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How to keep food costs down?

As another responder noted, this is a fascinating discussion. Here's my $.02 worth. Two adult household, DH is diabetic. I retired about 4 years after DH. Before that, the only meal we regularly shared was dinner and grocery/menu planning was hap-hazard. I didn't shop grocery ads and bought by brand name, not item cost. We never gave the food budget much thought.

The first year of my retirement, I logged everything spent on human food (groceries & dining out) pet food was separate and quite another story--we spend what the USDA says is the monthly average for a family of 4 on our 3 furry kids :)

After the first year, I was surprised at how much we spent and dismayed at how much we wasted. So by year 2, I was planning meals and shopping accordingly. Kept track of what was in the freezer and dates. Stocked the pantry for staples and emergencies. Adjusted quantities on recipes depending upon whether the left-overs would freeze. Note: I discovered that if the recipe said "serves 8" it was often better to prepare the full recipe and freeze the extra--reducing the recipe amount often left not enough to save, so it went into the garbage.

By year 3, I was saving close to $200/month. Not dramatic, but we were still eating the food we liked and dining out whenever we felt like it -- 2 or 3 times a week. We also noted the restaurants we liked that had "early-bird" specials, and made reservations for DC's Restaurant Week to get deals on great lunches at high-end dining spots.

I like to cook and we frequently have friends over dinner. I don't stint on dinner party entertaining and often warn guests that it's my opportunity to try out new recipes! They are willing guinea pigs.

With all that, we eat well, enjoy DC's wonderful restaurants, and keep the food budget and wine for me (DH doesn't drink) within $1000-$1200 month. That's still significantly more the average family of 4 spends, but we think it's reasonable and we don't feel we compromised our pre-retirement standard of eating. The difference is we are more conscious of what we are buying and eating and making a greater effort to plan meals.
 
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A very active and interesting post.

It was fascinating to hear other people's stories about food. I'm in the category that has spent at times, $100 per week for a family of two. There are lots of words to describe this type of person -- some have already been mentioned. A friend recently told me they call it being VALUE conscious. I am going to adopt that as a description of myself. In regard to the OP -- I'll have to admit I was shocked to imagine spending that amount of money for food and staples.

My first inclination was to ask whether the son could help with cooking. I saw the reply regarding some limitations. Here is what I'm wondering. OP, you have mentioned your intention to provide for his financial needs. Possibly this is a good time to help him <by example and assistance> learn to care for his food needs.

In regard to eating out, I'm guessing this is a pleasant way to spend time or you would have found other methods by now. Perhaps finding a new 'thing' that is fun would be good to do on a regular basis. Your husband has his golf, what do you have? I recently suggested to my sis, and she followed my advice, to get a 'treatment' of some sort each week -- feet, nails, hair, massage, facial, etc. She has been her husband's caregiver for a year as he has battled a serious disease. She needed to do something for herself. This doesn't come easy to some and you may be like her.

I agree with many suggestions offered -- but I think the one thing not addressed is -- eating at home requires some level of cleaning up. Even at my best, it was difficult to come home after a day's work, fix a meal and then clean up the kitchen. Often the dishes would spill over to the next day. I am wondering whether you husband and son help with this and other cleaning -- and if not, I'd much rather spend some of my budget dollars on some housecleaning assistance.

My other suggestion would be start at the top of the thread -- and somebody has posted something of value to you. Stop reading, write it down and plan to do it THIS coming week.

Blessings to you, OP.
 
I received lots of good suggestions and will keep them for my reference. My husband and son split the clean up. My son is not physically disabled. He has an unusual language communication learning disability that makes it difficult to get past a first interview. Doctor wanted me to pull him out of main stream school and to put him in a "special" program when he was young. I resisted, did everything I could and he did everything he could to overcome his disability and the rest is history. He is very intelligent, very hardworking and has great work ethics. He is an excellent employee and an asset to any employer. He works for us currently but we will be retiring soon. He needs to be able to get past the interviews before given opportunity to prove himself. Currently he lacks language fluency when he is under stress. But other than that he is as normal as any adult of his age. He does have a 4 year college degree and is a very good kid/adult - he does not smoke, drink, or do drugs. I know I am over protective and time will tell how well he will do on his own.
 
I have a couple of suggestions...

Split the entre at restaurants; usually they are plated separately. You can still enjoy the experience and it will cost less.

Start reading the food blog "budgetbytes,"
http://budgetbytes.com. Great way to find interesting recipes along with menu planning and food budgeting.

