Hi to All.

I have questions to All of You.The question is :How much money do You spend monthly on food and what do you buy to save money?
I love to shop in costco,but the problem is that shop closes early ,so last month going to Safeway we spent bunch of money.I am curious what you buying at costco and what you cook out of it to make it cheaper?

Thank you,

We do waste a lot of food I have tried to encourage Claudeth to be a little less wasteful but so far it has done no good. We spend almost $1000 at the grocery store last month for just the two of us

My wife just read that and said "Wow they eat a lot"

We try to spend less than $400.00 per month for the three of us. We buy some fruit, look for meat on sale, pasta, juice, soda, chips and the required cookies. Occasionally we have to get toilet paper, cleaners, coffee etc. We are very proud of ourselves when we spend less than $75 in week and we treat ourselves by going to dinner out or something fun like that. If you keep it simple and get some recipes (betty crocker and ones like that) you can get inexpensive meals that are good.

We easily spend $1000.00 a month on food.

I cook often and we entertain a lot. We eat very well.

I'm freaky deaky about expiration dates and things being fresh.

If I lived alone, it would be different- I would rarely cook just for myself.

yes we spend about the same not more then 400$ a month on food for 3 persons , and i believe safeway is one of the most expensive stores i would never shop there , we save a lot with collecting coupons from the internet to print out and looking always for items on sale and try to avoid the name brand products there is most of the time a cheaper version with the same quality with noname available and of course comparing prices in every shop we go to like walmart , aldi or shoppers .


also my husband is in the military and we have the option to go shopping for groceries on every military installation which does not mean it is always cheaper , sometimes even more then outside the base ....

Seriously, about 80$ a month on just me. The pets are a different story.

Just cook traditional Russian meals. Lots of bread and potatoes. Those things are pretty cheap no matter where you buy them. The more you cook from scratch the more you will save. Avoid buying food that is out of season. Stick to chicken and rice over expensive seafood and fine cuts of meat and you'll do just fine.

We spend about $200 a month on groceries (this includes TP, laundry detergent, and some personal grooming items). This does not include what we spend on eating out. I use a lot of coupons, and base most of my week's shopping on what's on sale that week.

we spend about less than $150 a month on food. my husband has taught me a lot about shopping. first of all try not to eat as much! LOL! I know it is hard! Anyway I have realized that the most expensive stuff is "packaged stuff" . And just buy the no frills brands or stuff on sale and do the coupon thing/ If you stick to veggies, fruits, rice, pasta you will save a lot rather than buying frozen or instant stuff which is very expensive. Instead of the chicken breasts cutlets get the whole chicken (I know I know its more work! taking off all the skin and all) or if u like beef get a cut that u can slice thin and make a stir fry type meal with lots of veggies or u can make a satay(indonesian/malayasian dish) It makes the beef go further and its healthier too. ALso try to find a place that specializes in produce they are usually cheaper than a chain grocery store. Making your own soups and stews are good. Rice is great and I eat it 3 times a day dont be fooled about the carbs I have actually lost weight! Rice is cheeeep!!!!!!!!!!!!also potatoesJust buy a 20 lb bag rice for 5 or 6 dollars on sale. Beans and rice are healthy and very filling! THe prepared foods are the ones that add up, just observe what you buy the next time. When I lived alone I spent more $$ on food myself and the food didnt go so far...now we are together and we spend less on food and I eat healthier . Good luck. Oh yeah forget the juices, we just drink water for the most part...............................

When I was married, we used to shoppe at Costco and bought lots of things. Meats, poultry (chicken) we'd buy in large quantities and then immediately repackage into smaller portions when we got home. These would go directly into the freezer. I'd typically put them into packages that would make 2 servings, so that it would be convenient when she and I were alone. If her daughter was with us, we'd cook twice the amount (for 4) and repackage the leftovers for lunches.

Sometimes, we'd intentionally make extra large dinner with the intent to have leftovers for lunch. When dinner would be cleaned, it would go straight into plastic containers for each of us to take for lunch.

