month you spend on food/toiletry items… Thanks!
April
It’s not too personal at all and I’m always happy to talk grocery budgets! Thanks for the great question, April!
At present, we are spending $450 CAN (or about $437 US). That is for our family of 5 and it includes all of our food and beverages, cleaning supplies/basic household (garbage bags, etc.), toiletries and beauty products, and a few supplements/herbs/homeopathic remedies.
I would say that we buy about 70-90% either organic, non-certified organic (but organically grown/raised, or natural/ecological products and foods. The 10-30% would include fish (I buy wild), nuts and most seeds, things like mustard, razors, some veggies/fruits that are unavailable or too expensive organic, etc.
Could we eat for less?
Yes, definitely.
I make certain calculated “splurges” in the area of the foods and products that we buy, because the quality is more important to me than the bottom line. If we have the ability to purchase foods that are organic, grass-fed or pastured, naturally grown or raised, wild, etc. then we do it.
If we absolutely needed to cut our budget down further, I would stop buying certified organic and grass-fed products and I would simply focus my energies and dollars on whole foods: basics like grains, dry beans, fruits, vegetables, meat and fish, dairy, etc. Even if something is not 100% the very best quality, whole foods are ALWAYS infinitely better than processed or packaged ones!
How My Budget Breaks Down
I’m struggling just a little bit to answer this question, because we’ve been in a very busy and challenging season of life lately, and so my grocery budget just doesn’t look exactly like it usually does these days. There is still a basic rhythm to it, though, and this is it:
1) $30 Organic Eggs
These are seconds, or the imperfect eggs, from an organic egg farmer whose family we know. $30 gets me 6 flats, or 15 dozen.
2) $70 Produce :: Local Produce Market
This is always slightly variable, but on average I spend $35 every two weeks at my favorite local produce market. I buy about half organic or unsprayed, and half conventional, trying to use the Dirty Dozen as a guideline. I also use as much homegrown organic product from my garden each spring/summer/fall as I can grow!
3) $120-180 :: Bulk natural foods purchase my Azure Standard Co-op
This is a monthly purchase, and I buy all of my organic whole grains, dry beans, nuts and seeds, dried fruit, baking supplies, coconut milk, cleaning supplies, some toiletries, herbs/homeopathics, spices, as well as cases of our favorite pastured organic butter, and 5 lb blocks of natural, raw cheese.
4) $30-$80 :: Meat and Poultry
It depends on the month, but this could be buying 4-6 whole chickens off of my MIL’s friend who raises pastured chickens, purchasing a bunch of ground chicken or turkey and sausages at my local meat store, or setting money aside towards a side of beef (usually a $200+ purchase that I make about every 7-9 mths).
5) $40 :: Raw Milk
I was previously purchasing my milk through a cow share, but haven’t been for the last several months. The cost was becoming very prohibitive for us ($18 per gallon) but it was all that was available in Canada as raw milk is illegal. Recently I have been buying 3-4 gallons of milk from Washington state whenever I go down, keeping 1 fresh and storing the rest in the freezer. It’s not as nice as having fresh milk all the time, but the cost is nearly half of what I was paying before and otherwise we just couldn’t really keep drinking raw milk.
6) $100 or whatever is remaining
This is for local grocery stores, like Superstore, Costco, London Drugs or Nature’s Fare Market. It includes my couponing. This is used for fish (frozen, fresh or canned), toilet paper, razors, floss, bananas, some dairy (sour cream, cream, sometimes cheese), brown rice, tomato paste, peanut or almond butter, vanilla, etc.
Getting My Budget Back Down
The exact what and how much of what I buy changes slightly every month, mostly because I buy in bulk and try to stock up on sales whenever I can. One month I might spend $80 on bulk organic grains, or maybe $60 on raw honey and pastured butter. In a typical summer month I might plop down $80-100 on local, seasonal berries or other fruit for preserving or on tomatoes for canning.