Your son sounds like a nice young man and I wish you all well in this transition!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
b2bailey said:
I agree with many suggestions offered -- but I think the one thing not addressed is -- eating at home requires some level of cleaning up. Even at my best, it was difficult to come home after a day's work, fix a meal and then clean up the kitchen. Often the dishes would spill over to the next day. I am wondering whether you husband and son help with this and other cleaning -- and if not, I'd much rather spend some of my budget dollars on some housecleaning assistance.
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This is the exact reason why I cook everything on Sunday mornings. I start early and am usually done by 12 noon. I have a well stocked freezer and pantry so always stuff to cook up.

Everything I cook is packed in containers in the fridge. And every single morning before work I take the food out of the containers and put it on our dinner plates. Then I cover the plates with microwave lids. I wash all the containers and put them away. This way, when we get home all we have to do is take the plates out of the fridge and microwave them and after eating put the plates in the dishwasher. No pots and pans or even containers to wash after work.

I have just started doing this in the past 2 years because I find that at my age- 59- after being up from 4am every work day- I just couldn't deal with cooking and cleaning up when I got home from work anymore. Better for me to get up early on Sunday and get the deed done. I will tell you, although I kind of hate spending a 1/2 day of my day off cooking, it beats the alternative- getting home from work exhausted and having to do it.
 
I totally agree with OP about how tiring preparing meals can be. On Christmas I prepared a dish to take and it took over two hours, not counting cooking time. I was tired after that, part old age, part lots of physical limitations. I don't enjoy cooking much anymore.
 
The OP lives in Calif and maybe food costs more in that state. Maybe, she is liked my friend who is a chef and only purchase the best meats, fish, etc., at the very high end market places.
 
WRT clean-up, I tend to do 2 things:

1) I clean up while I cook. If something needs to simmer 20 minutes, I use that 20 minutes to clean up all of the knives, cutting boards, etc that I used to prepare the ingredients. Also put away ingredients I got out.

2) After the meal, if I am enthusiastic, I clean everything immediately. Otherwise, I set all of the pots and pans to soak in the sink, and go relax for a while. Then, before I go to bed, I'll go in and put away the stuff I washed earlier, and finish washing the pots and pans. Put them on the drying rack and then put them away in the morning.
 
Old habits die hard, so the most effective changes will be the ones that take the least efforts, at least in the beginning. Plus, it sounds the OP wants to change not because they can't afford it, but just because she thinks the amount they are spending is too high (which almost everybody agrees it is :)). That makes it harder to change.

I have a few suggestions:
1. Instead of going to high-priced restaurants, use neighborhood diners, and grocery and Costco deli counters (lower prices).
2. Instead of eating in, use take-outs (save the 15%-25% tips).
3. Use a smaller portion of meat, and supplement with a larger portion of vegetables. Add variety by using 3 or more vegetables for each meal, and vary the cooking methods (steaming, roasting, stir-fry, etc.) between meals.
4. Instead of eating out for lunch, bring a meal from home and use the office microwave. If there is no fridge or microwave at work, buy small ones for your office/cubicle for much under $100. (If you are the boss, if there is no fridge/microwave in the office, consider getting a large size one for everybody to use.)
5. Start with baby steps, then improve upon them.

This would mean much less change than the other changes that you might be considering, therefore might be easier to get done. You mentioned In N Out burgers a couple of times, this would be healthier but along the same direction.

You would get over 90% of the dishes that you are presently getting. The food would be good, and already cooked and ready to eat, but much healthier, as you would not be under the influence of the fancy ambience to pick an elaborate/fancy dish. Actually, the only thing you might think you are missing would be the ambience of the high-end restaurants. But you could set the dinner table to have a nice ambience too - use nice tableware (that you probably already have), just do it yourself (or have your son do it).

You could still go to a restaurant once or twice a month - in total, not for breakfast, lunch and dinner individually. When you want to do something special, make it a special family cooking project, e.g. cook something special. Only eat out for very special occasions - anniversaries, etc.

Hopefully, you would be able to reduce the food budget by at least $2000-$3000 in the beginning, and improve upon it over time. Save more money to leave to your son. :)
 
If you have difficulty standing for long periods of time at the stove, perhaps get those delicious rotisserie chickens at Walmart, Costco, your neighbourhood supermarket. Add a few sides and voila! An inexpensive meal that is very tasty.