We had storage space, so we'd buy other things that could be stored and be fine. Paper goods (tissues, toilet paper), dry goods, pastas, canned goods used in normal sized cans (e.g. tomato paste, tomato sauce)

Some of the frozen goods at Costco are good if you have a large freezer. Not the snacks or treats, but things like chicken wings, frozen shrimp, etc. It was helpful if they had resealable packages that we could take for a single meal and leave the rest for later.

We tried the fresh produce but it didn't work, because its such a large quantity that we didn't eat it all before it spoiled. We thought the Costco pizza was actually quite good and worth a meal and lunch later.

As you can tell, we didn't object to leftovers and bringing lunches. I know that some people don't/can't/won't do that. We found it cheaper to take lunch than to buy. Leftovers were usually planned for.

Its been a while, so I can't really say how much we'd spend. But I hope this helps.

we spend about 600.00 for 4 people and this includes kids breakfasts and lunches at school

I would hate to speculate on our monthly food budget, because I'm a fat guy, but food is one of our biggest expenses. We don't hold back when it comes to victuals. (Or, "vittles" as they say in Russalachia.)

First thing.... STOP BUYING ORGANIC ANYTHING!!! A couple threads over, you were talking about buying organic strawberries from Safeway. Organic anything costs like 6 times as much as chemical infested everything. If you're going to buy the organic stuff (which is a scam, anyway!) buy it from an organic foods or "healthy living" store. They've usually got the best deals when it comes to that crap. A farmers' market or produce market or something of that nature may be available in your area as well.

(Let me just go on record here and say it..... I HATE VEGGIES AND FRUIT! UGH!!!!! Yucky, yucky, yucky!)

Next..... to truly reduce your costs, you need to effectively plan your meals and buy in quantities closest to your needs. You should have a "meal plan" mapped out and know what you need to buy and for which meals you'll need it. Always have a list, and stick to it when shopping. NEVER, ever, ever go to the grocery store on an empty stomach!

Buy things like toilet paper, paper towels, rice, potatoes, meat, cheese, cereal, sauces, canned veggies, soups, Kraft Mac'n'Cheese shells, etc., from Costco. (And those bomb-@$$ Ghirardelli triple chocolate brownies!) Things that are large and will "keep" for a while or can be broken down and refridgerated/frozen. Beer/wine are also usually priced pretty well at warehouse stores. (So is gasoline if available.) You can also stock up on personal items like toothpaste, soap and shampoo, lotion, vitamins, OTC medications, women's stuff, etc. at a lower price than your supermarket.

Buy the perishable goods like milk, eggs, your fresh fruits and veggies at the local supermarket.

Costco's hours shouldn't affect you too greatly as you should only need to go there once or twice a month. Everything else can be purchased weekly or bi-weekly at the local supermarket. (Also, as mentioned in another post, Safeway is pricey. There should be a "discount" supermarket in your area, something like an Aldi or GFS foods. These stores usually have a more generic selection of most items, but everyone buys their produce from the same places... places like the farms of NoCal.)

Food prep (or the lack of food prep) is the biggest money grabber. Pop-Tarts at $3/box will get you by for four days. A loaf of bread, a pack of butter, and a little jelly or cinnamon/sugar for $3 will get you by for more than two weeks. Things like that are huge money savers.

I don't want to know how much we spend, but looking at myself sideway in the mirror, it's a lot.

We shop at Winco in Northern California or Food Max. I don't know if you are in No. Cal. but I would find a large warehouse style grocery store. Safeway is pretty expensive and Costco you buy in large quantities and the prices are not always that good. I use to call Costco the $100 store because I could never leave without spending that much. Then it changed to the $200 store until two weeks ago. We spent $400 and I almost passed out.

We buy rice by the 25lb. bag at our international grocery store. The kind we like is around $8.

We go to the farmer's market a few times a month. There, we buy fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, fish, and spices. For about $60-80, I can usually get enough to last us 2 weeks or more. That is a pretty good deal considering we eat a lot of shrimp, salmon, chicken, pork, oxtail, and goat. This would cost me hundreds in the grocery store.

