Our food budget is $700 a month. Some families may consider this a large sum but if you figure that we eat almost every meal at home, this amount breaks down as follows: $700/30days = $23 a day so that's roughly $8 a meal, for 4 (yes, my kids eat like adults). But I'm still struggling to make it work. Here is how it breaks down:
On a typical month I do 3 large purchases:
1) 4lbs of 100% grass-fed beef from Realfoodbayarea.com. They average about $8lb since I get a mix of ground and premium cuts so that's roughly $32 a month
2) Costco for bulk items such as: quinoa, almond butter, tomatoes in a jar, kids snacks, coffee, frozen berries, etc. we typically spend about $200 a month on food exclusively from Costco.
3) Beans in bulk from whole foods or now, new leaf. I buy anywhere from 8 to 10lbs of different beans, peas, and lentils. I buy them here because they are organic. I typically spend about $40 on bulk items.
I was used to spending an average of $40/week at the farmers market although recently I have signed up to a CSA (community supported agriculture) so the cost has gone down to $20/week. I also started buying pastured eggs from the same farm at $7 a dozen and I get one every week.
We buy the bulk of our food from trader joes and we spend an average of $120/week
So we have $32 + $200 + $40 + $80 + $28 + $480 = $860!
So here are some things I plan to do to remain within budget:
1) purchase less convenience meals: frozen burritos, hummus, prepackaged snacks, etc
2) limit our weekly trader joes budget to $100. It's going to be tough but we can make it work.
If I'm able to cut our Costco bill to $130 and our TJ bill to $100/week we are still $10 over budget but very close to our target.
I'd love to her your ideas for keeping the cost of groceries down while maintaining quality.
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Location:Our food budget
