Groceries on $70 a week

So things in my life have been very busy, in the best sense. This year my partner and I have become engaged and within months of that we bought a block of land and are building our first house together. I feel so blessed and I have been on a high for most of 2017 but it also means that it forces us to look at our finances and where we can cut back a bit.

Upon looking at the amount we were spending on food it was really getting out of hand. It may not be much of a surprise to you, but in our house, food is a big deal. If you follow me on instagram (or even Facebook to a lesser extent) I am the first person to be taking photos of beautiful meals, so you will understand that I love to spend a lot of time in the kitchen. I have always made food a priority, investing in lots of wholefoods, superfoods, organic produce an good quality cuts of meat. I see food as an investment in your health, whatever you put into your body is what you get to of it. Put in rubbish and you will feel like rubbish. So when I was looking at our weekly spend on food for the 2, while it was all good food it was really starting to add up. We were sending about $120-$140 on food each week, I tried to keep it to $100 but we always seemed to go over.

Aside from the amount of money that we were spending we were also throwing a lot of food out on closer inspection. I estimate that we were throwing out at LEAST $20 worth of food each week. Between the meat that went off, the half sliced tomato thats gone funky, the brown avocado and the left overs of that meal that was less than tasty it was all adding up.

So the breakdown of what we were spending was looking something like this:

Butcher- $30-40

Supermarket- $40-50

Green Grocer- $30-40

Health Food Shop- $20-25

So on a big shop we were spending about $155. Breaking it down to a daily spend brings that to $22.15 and between 2 people it brings it to $11.07 each. Approximately costing us $3.70 each meal over the week. At this point of the article I must say that I do love numbers and I am a bit of a maths nerd and always have been so I'm sorry if you don’t really care for the breakdown.

It doesn't sound like all that much when you break it down, but keep in mind that on top of this there was probably 3-4 lunches bought and we would eat out 1-2 nights each week.

So how am I going to halve our grocery bill? Well it was a LOT easier then I had ever expected. I started by setting myself a rough budget for each section of shopping. My breakdown now looks something like this:

Butcher- $20

Supermarket- $20

Green Grocer- $20

Health Food Shop- $10

I must also preface this by saying that I don’t include my standard pantry health food staples within this. I purchase all of my nuts, seeds, coconut oil etc in bulk once every month or two so I am not saying that this is all that I eat. This general spend for this is still only about $50.

BUTCHER

I will always look for pieces of meat that are on special and keep it to 3 serves of meat a week. This has also been more of a conscious effort for us to reduce the amount of meat that we are consuming and increasing our veggie intake. What we buy from the butcher is never the same, it will generally be some chicken, lamb and beef.

SUPERMARKET

This is really where our savings start to happen, we were buying so much extra ‘stuff’ that we really didn't need.

A general shop will include something like this-

Olive oil, organic tinned chickpeas, organic tinned tomatoes, organic yogurt, frozen berries, almond milk, rice flakes + whatever household products we need- i.e. garbage bags etc.

GREEN GROCER

Again, it is all about shopping smart. Reading the price of the produce you are buying will give you a really good idea of what is in season and what is not. To get even more bang for your buck then head to a green grocer that uses ‘NQR’ produce, bring on the wonky cucumber and the small broccoli heads.

Investigate your local organic producers as they will often offer weekly boxes which are amazing value.

HEALTH FOOD SHOP

I generally buy free range eggs ( WES EGGS are the best!!!!) and bonsoy. Quite boring I know, but these are staples in our diet and can’t do without them. Here I'll also grab an organic sourdough loaf if there is one available.

The main benefit (aside from having some extra cash) is the fact that we are using our food more efficiently. Throwing out less…actually a LOT less. I am using all of the offcuts from veggies to make next weeks stock, and making soups filled with veggies to use up any produce that is beginning to look a bit iffy. And this is nothing new, in fact it is some of the oldest practices going around but it just makes sense.

If you don’t believe me then below is our grocery shop from this week and the grand total of the costs. From this weeks shop the cost per meal is $1.60, compared to $3.70. And while this may not seem like much it adds up to $88.20 per week and equals $4,586.40 per year! Hello holidays!

I do understand that all of this may not be totally do-able every single week, and if you have kids then that adds a whole other dimension. But I do urge you to take a good look at the spend on food, and if not the spend then look at the amount of food you are throwing out.

Green Grocer - $19

2 heads of broccoli, 1 whole cauliflower, bag of potatoes, bananas, bag of apples, mushrooms, bag of carrots, spinach, 2 avocado, pear, lemons, sweet potato, tomatoes