I go to the Wonderbread Store to buy what they call "day old" bread. It's 3 for $1.00 to maybe 70cents a loaf there, depending. If I'm having a chocolate craving, I also get the 3 boxes of hostess cakes for $5.00 deal too.

Those are my regular trips. If I see a good bargain, I am not beyond varying my routine to cash in on it.

I spend too much on food because when you're single it ends up costing more to cook everything from scratch and then throw half away... I don't go out to lunch at work so that does save a lot- usually I buy large bags of bean burritos for $3.99 - two make a good lunch for only $.80.

G and I are both vegetarians and I think when he comes we will eat Nepali style, mostly dal and rice with veggies. Nepalis get anxious if they don't eat dal bhat at least once a day - even if G has had noodles, etc. he feels like he hasn't really eaten if he hasn't had his daily dal bhat. I want to learn to make chili momos, our favorite food.

let me say something about Costco, i dont like one thing of Costco, that u cant buy anything if u done have costco card, and for sure u going to pay 50 bux to get that card and not one time but every year lool well what can i do i like to go to stores, so i have to have it

We spend under $400 a month on food for the two of us. We buy cheap stuff - mostly chicken, rice, yogurts, frozen food, noodles and tuna, sometimes (not too often) fruits and veggies. We live in an area where everything costs a lot, so it doesn't matter how hard we try to save. At one time (when I was in school and he was making little money), we lived off hamburger helper and MacCheese. Those days are gone now, but now that I look back at it, it wasn't too bad after all

thanks guys:)good info:))
Its harder for Us since are all into healthy lifestyle,doing bunch of gym and eating healthy.My man needs fish meat and fresh veggies..
I also do not eat much chocolates.more fruits..so its more expensive..
I guess I have to start making plan for a week what we cook in advance:)

I am still a bachelor living alone so I scavange a lot. Whatever is in the refrigerator......... animals found on the road (point of impact is the most tender spot)............ tree bark....... My monthly food budget is small but I find myself spending a lot on antacids and other stomach medicines. My finacee promises that I will eat better after she arrives.

Its not that we eat a lot, Claudeth just cooks a lot I am trying to teach her but it is tough going

We try to budget about $600 for groceries per month for 4 of us, but when we add how much we spend eating out on top of that, probably close to $1,000 a month.

I like the meat at Costco - we can get ground turkey in packets of 4 for about $2/lb. For awhile they had pork loin (very lean) for $1.99/lb. The cut, quality and price of the meat at Costco is hard to beat.

We shop at Trader Joe's for things like eggs, cheese and produce - they have some really good frozen veggies that are also organic and they're cheap.

The rest of things we buy at Stater Bros., Ralph's and Von's - usually just hit their ad items (for example, Von's had Hormel chili on sale for $1/can ...about half off normal price) to save the most.


It means going to several places to buy all the groceries, but I've found this system to work pretty well.

Every Sunday my ex used to go to a half dozen different stores to get groceries. I am just too damn lazy to do that so its mostly Vons and then about once every three months is $400+ at Costco

We typically spend about $1,000 a month on groceries for the two of us. Changing jobs this month, we have tried to stay on a budget, which has not been fun. I'm kind of cheap when it comes to shopping, I usually try to get store brand stuff and things on sale. We also eat out quite a bit.

I agree that organic anything is a ripoff. (I remember chemistry in college, doesn't organic mean a carbon molecule -- which is all food?) It isn't any better for you, and probably has more bacteria. Don't waste your money.

Back in college I managed to live on about $50 a month for groceries, it can be done. Lots of potatoes, mac&cheese, and ramen noodle.

Well if you want to go back to college days, i worked in the cafeteria and my roommate and I lets say repatriated a lot of food. It took about 6 weeks (including 1 ice cream social) to go through a 5 gallon bucket of cut strawberries.

We go to Sam's club for gas and formula(much better price and we have coupons), I also will check and see if they have deals on meat or anything else that might interest us. I am thinking of going to the 3 gallon container of Ketchup since Elena cant seem to eat anything without it. I asked her once if she knew what chicken tastes like, she said "Of course" and I asked does it taste like ketchup? Talk about cultural differences, I dont get that one.

