I know we talked about our food budgets lately..... I was digging in my paperwork and came across a receipt from a few months ago and was astounded by how significantly some prices have gone up...slow steady increases that you dont realize until looking back. Have you changed your shopping from a year ago to adhere to a set budget limit or have you continued your normal grocery list and just watched your budget increase over the past year? (I ask this as the news announces the cost of peanut butter will be increasing 40% and it is a main staple in my house!)
I have made some changes regarding where I shop and how much I might purchase due to the price increase. Still, I do not have a set budget.
We've changed how we shop drastically in the past year. Again, no budget necessarily, but we only purchase what we need--and then only if we can get it on the cheap. Last paycheck I didn't go grocery shopping because we just couldn't afford it. We bought some milk a couple times and that was about it.
Coffee has jumped through the roof. I usually stick to one brand of coffee but these days I buy whatever is on sale.
:lol: My husband quit smoking the first time the taxes on it shot up (PTL!)...but it might be my turn to "get clean" from my coffee addiction. :cry:
I have changed my shopping list some, for us a big thing has been cheese, the price on cheese has gotten crazy expensive and so unless I find a great sale, we just have to do without. When I do find a great sale, I get it and freeze it (yes it crumbles) but since I mostly shred it anyway it doesn't matter. Coffee isn't too bad around here honestly, though I usually get a better price on the more expensive brands because I can combine a sale price with coupons. I have several packages of Caribou Coffee in my freezer that with a sale price combined with a high value coupon I only paid 2.00 for! The items I find we go without most often are cheese, real butter (margarine is so much cheaper), and pre-made snack foods.
Most items I will only buy if I have a coupon, and if there is a sale on that item, making it a super good deal. Of course, some things, like milk and eggs, hardly ever go on sale, and you never find a coupon. But....when the good sales/coupon combo comes up, I stock up on those items, so that I don't have to spend more when they are not on sale. For instance last week, I bought several packets of Lipton Soup mixes on the cheap, because I got them for about .64 for a box of 2 mixes. This week, I got free kids toothpaste (4 boxes). Coffee is something that I don't drink, but my DH does. I only buy it when it hits a GREAT sale, and it doesn't matter what the brand is.
For dairy products, if you have the freezer space, you might look into making a deal with a local grocer's dairy department to buy their expiring milk/cheese/etc. for a set price. I have a friend who does this and then she distributes it to others. Milk in gallon jugs freezes just fine as does coffee creamers and half/half. We have found that yogurt will last way, way beyond the expiration date in the refrigerator. Cheeses usually need frozen because of mold potential. The other things she gets we just make our meal plan out of what we need to get used up in a hurry. I have another friend with this arrangement for produce from the same store. We process what we can store frozen or canned and then eat the fresh stuff before it goes bad. The chickens are happy about this set up, too.
I always chop my cheese into quarters and then freeze it. Once it is cooked, it is no longer crumbly. :lol: Around here coffee is an average of $13.00 a can. I found Yuban on sale for $8.00 the other day so I bought a can even though we didn't need it yet. We do not use a lot of butter but I pretty much buy what is on sale. Margarine is so much cheaper so I like to buy butter for special recipes and use the margarine year around. Still, a tub can last us for a long time these days.
Congratulations to your husband!!! My dad quit smoking about four months ago. They are seeing an average of $200 a month savings because of it. My dad was a heavy smoker. Now, as to the coffee addiction. I have blamed my mom and MIL for getting me hooked! I drank it once in a while but when they visit, that pot is literally plugged in all day. It is a coffee drinkers heaven when they visit.:lol: So I started drinking it on a regular basis and then daily and now I drink many cups a morning. As much as I would love to stop drinking it, I can't until I can admit that my addiction is my fault. Until I am ready, I will continue to blame my mom and MIL. He, he!