Our budget has crept up slightly in the past 6 months, from $400 to $450. This is partly because of rising foods costs in a down economy, partly because our kids are getting bigger and eating much (much) more, and partly because our family has been in an especially hectic season and I haven’t had as much time or energy to really keep our food budget down.
I have been working my way through Carrie Isaac’s Grocery University this past week, listening to all of the mp3 audio files and now starting to work through the student workbook. I’m very impressed with the course, and I think that even if couponing is only a small part of your strategy (as it is for me) that you can walk away with practical tips and techniques that you can apply.
I can see a few areas where I think I can improve, like better learning the sales cycles and stocking up more significantly on items that I know won’t be on sale again for another 3-6 months so that I don’t pay full price. Or tailoring my menu plans even more strongly to what’s currently on sale or available for a low price.
At this point, I’m committed to keeping things simple (for my sanity, as life hasn’t really slowed down for us yet), but also making some simple changes to see if I can bring our budget back down. I will definitely keep you updated on my progress as I find more ways to make it happen!
Its interesting to see this again, thanks for sharing again. I remember a similar post from your other site a while back.
The thing with grocery budgets is that they are so dependent on where people live and what options they have (as you know). I try my best to get the best deals, do all the frugal things, don’t eat junk, etc etc etc and we seriously spend about $600 CDN a month, sometimes more, but sometimes a bit less. We all are big eaters too and I think that plays into it (but we just eat what we need…my husnband commutes by bike and I’m nursing). I’ve tried and tried to get it down, looked at receipts, broken down where the money is going etc, but that is where its going. And honestly, that is not even getting as great food deals as what you are getting (we can’t afford as good quality stuff as you but we are spending more money than you). Its discouraging, really, but I don’t have access to the same deals as you, especially the amazing meat deals and bulk deals and produce deals you get. But I must remember I just try my absolute best. Its hard even to do what I’m doing for that amount as we often (most of the time) feel like we can never get any extras at all and then my family feels it.
@Nola, I can understand it’s discouraging. We are fortunate to live where we live, because we have fairly good resources available to us (but not like in the mid-west US, wow!).
I think it’s important to remember that yes, I can spend $150-200 less in groceries per month, BUT I don’t even want to guess how much more we spend on housing. That is a huge expense for us and if our food wasn’t a bit more affordable I don’t know how we would ever do it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if we spend a solid $300-400 more a month on housing than those who live in smaller towns or less popular areas, and that is without owning a house (because buying a house here is completely out of reach for us). Anyways, I’m just saying that it’s important to take the big picture into consideration. There are pros and cons to living anywhere.
I wanted to add WOW that is A LOT of eggs!
We pay $4.50 a week for free range (not organic) eggs from someone local and that gets me 1 1/2 dozen. Around here that is a deal. So that is 6 dozen a month for $18.
@Nola, I think that’s still a good deal for eggs. I’m happy to pay $3 per dozen when my farmer doesn’t have eggs (well, mostly happy
.
And we don’t always go through the full 15 dozen. Sometimes it’s more like 10-12 dozen and we have some going into the next month. But there are months when we really do eat that many, especially when we’re on a special diet like GAPS or the Maker’s Diet where we are restricting or eliminating grains. What’s for breakfast? Eggs and smoothie. What about lunch? How about some apples and eggs?
That makes me realize how fortunate we are to live where we do. We just have so many local and inexpensive resources. I know that if I lived in a less rural area with less options from local farmers, our bills would be MUCH higher. We raise our own chickens and eggs which helps a lot. Also, we are really fortunate to be able to get milk for $4 a gallon. There are local mills that sell wheat and whole grains at huge discounts when you buy in bulk as a group as well. We have been able to get 50 pounds of wheat berries for as little as $12.50 when we placed a really large order with other families. We pay about the same amount for beef. Close to $400 a year. It works out to a little less than $2.50 a pound for organic beef, which is so much cheaper than anything I could find in the store.