We go to a regular grocery store for everything else.

Organic is a joke, unless they can show me, that the seeds came from organic plants going all the way back, that the earth they plant them in has never been treated, that the water comes from a pure aquifer, that the farmer wore gloves when handling, that it was washed in pure spring water, that it was transported to market by horse drawn carriage and the horse was fed with organic grains and they can trace the source of everything that comes in contact then I will buy organic but until then I believe the perservatives are going to make me live longer.

Organic is a label that is often thrown around indiscriminately. If you go to Safeway and buy anything labeled organic, you're just paying too much money for roughly the same as anything else in the store. You have to look harder to find real organic food. And to me, it isn't about pesticides or fertilizers or preservatives or anything like that, although I really do think those things are harmful in the long run to our health and the environment. But for me, an organic peach, for example, just has MUCH more flavor than a non-organic. Most real organic foods I've had simply taste better, and that's enough for me to be cool with paying the premium. But again, you have to understand what you're buying and not just look at the "organic" label.

This is why I boycot fruits and vegitables entirely.

I'll tell you where you can get MUCH more flavor....... in a tube of artificial flavoring. And, you can get MUCH more flavoring in any flavor you can imagine.

I SAY BRING BACK THE MSG!!!

And while we're at it, give me a pack of filterless Lucky's and a big ol' BLT sandwich with processed bread, enough Mayo to stop up a drain pipe, thick pieces of greasy bacon, and tomatoes with enough pesticide and radiation to... on second thought, hold the tomatoes, that stuff will kill you.

Seems like this topic -- how to save on food -- is becoming a lot more important lately for Russians, especially on fixed budgets, right?

Funny you mention the old BLT my wife has fallen in love with them. I havent eaten this much bacon in a long time, now we have to buy bacon and that squishy white bread for making the bacon sandwiches.

As far as the tomotoes go they are SATAN's apples to me so no touchy.

We do waste lots of food too. Thats because my husband doesn't want to eat leftover foods, every leftovers after we eat end up on the trash. Even the raw meats that we stocked on the freezer he throw it away after 1 week. So we go grocery shopping every week and we spend $50 to $70. On his days off we dine out and we spend $30 to $50 a meal.

That's a FAT budget! (It's nice to enjoy only the freshest of foods. Once I hit that lottery, I'm right there with you.)

Irina and I are closest to the $600-for-two budgets. $100 is spent on my personal taste for nice imported cheeses and coldcuts. Another $100 is fruit. Irina never got to eat as much fruit as she wanted when she was living in Siberia, and now she is crazy for it. Every weekend we are at the local Farmer's Market buying berries in the summer, apples and pears in the winter. Also, after two years in the US, we still spend a maddening amount of time in the supermarket on what she calls "doing research", always ending up with a few new items that she wants to try.

Despite Irina's tendency to behave like a kid in a chocolate store, I am spending less money on food than I did when I was single, because she can't bear the thought of paying money to someone else to do something that she could do herseslf. (I guess that's another Russian thiing). As a result, we almost never eat out, and we very seldom buy packaged baked goods, preferring to bake our own. She also makes her own jam and jellies from scratch and pickles herring by herself.

I"m not counting the money I spend on good wine, or the money we spend on our two overfed cats. I'm too embarrassed to admit how much gets spent on the cats. Irina tried her Russian recipes for pets (kasha in chicken broth, etc.) but they didn't like it, and their willpower proved to be stronger than hers.

I dont even want to know how much i spend on food in total per month. I think I figured it out something like $200-ish. I seldom eat at home as I'm single and NEVER home long enough to cook. I go home only to sleep and then right back to work again. So I always eat on the go. I never get the little frozen $1 meals in the freezer section anymore cuz I'm hungry 20 mins later. THen I only end up going out to eat anyways which was what I was trying not to do in the first place. So I just gave up and only eat out:) Prob is.....I'm getting sick of all the restaurants around my workplace, LOL