Dori
 
I went back and analyzed my credit card spending, the interesting part is that my eating out charges come up to about $1K a month. My grocery bills are very high, making up most of the $4K. I looked back at this weekend, Asian market was $75 and I only bought 4 frozen packets of eel, 2 small packets of frozen fruits, 2 potatoes and a packet of garlic. Then Raley's was $250, some drinks and wine, grapes, gluten free bread, almond milk, no meat, some toiletries (cheap stuff) and that was it. Also went to Trader Joe's and bought a couple of boxes of chicken stock, a ready to heat up turkey meatloaf. All in all, grocery billstore totalled about $400.
 
You also might want to break down how much you are spending on alcohol. If your husband is diabetic, he probably isn't supposed to drink alcohol anyway - is he?
 
DeniseM said:
You also might want to break down how much you are spending on alcohol. If your husband is diabetic, he probably isn't supposed to drink alcohol anyway - is he?
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Alcohol like red wine brings blood sugar down. It's the high sugar ones like cocktails and liqueurs that are bad.
 
sptung said:
Alcohol like red wine brings blood sugar down. It's the high sugar ones like cocktails and liqueurs that are bad.
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That's interesting - I didn't know that. How much red wine does your husband's doctor allow him to drink?
 
Sptung, does your living expense change significantly when you are in your Las Vegas condo, over/under what it costs to live in California? There are a bunch of 'locals' casinos/eateries off the Strip where you can easily out like the locals do. 2 for ones, early bird specials, etc.

It appears you are not in the 'preparing for retirement' mode, but still living like you are in acquisition mode.

As people who, like you have timeshares and a second home too, it is costly, and forces one to divvy up the time pretty thinly to feel like you're getting sufficient value from the stuff you think should give pleasure.

Might be time to consider simplifying.

Jim
 
sptung said:
His cardiologist wants him to have 2 servings of red wine a day. His PCP is in full agreement. He does not exceed that.
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That seems reasonable. When you wrote that he drank for both of you, I thought that alcohol was a bigger part of your budget.
 
Passepartout said:
Sptung, does your living expense change significantly when you are in your Las Vegas condo, over/under what it costs to live in California? There are a bunch of 'locals' casinos/eateries off the Strip where you can easily out like the locals do. 2 for ones, early bird specials, etc.

It appears you are not in the 'preparing for retirement' mode, but still living like you are in acquisition mode.

As people who, like you have timeshares and a second home too, it is costly, and forces one to divvy up the time pretty thinly to feel like you're getting sufficient value from the stuff you think should give pleasure.

Might be time to consider simplifying.

Jim
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My intention is to downsize the CA home to something that requires low maintenance where my son will pay for on-going costs like utilities, insurances etc. Basically no on-going cost for me. I will step in if he truly needs financial help but I am hopeful that he will just be fine. He has alot of relevant work skills that he can apply after working for us for 5 years.

Our living cost usually goes down when we are in Henderson, as long as we stay away from expensive shows. We don't generally go to Las Vegas strip unless we have a show to go to. We don't gamble and don't like crowds.
 
sptung said:
Because I don't generally drink anything more than 1 on a regular basis is too much. ;)
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You probably don't want to say that he drinks for both of you - that makes it sound like he drinks twice as much as he should. ;)
 
sptung said:
My grocery bills are very high, making up most of the $4K. I looked back at this weekend, Asian market was $75 and I only bought 4 frozen packets of eel, 2 small packets of frozen fruits, 2 potatoes and a packet of garlic.
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I think this is amazingly expensive. Is it a Japanese market? We have a Mitsuwa here and it's so expensive that it's like a food museum. Even getting your eel and other items from Whole Foods would be less expensive.
 
I just got a survey from Walmart about something that might fit you.



 
And if you move to Henderson permanently when you retire, you'll immediately recoup 13.3% of your income since NV has no state taxes! Then there are things like "Military Mondays" at Stations Casinos if either of you were in the military. You register once, then just pick up the coupons the first Monday of the month. We often use the 2 for 1 buffet coupon and go to Green Valley Ranch's buffet for lunch. That makes it $10.80 for two! And they have a Mongolian BBQ Stir Fry section among all the others.

There are many other eating out specials that you can avail yourself to if you live in Henderson.

Fern

sptung said:
Our living cost usually goes down when we are in Henderson, as long as we stay away from expensive shows. We don't generally go to Las Vegas strip unless we have a show to go to. We don't gamble and don't like crowds.
Click to expand...
 
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