So I had a hypothesis that I might be spending too much money on food, especially considering the fact that I’m now living with my girlfriend and buying food for two.
What I found was disgusting. I spent $939 on food (groceries + restaurants) in June.
Apparently I’m eating out much too much. In fact I ate out 35 different times during the month of June, which comes to over one meal outside the home per day. I guess there’s a reason my friends call me Fat Kevin.
I’m not as young as I used to be and my metabolism isn’t as strong as it was years ago. If I don’t start eating out less, I’m going to get fat, spend a bunch of money, Tag is going to leave me and I’ll lose to The Hoff in my Race to $1 Million.
I can’t let any of that stuff happen.
I’m Not Eating Out for 7 Days
I decided that Tag and I need to kick this eating out habit. Cooking for one is hard because you always end up with a lot of leftovers and you are stuck either eating leftovers most of the time or throwing out excess food. If you end up throwing out lots of excess food then it isn’t much cheaper than eating out.
Luckily Tag and I have done that. We have a few meals planned this week and a bunch of stuff to make easy meals like sandwiches. We made a decision on Saturday that we wouldn’t eat out for seven days.
So far it’s going well. On Sunday Tag made banana bread, which we ate for breakfast. Then I made grilled cheese for lunch, and we went to my aunt’s house for a steak dinner like we do every week.
Now we just have to make it six more days without spending a dime at a fast food joint or restaurant.
What’s Next?
We are going to make it a week without eating out. But it won’t mean much if we go right back to Jack in the Box and Taco Bell next Sunday. The goal is that we find some recipes over the next week that we really enjoy and will cook more often.
Furthermore, I’m going to start keeping closer track of my eating out expenses. I’m not sure what my monthly food budget should be, but I know it needs to be lower than $939.
Be on the lookout for more food related posts. This is a pretty big deal for me and I’m not going to let overspending on food ruin my goals of having money to buy a house and increasing my net worth.
Readers: How much do you spend every month on food? What do you do to keep your food expenses down?
Carnival Links
Carnival of Fin. Camaraderie at The University of Money
Carnival of Financial Planning at Master The Art of Saving
Carnival of MoneyPros at Portfolio Princess
Carnival of Retirement at Good Financial Cents
Totally Money Carnival at Money Reasons
Y & T’s Weekend Ramblings at Young and Thrifty
Yakezie Carnival at Tackling Our Debt
Kevin McKee is an entrepreneur, IT guru, and personal finance leader. In addition to his writing, Kevin is the head of IT at Buildingstars, Co-Founder of Padmission, and organizer of Laravel STL. He is also the creator of www.contributetoopensource.com. When he’s not working, Kevin enjoys podcasting about movies and spending time with his wife and four children.
You are lucky you have a huge opportunity here to save money. Two people should be able to eat and drink for about $50 week including eating out and meals at home. Start by buying two Sunday papers to get the coupons. Read your junk mail with grocery store ads. Follow a blog that specializes in writing about your favorite grocery store to know about the great free or cheap deals. Shop the first day of the sale each week buying what is on sale and stockpile a litttle on stuff you use regularly when it is on sale. Eat cereal or fruit or yogurt for breakfast. We make 10 salads for the week on Sundays so we have lunch made easy to grab, don’t eat out lunch. Make fish or chicken with vegetables or rice for dinner. Have the leftovers for a small snack when you are hungry after work. Go out once a week on Fri or Sat only.
We actually coupon quite a bit and make money each year with coupons, so our food and drinks and all household supplies are paid for with coupons and nothing comes out of our household budget toward any of that. It is our hobby and takes a bunch of time, but it is a profitable hobby. Its not for everyone.
First of all congratulations on spending so little on food. It’s pretty incredible that you can eat on such a small budget.
With that being said, there’s no way I would spend my time couponing. I spend my free time working on websites to hopefully increase my income. I’d rather focus on increasing income because the max I can save by couponing is about $1000 a month, but I have unlimited earning potential with new income streams.
Once again, I have nothing against couponers (except when I get stuck behind them in the checkout line at the store), but it’s just not for me. If I can get down to $500 a month I’ll be happy.
My girlfriend and I budget 500 a month between the two of us. We only eat out at most twice a week though. Good job for recognizing the budget black hole and good luck resisting eating out.
Yeah I think $500 a month is a pretty good goal to strive for. We need to stop eating out so much, start getting water instead of soda and alcohol at restaurants, always eat dessert at home (or just don’t eat dessert), etc.