Our budget has definitely been higher the past couple of months though. I have been having to buy a lot more convenience foods, and have been cooking a lot less with complications in this pregnancy. That just happens sometimes in life. It still helps out though when you live on less other months. I just have tried to save where I could, and not really worried about it. I figure I can get back on track once our little man is born. (-:
@Rene @ Budget Saving Mom, We all have seasons where we just can’t do the same kind of cooking we usually do and have to eat more convenience foods than we want to. Babies are particularly worthwhile, though.
Thanks for sharing this, Stephanie. I, too, am spending upwards of $600 on groceries a month, and am kind of sickened by it, but I don’t want to sacrifice the quality of food we’re buying. I appreciate your candor, b/c it makes me feel a little better about our (absurdly high) number. I don’t have access to these resources, either, and while I think we could get our food costs down, I have to be realistic about the cost of buying organic.
Wow. I feel the same as Nola, I feel so frustrated at what I spend on groceries. You spend far less than we do, but we aren’t eating pastured chickens, or even organic chickens, we don’t drink raw milk, but it is grass fed and local. I usually end up with local honey but not raw, and I’d sure like to know where you get your beef. I have found prices that charge $500 for half a side of beef, you find prices of $200 for a full side of beef. I get Kerrygold butter at Trader Joes because local grass fed butter is twice as much. I make almost everything from scratch. We have 2 teenaged girls, not big eaters, we shouldn’t be spending so much on food! Help! What am I doing wrong?
@MaryEllen, I call it a “side” but it’s not actually a full side. It’s a “front”, which is more accurately about a quarter, I believe, whereas a side is a half (at least, I think it is). So that’s what I’m only spending $200-ish on it. A full side would definitely run me closer to $500 as well. The fronts that I buy don’t last us the full year, either, whereas a side would.
Another great grocery budget post! I think I probably comment on nearly every one that is posted on this subject, lol, but I continue to feel amazed at the (seemingly) impossibly low amount you spend on groceries Stephanie!
I feel as Nola does, that I am doing very nearly as much as I can to save on our monthly bill but it remains so high (much higher than Nola’s). One problem for us is we don’t have a chest freezer so are not able to take advantage of stocking up on natural meat direct from the farm (which I know is much cheaper and healthier too), and we live in quite a small suite at the moment so I’m not sure when we would be able to get one. Also, because we live right in the middle of the city, I’m not able to get those great deals on eggs because we don’t have the time or money to drive for hours to just pick up eggs. About 6 months ago I did manage to find a good, pastured, local source that would deliver the eggs to me here (for a small fee), but then the very next month after that (and we also go through at least 15 dozen in a month) all the eggs started to be bought up by one customer, and there were none left over for any of the other customers. That was a sad day as these eggs were so reasonably priced and were the best we’d ever eaten.
I hear you on the exorbitant price of raw milk up here; I have wanted so much to have only raw milk and cream for my family, but we just can’t pay those prices, not to mention the difficulties of trying to collect the milk. From what I have seen, our local cow share here charges the highest prices around. There are other cow shares in the province that charge much less. Anyway, the bottom line is we can’t afford it, much as we would like it. So, we still buy organic, pasteurized milk and cream from a local dairy. That is plenty expensive enough ($8-9 per gallon for the milk). I have seen that there are many more options for raw milk down in WA, so we might try to take advantage of that, as you do Stephanie, from time to time.
I have started buying more produce (trying also to stick with the dirty dozen/clean fifteen lists) from Costco, and that definitely helps, and we go to T & T (large Asian grocery store) from time to time as their prices are some of the lowest around. I buy some of our Asian staples there such as seaweed, wakame and kombu (for miso, etc.), and tea. Last time I bought some palm sugar to try, although we are not eating much sugar at the moment (mostly raw honey). I didn’t check but I can imagine their prices on coconut milk would be fairly low too (not sure they have organic though).
