So, why do we have a $200 a month grocery budget anyway? Is it really just all about saving money? The answer might surprise you!
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Our $200 a month grocery budget has been a long source of intrigue! Over the last several years I’ve received many emails and comments asking things like, “How do you manage to live on such a low budget?” “What do you all eat? Just processed, junk food?” “What are your tips to save on groceries?” “Can you please teach me how to shop like you do?” “How do you decide if something is a good price?”
I try to pack my weekly What I Spent & Saved posts as full of tips and helpful information as possible, but I realize that it is still probably hard to get a good grasp of just exactly how I make our budget work. So, in an effort to make things more clear and hopefully help you spend less on groceries as well, I’m doing a series of post that will be all about Our $200 Grocery Budget- the way I shop, the key things that help me save, my favorite money saving tricks and more!
But, before I dive into all the fun specifics of how I shop, I wanted to first address the whole question of why we have a $200 grocery budget in the first place. It’s a question that I assume some of you have, even though you’ve been polite enough not to ask it. 🙂
Why do we have a $200 grocery budget?
The History
When we got married 8 ½ years ago, we had very little money or possessions to our names. But we had a lot of determination to live debt free and wanted to buy a house within a year of getting married. It’s kind of a long story, but thanks to some generous people, the grace of God and lots of hard work, we were able to buy a house 6 months after we got married. We were probably kind of crazy though because we actually borrowed the full $90,000 that we needed for our mortgage! But we had gotten advice from numerous people that we trusted and they encouraged us to do it and we felt like it was the route we were to take. And thankfully, it turned out well for us!
READ MORE: 10 Things We Did to Pay Off Our $90,000 Mortgage in 5 Years
But obviously, that meant we needed to scrimp and save like crazy to make things work! After some fairly animated discussions about what our grocery budget should be (I thought we needed more and my husband thought we needed less), we finally settled on something close to $150. At first I bulked at the tightness of it. It seemed impossible! And then one day I stumbled across a coupon blog (that was back when there was literally only a handful of them) and I was fascinated. Suddenly, I felt like I had some tools to make our too-tight budget work!
Over the next couple of months, I learned all that I could, read everything about couponing and money saving that I was able to find and gradually, the whole thing of keeping our grocery spending under control went from being a hardship to being a fun challenge.
Over the years, because of rising prices and the addition of children to our family, we gradually upped our grocery budget and are now at $200 a month for our family of five.
Do we really need to live that frugally?
In a word, no. While we initially set our grocery budget this low because it truly was pretty much a necessity, that is no longer the case. Our financial situation has gradually improved over the last several years, and while money is tight again with my husband being back in school, we are blessed and in reality, could up our grocery budget if we absolutely needed too.
Why we have chosen to keep our grocery budget low:
1. I enjoy the challenge
I know this might sound crazy, but most of the time I really do enjoy the challenge of making our budget work. Yes, there are days when I’m ready to call it quits and up our budget to $350, but the majority of the time I revel in the thrill of figuring out how to make it work- much like some of you revel in the challenge of training for a marathon or the challenge of solving a puzzle or fixing up an old piece of furniture. To me, it’s almost a game to see what things I can do to save money each week and yet still have a nicely stocked pantry and eat delicious, healthy meals. I’ll admit, if I hated grocery shopping or didn’t find saving money on groceries to be a fun thing, I am almost sure that we would have upped our grocery budget long ago!
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2. Allows us to meet other goals
Obviously, if we would up our grocery budget then we’d have to reduce our spending in some other category in order to compensate. By keeping our grocery spending low, it’s allowed us to meet some other goals that we had such as house projects, sending my husband to school without borrowing anything, taking a family trip last summer, saving for a 10th anniversary trip, being able to give generously to others (something that we feel is very important), to name just a few.
3. It helps us live simply
It’s not that it’s necessarily wrong to have lots of nice things or enjoy expensive food, but it’s so easy to get sucked into the American mindset that you need to have certain things in order to be truly happy. The fact of the matter is, nothing can buy you happiness. Yes, it’s true that some things make life easier and more enjoyable, but that’s about as far as it goes. Contentment is so important!
I don’t know if this makes sense to you or not, but by keeping our grocery spending low, we are in a small way, attempting to help us learn contentment. It kind of serves as a regular reminder to us that we don’t need a lot of expensive things to be happy.
Do I think everyone needs to have a $200 grocery budget?
By all means, no! In fact, I feel so strongly about it that I wrote a whole post addressing the subject!