I think we can do it. Here’s hoping the July numbers start looking a little better
I’m in the same boat. My wife and I spent $900+ on food last month. We even do a lot of weekly meal planning and grocery shopping.
That said, we eat balanced healthy meals. My wife is an excellent cook and can make amazing dinners (I can hold my own, too). Very little goes to waste normally.
Go on Amazon and find some cookbooks. Utilize Allrecipes.com – there are some great ones on there. Grill as much as you can (everything tastes better when grilled).
We don’t coupon since coupons are mostly for processed foods. We do try to take advantage of things on sale.
The biggest issue we still have is eating out. One thing I’m trying to cut down on, but after cooking for 4-5 days straight, you need a break.
I’m with you on the coupon thing. Tag and I don’t always eat healthy, but we do tend to purchase healthier options (at least that’s what she tells me).
Tag has a cookbook and found a recipe for some kind of lime chicken casserole and is making that today. Hopefully it turns out well and gets us excited about eating delicious stuff at home.
My husband and I budget $360 for groceries, $25 for our CSA, and $60 for eating out per month – but those are maximums, so we usually spend less.
I would say if you don’t like leftovers and tend to waste food you should learn to cook an appropriate amount of food for each meal. I either cook large batches of things in our slow cooker and immediately tupperware them in single servings for my lunches or cook just as much as I’m going to eat right then. I very rarely follow a recipe without sizing it down to what we can reasonably eat in a couple days.
Are you eating out so much because you like variety? I’m very monotonous with my eating, but that means I’ve been able to find a pattern that results in very little wasted food that also meets all my nutritional goals.
My girlfriend and I don’t eat out but once a month. We make a date to go and splurge on something expensive. We realized that eating out used to be a fun, exciting experience because we didn’t ever do it growing up! We wanted to recreate that feeling while saving mucho dinero. I budget about $200 a month for food and we ALWAYS have leftovers. We eat a lot of fruit. It’s really quick and easy to grab and go. Dinner is an “activity” that we do together to spend more time together. After I get off of work we go straight into the kitchen and whip up something she found on Pinterest or something. It’s fun and actually we are pretty savvy in the kitchen now that we cook all the time. We usually eat the leftovers for lunch the next day.
I actually laughed when I saw how much you spent on groceries last month. You guys must have been eating good! Sometimes you have to do that. Now if that was spent on Taco Bell and Jack in the Box, then it is a different story. Our family of 6 (4 kids under 5) spends about $400 -$500 a month total on food. We (my wife) do a lot of cooking and meal planning is a big part of that cooking. Your suggestion of finding a lot of recipes that you like and creating them again is a really good one. We used to do coupons, now I just watch the sales ads and shop at the best two local grocery stores for that week. It takes a little more time, but it does save us. Plus, it adds variety because some weeks I go to the local hispanic store and get mexican themed foods while other weeks I go to the national chain store by us and get more american type meals. It adds variety and that is what you need when you cook at home! If you are cooking the same 4 or 5 meals each week, it gets real old real quick and will make you want to eat out a lot more.
Another big money saver is to eat off the value menus when you go out to eat. It is easier to order by saying, “I’ll take the #3,” but you can cut that bill in half by just getting a sandwich, small side and a glass of water. Speaking of water, that is a big key. Drinks are a huge money maker for restaurants. If you are looking to drop weight and lower your calories, drink water. It is crazy how many calories are drank each day with a much lower nutritional value.
We are able to feed a family of 8 for around $1,200 a month. We eat out about 8 times a month. We live in a western city where the cost of living is significantly lower than where you live. However, the cost of food has been going up recently which will require being more creative and conscious of the amount we spend in order to stay in budget.
We tried coupons but found that unless you spent several hours on them, they barely recovered the cost of the paper to deliver them.
One thing that we did find that worked pretty well is price matching. Looking at the sales of other stores and then shopping at a store that will match their prices.
Another thing we do is a grocery Co-op. You pool your money up with neighbors so that you can purchase items in bulk from a distributor and skip the middle man. You are just expected to volunteer a few times a year with unloading the truck and distribution. It also promotes healthier eating since they focus on fresh local ingredients. I’ve found that there are several around the country. The one we use is called Bountiful Baskets.
I am in the same situation as you – live with my girlfriend – and we spend about $300 on groceries + household items (TP, shampoo, etc).
We go out about 4x a month, never for fast food, and spend $30ish each time. Authentic mexican restaurants are usually cheap and tasty.
The key for us is to:
1. Make a list of 7 dinners for the week. Emphasize things you already have (supercook.com) or are on sale at the grocery store.