To me it has seemed that we’ve had to compromise the quality of the food we eat whenever we try to cut down on our grocery bill, and I just think there must be a better way. Right now I’m just not sure what that might be!
@Jana, For milk, when I can’t get our usual raw milk, we sometimes compromise by buying Avalon milk, which is pasteurized but more lightly and you can get the unhomogenized organic milk. Their dairy is really delicious and better than most organic milk (even their conventional is, in my opinion).
I think that we have to constantly remember that every family is different and we simply may not be able to cut our budget down like someone else’s. I try to remind people often that this is just our families budget and everyone’s will be different. That’s ok. Just do the best you can with what you have. That’s all you can do.
I love seeing things like this. We are working our way slowly but surely toward a whole foods diet (I just bought Healthy Homemaking
), so our grocery bill is still pretty low because we’re not buying organic meat or raw milk (yet!). I’m curious, though, how do you use fifteen dozen eggs in a month?! I’d love some ideas. I can get free range eggs really cheaply. Love your blogs!
Thank you! This was super helpful!
.-= heather´s last blog ..Savoring Summer =-.
My husband and I used to have a budget of $45/week for the two of us. Now that I’m expecting, I eat a LOT more, and our budget is $65/week. That’s $260/month. Here’s how it breaks down.
$13/week organic CSA share–year round.
$2/week for 1 dozen eggs–delivered by the farmer to my workplace. It’s kind of like a share. Sometimes we don’t get eggs in a given week because we already have enough.
~$20/week on meat/dairy. A lot of times I put the money away to save up for a bulk purchase. Right now we still have 100lbs of moosemeat in our freezer from last November’s moose, so I’m putting away a lot of the meat money and spending some on chicken and pork products. My husband can’t break the lunchmeat habit but I’m hoping to change that soon by freezing roasted turkey/chicken/ham.
~$30/week. The rest. Spices come from the bulk bins in the natural food store, as do a lot of grains. I try to buy toiletries with Swagbucks (http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/wingonwing) or with CVS Easy Care or with fantastic sales online that I find out about from moneysavingmom.com or other blogs. We don’t drink milk in my family (and won’t even when the baby’s here) so that’s a savings for us, and we only purchase one bottle of juice per week and dilute it a whole lot. Fortunately, Maine is one of 12-ish states where raw milk is legal, so I appreciate having the choice when I need cream or want to make cheese.
We eat really well–click on my name, which will take you to my blog– if you’re interested in what we’re managing to eat on $65/week.
I don’t use a lot of coupons because they’re usually for crap food I don’t buy.
Organic veggies don’t have to be expensive–check out localharvest.org to see if there’s a CSA in your area.
I still read a lot to see where I can do better. I feel like there’s still room for the budget to come down a bit, but when balanced with happiness, it just might not be worth it.
My budget says I can spend $400/month (US) on just groceries (no other household supplies included) for my family of seven, but I really struggle to keep it that low. I’m fortunate to be able to get raw milk for only $3/gallon and my beef (though not pastured) comes from my dad for the cost of processing. The hardest time of year to stick with the budget is right now–I can only stock up on chicken, produce, wild caught salmon, etc. during the summer and fall months and then inevitably I also need to replenish my stock of wheat, oatmeal, or coconut oil all of which I buy in bulk. During some of the winter last year I was able to eat out of our freezer and pantry and spend as little as $250 at the grocery store. And like everyone else I would still like to buy better quality, for example we’re still using conventional cheese and butter.
I guess that though I will constantly strive to get the best whole foods that my budget allows, I want to be really grateful to God for what he has provided for my family, rather than allow any discontentment to creep in.
I really enjoy seeing these posts, too! It’s definitely hard to really compare due to our various locations and family sizes, but it’s always neat to see how others’ prices break down. While most prices seem very comparable to ours (we’re in a small city in SW OK with few choices), that beef price just blows me away! I can’t imagine finding a side of beef for $200-ish here…Although we figure our most recent one came out to $2.07 (US) per lb, it was still over $600 to purchase.