I think it also makes a difference what store you shop. Here Safeway is more expensive, Wal-mart grocery store used to be a better deal, now we mostly stick to what the sales are in the ads, we shop 2 stores each week. Milk has been pretty good at $1.57 a gallon Coffee is about $7 something
I tend to also think it is where you shop. I only have HEB or Walmart to do any type of shopping at. I have a Super S foods near by but I will not pay double the price for less quiality! I say HEB is cheapper, but my husband says Walmart is... so I have shopped at Wallworld last week just to get a few items.... ha! I spent more!!!! So my husband finally agreed with me!!!! yea!!! I shop for only the things I need. I have changed some of my shopping but not a whole lot. I love Coffee, but I have not had to buy it in 6mths!!!! (thanks to my mother) I did notice that even the creamers have gone up in price, so I swicthed to the off brand. I can't believe the milk prices.... almost 4 bucks! I am going to have to switch brands again....
Wow! $1.57 a gallon?! That is awesome! Right now, we get it usually for $3.52 a gallon. And that is the store brand!
Ours is around $3.50 too. I have noticed a steady increase. My last big shopping trip was about $50 more (for 2 weeks) than I was spending a year or so ago. I'm trying to cut back more, but we have a fairly low food budget already. We fall into the Walmart or HEB only group, but in their defense HEB is cheaper--if you buy their brand.
mine too, not to mention the fact our daughter went inti the ICU for a week with sever asthma (first time issue)....... it scared him enough to quit, the extra money helps!! congrats to your DH, I know its hard on them some times.....
I agree! Walmart brands tend to be a little higher than name brands... I love how HEB tells you how much you saved on your receipt..... I buy nothing but their brand and "I'm saving".... kinda of funny! I love HEB's meal deals!
I have a ton of stores to choose from, and generally I still only go to one store. I like Albertson's I find that I spend much less there than I would at Wal-Mart or the other stores! I can get milk for 1.57-1.89 most weeks, but sometimes I am forced to pay 2.59 - 3.26 per gallon of milk. Though we have been making a lot of soy milk lately which is saving me a ton of money because a gallon of that only costs me about .75, and an hour of my time! I was at the store today and found several great deals at the store. I paid 12.87 for 12 steaks (which will feed us for 3 meals), and picked up some clearance meats that were set to expire tomorrow or Friday (I can freeze them and they'll be fine when I cook them! I also picked up the clearance halloween paper towels (we don't celebrate but paper towels are paper towels) for only .25 a roll!
Milk is on sale around here for $2.50/gallon. We don't do lots of peanut butter, but Rachael's been hitting it lately as they've had apples really cheap and she likes apples with peanut butter on it. Costco had PB on sale a while back, so I have four 48 oz. jars. That should last me most of the winter!!! I like to buy cheese/lunch meats at a farm market near where my dad lives. The normal prices there are about $2/lb less than the sale prices in the stores; the sale prices even cheaper. I do like to stock up when things are on sale.
I wanna know why the people living closer to Wisconsin are paying more than double what Arizona is for milk....must be those California cows. Hussies. :roll:
Yes. Even my beloved Aldi's prices are going up. Thankfully MOST of the things we buy there are still relatively inexpensive. Menu planning helps A LOT. Coffee is really expensive here. Thankfully I have a friend who works for a coffee distributor, and when he removes stock, he's not allowed to return it to the company, so he freezes it and gives it away to his friends. And it's GOOD coffee, a higher level brand. Hubby also gets free coffee at work, so sometimes he foregoes it at home to save it. Milk prices are regulated by the state and run from $3.50-$4.00 a gallon. I miss AZ where you could buy milk for $1.50 on sale!!!! And every week one store had it on sale. There was even one that for every 5 you bought, you got a free one - and they tracked it on your card. I miss that. I think my biggest issue is I need to give up soda again. I do buy the 2 ltr bottles....but my Coke Zero addiction is costing us a lot of $$$$ each pay period. When it's not on sale it's $1.25 a bottle!! And I go through a bottle a day most days (yes, that is AWFUL, I'm fully aware. I had given it up a long time ago, and started again.....ugh....it IS an addiction....I'm giving myself until after Christmas to quit again). We do have a Walmart Super Center, so I do buy bulk meats from them most of the time. We also have a discount produce place, so I try to buy the things we eat quickly there (like apples, bananas, etc). I do find if I buy a bag of things we don't eat often, it goes bad. I do sometimes buy things that they have on super sale and process it for the freezer for later. I still have half my food budget left....and hubby's going away for most of the week next week, so I'm trying to see if aside from milk, if the kids and I can live on what we already have in the house without having to spend that. But yes, food is WAY more expensive!!!!
