Grocery Games

I was reviewing my 2019 year to date spending and was surprised at how much we spent on food. Here’s the chart (I use a plain old excel spreadsheet).

I must have rounded my numbers in January 

The grocery bill covers three adults and a dog. If you have been following my blog, I have posted previously on my grocery savings. Clearly I’m not saving as much as I thought.

If someone asked me, I would have said I spend $500 a month at the grocery store and $100 a month eating out at restaurants.

I can understand the overage in restaurants:
January - husband’s birthday
February/March - on vacation
March - older son’s birthday
April - wedding anniversary

The restaurant meals will be decreasing as we don’t have any special events coming up. We avoid eating out on Mother’s Day; the restaurants are just too crowded. We are also approaching backyard barbecue season. I feel confident that we can keep the May dining out at or below my budgeted amount of $100.

The grocery store is a whole different animal. Since we pay everything using our credit card to earn travel rewards (paid in full every month), it’s easy to see that the biggest culprit is the midweek drop-in shop. Without fail, we are running in to the supermarket in the middle of the week for something!

Unless we’re out of coffee, coffee filters or half and half for coffee, there is no reason to go to the supermarket midweek. Of course, I will continue my usual coupon clipping, rewards card use, shopping sales, meal planning, etc.

So far this month we’ve spent $143.20 which includes a trip to CVS for Coke Zero and candy (that’s not a joke). We could obviously eliminate some costs if we eliminated these guilty pleasures. But that’s a topic for another day.

How do you save on groceries?