Anyway, thanks for sharing!
Can I ask what butter you are buying by the case from Azure? I’ve been using Kerrygold from Trader Joe’s and also that New Zealand butter from Tropical Traditions (which I stocked up on and should not run out of for probably who knows how long!). Love reading about other real foodie’s grocery budgets… helps me see ways I can improve and save. Thanks
@Carrie, I buy the pastured, cultured butter from Organic Valley. We really like it, as much as Kerrygold.
I spend approximately $200/month (probably more) for a family of 3, going on 4. I spend about $40 of that at Costco and the rest is divvied up $40/week. Additionally, during the summer, I’ll spend about $10 at the farmer’s market when I get there (can’t go every week). Also, this summer, I’ve done some preserving for the first time, so we’ve picked berries and peaches (and soon, apples) in bulk to store. I do try to buy organic products, but so far that means milk and yogurt (which I make from the milk). Occasionally I am able to get organic produce and meat, but it’s usually prohibitively expensive for my budget. I have some of the same problems as Jana – we live in an apartment, so no room for a chest freezer and no garden. We’re hoping to buy a home soon, though, so a garden is #1 priority for me! Also, our community has garden plots to rent, so I’m going to look into that if I need to. Also, when we move, i’m going to invest in chest freezer.
It’s also a problem that my DH is not 100% on board with the whole foods idea, although he’s really changed a lot since we’ve been married. He still prefers to have a lot of easy fix-it stuff to eat, and his diet is limited b/c of colitis, so I do buy stuff for him that I don’t eat. Also, my DS has multiple food allergies, and I make most of his food from scratch, but sometimes it’s just easier to give him safe food from a box and not have the stress of trying to make something yummy and edible from ingredients he can eat. All of this I know should change and I go through periods where I try to, but then it all gets to be too much for me. But thanks for the post; I’m inspired to regroup my efforts and see where I can make changes!
Great post Stephanie….I’m new to your blog from a link at Life as Mom…I too live in Canada in a middle size centre but have our grocery bill at $400.00 per month….we are a family of 4 and both my kids are 17 and 15 and one of them is a high performance athlete so I really have to buy healthy foods for her….I buy half a side of grass fed beef each year and huderite chickens….I have a garden and have even purchased an additional small chest freezer just for storing my veggie/fruit etc from the garden and the local fruit stands when it is in season….I plan my meals each month and base them on what I have in my freezer and pantry and only what is on sale at our local stores…I head to Costco twice a year to stock up on pantry staples (only if they are cheaper than on sale locally) …I do match coupons with sale items but I don’t buy any packaged or processed food except high fibre/cereals…..we live close to the US border so when I am down there, I usually try to buy milk and cheese….
Wow, Interesting read here. I have been slowly cutting my grocery bill down and for a family of 5 am now down to S250 dollars a week! Maybe it is because I have a lactose intolerance, celiac husband in the house where one bag of rice pasta is $3.69 and I get one meal and one left over lunch. Inspiring and interesting to read.
Glad to have found your blog. I had visited your old site a few times before, so glad to be ‘back’.
I’ve been fretting about our family’s budget, figuring it was way out of line at $1000 Cdn (sometimes down below $900) per month but there are 9 of us full time, and sometimes our oldest 2 girls are home. It’s predominantly organic and vegetarian as we eat high raw diet. That doesn’t include toiletries and cleaners, but those purchases are really low anyways as we’ve transitioned to natural products (oil cleansing method, using essential oils, etc) or eliminating some of them totally (no hair products at all).
Still got lots of room to learn and change. Thanks for the great tips.