2. Make a list of ingredients you’ll need to make said dinners
3. Go shopping (we use coupons sometimes)
4. Stick to the menu!
At the very least you can cut your food budget in half.
And another thing, we eat meat with every dinner, so it’s not like we are scraping by on ramen noodles. I’m sure the bill could be even lower if we had a few vegetarian meals a week.
When you buy meat, make sure you look at the price per pound. We’ve found ground turkey/chicken is cheaper and leaner than beef, and tastes about the same. I usually don’t pay over $3/pound for any type of meat.
I spend about $130/month on groceries, which covers most of my dinners and breakfasts, as well as snacks at work and weekend meals. I separate out things like shampoo, shaving cream, etc.
I budget $200/month for work lunches out. I would prefer to see it around $150 and it is some months, but I value that social time away from the office.
I budget around $60/month for when I eat dinner out because I’m too lazy to cook. I’ve been trying to get this down to $10-30/month. Planning has been really helpful with this. I categorize social restaurant spending into my Entertainment category and don’t really watch what it’s spent on.
I think that I could get my food budget down to $200/month total if I ate every meal at home or brought my lunch to work. All in all, I probably average about $500/month for food, but I’m not willing to cut out the work lunches and I don’t really miss the money at all. I don’t want to turn into a 75 year old woman in the body of a twenty-something woman who works in software and has dozens of cats 😉
Several months ago you asked a similar question and quite a few of us, myself included, offered a variety of simple and economical recipes.
No further comment.
Bazinga!
We spend about $450-500/month on groceries and eating out. We have been cutting back little by little and hope to have it down to $350. The wife is a really good cook and a lot of the time I’d rather eat her food rather than at a restaurant. The only thing with the restaurant is the convenience of not having to clean up afterwards so sometimes it is worth it. We save money by using coupons, not extreme like, but I think the wife spends maybe 20 minutes/week clipping coupons. Not bad for saving $20-$30 a week as it adds up in the long run.
We only eat out 8-9 times a month for $2-250 per month. . Our food budget is roughly $400 per month for groceries.
During the week, make note of the meals you wish you’d ordered, then find a recipe for them online.
I am on a cooking real food kick right now, but before that I implemented a point system for restaurants (kind of like Weight Watchers but for dollar amounts). I give myself 50 points a month; cheap like Taco Bell is 3 points, more expensive fast food like Panera is 5 points, decent food (TGIF) is 7 points, and anything really expensive is 10 points. For some reason those arbitrary numbers really help me stay on track – I can’t STAND going over on my points!
The goal for us every month is $200 for eating out and $400 for groceries, for two of us. We usually go over a little for both, but eating out is the only recreation that we really pay for– We don’t really shop other than for food, and we try to volunteer for shows that we go to. So, we don’t feel very guilty about the higher food budget.
One activity you might want to consider: Every week, we have a dinner night with our two best friends (who also live together), and we take turns hosting. No one is allowed to be stressed about it, so if it’s your week and you’re low on cash or energy, you can just make spaghetti if you want (though we all love to cook, so the meals have all been interesting and awesome). The couple who is not hosting has no responsibilities except to bring over a movie of their choice. Thus, the non-hosts get totally pampered, don’t have to clean up, get to watch the movie they want, and don’t have to pay for any food.
It’s been a really fun way to “go out” to dinner twice a month without paying… But to be honest, everyone loves to host! Anyways, I recommend that you and Tag think about setting up something like that with a couple of your friends.
I’m a single guy and spend roughly $400 a month on groceries and eat out once a weekend. Thats also with an emphasis on weightlifting so I’m taking in any where from 200 to 300 grams of protein a day without shakes. Given thats not a typical amount so most should be able to get a way with spending less.
My biggest pointer would be to utilize a slow cooker/crock pot! Most grocery stores I’ve been to have a reduced price meat freezer bin deal where they put meat that will go bad if they dont freeze it. Since its no longer fresh they often significantly discount it and when you cook something for 10 hours its hard for it to not come out tasting pretty good. On top of it its stress free cooking. Just rub the meat with whatever spices you think will taste good. Chop up whatever veggies you want. Throw it all in the pot and let her cook.
Dude, you need emeals. They send you a meal plan weekly based on the deals from whatever store you choose. You can also choose a type of diet you want. There’s 7 meals for the week, with a full shopping list and cooking instructions. My wife and I have saved hundreds already, and it takes the time/stress out of the whole planning/couponing thing. And you’re always shopping the deals.