So, there you have it! Now you know why we have a $200 grocery budget. 🙂
Other posts about our $200 Grocery Budget:
* Our $200 Grocery Budget: The Importance of Stockpiling
* Our $200 Grocery Budget: How to Start Building a Grocery Stockpile
* Our $200 Grocery Budget: How a Price List Saves Money
* Our $200 Grocery Budget: How I Plan my Deal Shopping Trips
Stacey
I know that we could never get down to $200 a month for our grocery budget but I am definitely up for tips and tricks. I signed up for your newsletter to see what I can learn. We have lots of allergies in my family and live in Alaska so food is pretty pricey, but I know we can cut our budget.
ThriftyFrugalMom
I love your attitude, Stacey! I think attitude is the most important thing when it comes to saving money and from what I can tell, you’ll do pretty well! 🙂
Thanks for signing up for my email list too. I currently don’t do a newsletter, but that’s on my list of things to start doing hopefully in the next couple of months.
Ruth Washburn
Your “$200 budget” caught my eye and I am very interested in learning your tips. I am the 3rd oldest of seven children (ranging from 24-11) and growing up we have always loved good deals, coupons, etc. My father is especially good at scanning Kroger for the “orange stickers” (managers special) and combining them with coupons.
Anyway though, our grocery bill can still be high and I look forward to hearing more about what you do. How to you find coupon blogs you mentioned.
Thank you.
ThriftyFrugalMom
Ah, sounds like you have a dad like mine! We laugh at some of the stories of things to save money on food back when he was single. My mom isn’t necessarily a spender, but I do think my frugal gene comes mostly from my dad.
Hi Ruth,
I’ll be sharing more about what coupon blogs I use in a future post in my $200 Grocery Budget series. The blog that I use the most is FortheMommas.com and she actually covers Kroger too! If you want to look for other blogs, I would Google something like “Kroger coupon matchups” or “Kroger deals”. Hope that helps!
I’m sure with a family your size, the grocery bill is far from $200. 🙂 My husband is second oldest of a family of 10 and while there are only 5 children still living at home, I’m always amazed at how much food and household supplies they go through!
Liz Joiner
We try to keep our grocery bill at $200 a month as well, everyone told me we were nuts, but for the most part we buy in bulk, like potatoes, or carrots, eggs, etc. Those things that are eaten enough to the point they don’t go bad, but buying in bulk helps. Although there are some months we just have to bump it up.
ThriftyFrugalMom
I always enjoy hearing from other people that have $200 grocery budgets, Liz! Buying in bulk is definitely one of the ways that we save the most. We definitely would have to up our budget though if I wasn’t able to shop at a grocery store that offers some amazing gas reward deals. Basically, when you buy a certain number of specific items, you earn money off gas. I then roll that money that I save on gas back into our grocery budget. I’m suspicious though that until another year, we’ll need to bump our budget up a bit. Our 3 children are eating so much more than they used to and I can’t imagine that we’ll be able to stick with what we do now.
Gwen
One of the frustrating things for me is that food is more expensive in the UK, and there are not as many coupons around here either. However, I try to glean as many grocery money saving ideas as possible from wherever I can! Thank you for sharing your experiences 🙂
ThriftyFrugalMom
Yes, I know I would have a big adjustment if I couldn’t use coupons. I love you how you realize though that you can still save by trying to implement other methods. And really, I think that is so key because every family has different needs and every area has different prices and pros and cons. I don’t know if you’ve read my post on why I don’t think everyone should have a $200 grocery budget or not, but you may find it encouraging. 🙂
Kelly Cox
We live on a $200 budget for groceries too! I am with you on the challenge. Plus, I feel like the budget we keep is a way to be more giving and prayerfully more intentional with our money. Great post. Thanks!
ThriftyFrugalMom
Oh, I love hearing from other people that have a similar budget to ours, Kelly! It would be fun to hear some of your tips for making it work. And I love how you put it: “a way to be more giving and prayerfully intentional with our money”. Yes! That is exactly what I was trying to say in the It Helps Us Live Simply point. But I think you summed it all up in a simple phrase. 🙂
Meredith
I would love to see your weekly menu plan, like what you did with your weekly haul. I actually find that to be my challenge. I get some great deals and then struggle what to do with it. Or always feel like I have random mismatched ingredients,
ThriftyFrugalMom
Thanks so much for that suggestion, Meredith! I do post a menu plan every two weeks, but because of the way I shop, I do things a bit differently than most and don’t necessarily plan my menus just from my weekly haul. I plan to talk about that in my next post, so hopefully that will clear things up for you at least a little.