This is amazing! I found this article through a friend’s link! We have been doing everything we can to maximize our budget so we can be eating healthier. This has given us some new angles we have not thought of. Thank you for taking the time to share the break down of how you make it work with your family of five (we are a family of five with kiddo #4 on the way)! One question I do have though–you said you purchase produce once every other week? How?! How do you keep it (other than either freezing or dehydrating)? We love fresh produce but can’t seem to get it to last beyond a couple of days (well, beside pumpkins, other squash). Is there a trick to the refrigerator I have yet to discover?
@Allyson Kellner, I don’t have any amazing fridge tricks to share. Although I do notice that my new fridge seems to keep things consistently cooler and produce that used to go bad within a week is now sometimes staying good now beyond a week, even up to 2 weeks. I have to use the crisper drawers, though, or else things do go quickly. If I keep the things that are fastest to go in the drawers and then more hardy veggies up on the shelves, that seems to be the best way to organize it.
The main way that I can go two weeks is that in the first week we use up all of the things that will go bad quickly (lettuce, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, soft fruit, etc.). Then the second week we end up eating more stuff like potatoes, onions, beets, broccoli/cauliflower (depending– if they look like they’re starting to go quickly, we’ll eat them earlier), cabbage, yams, etc. I might also end up using some of my canned/frozen/dehydrated summer produce by the time I hit the last day or two before I go shopping again.
Our current food budget is $200/month for my husband and I. That is pretty low, since the USDA says even the thriftiest food budget for us would be $350. We have spent as much as $700/month when I was working full time, experimenting with special healing diets, buying all organic and a lot of meat.
In CA the cheapest I have found pastured beef is $4/lb…for ground meat.
Other cuts are at least $6…and yes that is buying a whole side of beef. Likewise, pastured chickens are $20 each and the only raw milk I can get since we live nowhere near pasture lands (in the desert) is Organic Pastures which would run $8 for 1/2 gallon. The one thing I do feel blessed to have is we recently got a farmers market and I can get local family farmed eggs for $3/dozen (not pastured, but way better than anything in the stores). So besides that we can’t afford many animal products.
So we are on a flexitarian diet. My health has improved, I feel it is best for sustainability and it is a more affordable option.
Also, on $200 we can’t afford much organic, so I prioritize getting small amounts of organic animal products and organic corn and soy as I feel these are the worst when not organic (GMOs, factory farming, toxins in animal fat, etc)
So what we actually buy on this budget:
Once a month stocking up trip to Costco, Winco, Trader Joe’s, our local health food grocer and the farmer’s market for eggs: about $125
1 organic chicken and 1 lb of grassfed ground beef (PER MONTH), a can each of wild salmon, tuna, sardines, 5 dozen eggs, a 1lb or so each of all kinds of bulk beans and whole grains…this the bulk of our diet, nuts from Costco or Trader Joe’s, 10 lbs of organic carrots at Costco for less than $5!, organic diced tomatoes and tomato sauce from Costco (cheaper than non-organic anywhere else), Tillamook cheese at Costco (SO cheap there) Misc as needed from Trader Joe’s: peanut and almond butter, honey, jam, condiments, olive oil, organic tofu and tempeh, bread (though I will try to start making that), tortillas, English muffins, whole wheat and brown rice pastas, frozen veggies and fruit, etc. Oh yes, we LOVE Trader Joe’s around here.
Then that leaves me around $25/wk for fresh produce, misc items and milk (usually the plain organic kind from TJ, not the best but probably better than not organic). About $15 goes to produce, so I shop the sales at Cardenas (love it- it is a Mexican full-sized grocery store owned by Vons) for great deals like 3 lbs for .99 cents of roma tomatoes, apples, onions, pineapple and sweet potatoes, plus 8 bunches of radishes and or cilantro for .99 cents! Then I’ll swing by Henry’s each week for their produce sales and will sometimes happen on organic broccoli for .99 cents or some great deal like that. We used to have a CSA membership but that is $34/wk: most of our food budget.
I am thankful that even though we can’t afford organic any more, we are eating whole foods on a tight budget.