Looking at your list I’m noticing a few things:

1) Your eating out of season. For example, asparagus is totally not a cheap thing to eat right now. Likely this is similar thing with a lot of your fruit and veggies. To see what is in season check out prices – what is cheap is often in season so load up and enjoy. I still buy the odd thing out of season, but not too often.

2) Your eating some prefab stuff I would question the value of buying: cheese strings, sweet & sour sauce, orange & ginger sauce, pre-made soups (or mixes). If you love them keep them, but they tend to be pricey. I personally like making my our stir fry sauce. It’s never the same twice, but that makes it fun for me. Also I love homemade soups. Some prefab is handy to keep in the house when your just lazy. For example, we keep a frozen pizza and some chicken fingers/fries in the house for that reason. Just watch getting carried away.

3) The more processed it is the more you are paying for it. For example, beef strips. I would just buy a steak and cut it up myself. This is also why a whole chicken is a lot cheaper per pound than a boneless skinless chicken breast. I also tend to limit our beef (other than ground) and chicken beasts consumption to once a week each. Meat and cheese are likely the most expensive things you can eat. By the way, why buy a chicken burger? Either eat a actually chicken breast or buy some ground beef and make your own beef burger.

4) Diapers – you spend $100 at superstore for them. If your hooked on Huggies try to get coupons or perhaps try a smaller package of a cheaper brand (to start). We use Parent’s Choice from Walmart I believe the cost for a case is around $27 for 120 size 5 (I could be wrong, my wife has got the last few cases and I don’t recall the exact price).

5) Breakfast – Cereal is actually expensive to eat. It’s also the same for english muffins and bagels (~$.50 each). We personally eat a bit more toast, homemade muffins (~$0.15 each) and oatmeal with fruit.

That’s my summary on your list. In general try to break costs down per serving to compare items and decide which is giving you the most food enjoyment for the least amount of money. Of course you will want to get some more expensive food once in while. That’s fine. Just try to keep it as a treat and a smaller part of the bill. For example, we rotate month to month buying a roast, ham or seafood. We NEVER buy all three at once.

I hope all this helps.

Tim

This doesn’t include milk because we still had 4x 4L jugs in the freezers, or much meat for the same reason.

It seems like the superstore list has a ton of junk food, much more then normal. For any items that I felt beyond the basics, or were expensive I included the price:

SUPER STORE: $300

frozen corn
frozen sweat peas

brown mushrooms
green onions
bananas
asparagus – $4.35

beef strips – $3.99
boneless pork balls – $9.99
veggie hot dogs – $8.99

buns – $0.20
english muffins

2x frozen pizzas – $6.29/ea
pizza pockets – $2.28

soymilk – $1.99
generic orange juice – $3.29
orangina juice – $2.67

parmesan cheese – $8.69
2x cheese strings – $4.98/ea
2x large cottage cheese – $4.98/ea
2x large sour cream – $2.18/ea
feta cheese – $5.91

hot chocolate powder – $7.48
gummi bears – $1.19
cola candies – $1.79
peach rings – $1.40
pretzels – $2.48
cheetos – $3.39
3x baked nachos – $3.49/ea
chocolate chips – $6.58

rotini pasta
lasagna noodles

all bran cereal
quaker cereal – $8.97
generic toasted O cereal

manwich sauce
red pepper dip – $2.99

generic shampoo – $6.99
2x huggies diapers – $36.99/ea
pullups – $26.99

SAFEWAY – $150 on 10% off day (saved $54.12 with combined discounts)

apple sauce
couscous soup – $5.00
4x salsa – $3.49/ea
sweet & sour sauce – $3.49
orange & ginger sauce – $3.99
curry paste – $4.18

2x goldfish soup – $3.49
2x crispix cereal – $5.69/ea
4x food colouring – $1.99/ea
2x peanut butter – $2.50/ea

3x large astro yougurt – $2.50/ea

3x donuts – $.58/ea
2x flax begals – $5.78

chicken breast box – $26.26
chicken burgers – $11.98
chicken sandwich meat – $4.78

bananas
kiwi
cantaloupe
green peppers
red onions
red peppers
carrots
avocados
plantains
broccoli
white onion
medium onion
gala apple
red pears

So let me know what you think, any suggestions on things we shouldn’t get or have paid too much for?

I use the rule of thumb that if its something i would normally tip for, then it’s entertainment. otherwise, it’s food.

Very good points. I personally eat breakfast at home every day or take something to work. I also eat leftover’s for lunch just about every day.

As I’ve mentioned before we do a mid month run for more fresh veggies and fruit and the odd loaf of bread. Typically it is well under $50 (I would guess the average around $30). As noted above milk is approximately $35/month.

I would agree your breakfast/lunch numbers are about right, but I would guess your suppers are very different from mine. I’m usually not that high and our snacks/supplies again is typically much lower.

Mmm, I guess I need another post to short this all out.

Tim

A lot of people I speak to seem shocked when I mention this figure, but it seems to me that a lot of people have not truly done the analysis to see what their food/supplies budgets actually amount to. They will do a quick grocery trip with cash and not count it as a grocery expense at the end of the month, etc.

Do you eat breakfast at home? Many people I know grab a coffee and doughnut on the way to work… this is a massive expense that I save because we eat at home. But it increases food budget.
How about lunches? We pack our lunches primarily from left-overs from the previous night’s dinner. Many people, again, go out for lunch and spend a horrendous amount of money doing it.

Breakfast costs us, on average, about $2 per day. That’s $60 per month.
Lunch costs us about $4 per day. That’s $120 per month.
Dinner averages around $5-10 per meal. That amounts to $150-300 per month.
Total: $330-$480 per month.
Add to that total snacks and supplies and you easily hit the $500-600 mark.

We eat a lot of fresh fruits and veggies which drives up our food cost. But, as mentioned by others, you have to invest in your health as well as your finances. Spending an extra $50 per month on fresh fruit/vegetables is money well spent. We do a shop at Real Canadian Superstore about every 3 weeks and then go once or twice per week to the local Safeway to pick up some produce and items we’ve run low on.

I’d be curious to know what additional groceries you require as the month wears on. Milk, fruits, etc (those bananas definitely won’t last a month!).

The changes that made the biggest difference to us were cutting way back on meat, fish, and cheese (now no meat, fish 1-2x week, and cheese probably 1 week a month), and trying to find better sources for veggies. We have found a farm in our area that, although not certified organic, doesn’t use pesticides and is hugely cheaper than our local grocery store options. We buy a month’s worth of produce for $40 that only then needs supplementing with avocadoes, oranges, etc every week. Highly recommend doing some investigating in your area for options. Tastes WAY better and no packaging!

And we had the same experience when shopping for deals–we’d just end up hoarding more. We’ve found this year that shopping only for what we will eat in a week–even though individual items may not be on sale–has actually brought the bills way down. Not to mention the storage space that’s opened up! When things like cereal or flour go on sale we’ll still buy one extra, but not 6 like we used to.