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I spent $10k on food last year. What’s good way to track grocery spending? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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So I’m just one dude and 10k a year just on food seems incredibly high. I don’t go out that often, ~$1600 was at restaurants. I’m not really sure what I’m doing wrong while shopping at grocery stores and want to track grocery purchases better. The store I typically go to doesn’t have online receipts to use.

I’m wondering what kind of apps are available for tracking grocery expenditures that Lemmings would recommend? It would be nice to be able to go back and check prices/sizes of things too, so what is being shrinkflated/skimpflated

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[–] RBWells 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Thanks. I'm already doing all this (the processes, I mean - freeze scraps, make stock, big bags of rice, potatoes aren't cheap down here) I just think $35/week for a family is an unattainable target for most. We budget more like $200/week (2 adults, 2 teens are the last kids left at home, all physically active and 3 of us slender) mostly because food is not where I am willing to squeeze the budget, I do all that home cooking, low waste stuff because it makes better food. I do grow us greens and herbs and vegetables too.

I do agree wholeheartedly that meal planning and reducing waste saves the most, while impacting your diet in a positive not negative way.

[–] weeeeum 1 points 11 months ago

Yeah I absolutely agree about the healthy but also tasty diet. It could be even cheaper if we ate nothing but roasted sweet potatoes but I am never doing that. Additionally I should mention that the 150$ is a very low figure because I used the cheapest produce, cheapest protein, cheapest meat and nothing else. It definitely creeps up a significant margin when buying bread, butter, cheese, eggs, cream, oil, sauces, beef, processed meat, snacks, etc.

I also think a major factor is the family. My family is Asian, and very small. My mother and grandfather are both around 100lbs and fairly sedentary, they eat very little. I'm the odd one out at 230lb because my dad's Welsh and I have a very large stature and frame like him. I also work a job (mom's retired), have very physically intense hobbies and I tend to get the lion's share of the food lol.

Something I should mention is that I too splurge on some ingredients, but I left them out of the equation, because they are luxury (to me at least) items. Main ingredient I splurge on is Tsuru Bishio soy sauce 40$, worth every damn penny, quality extra virgin (EV) sesame oil and quality EV olive oil. The oil is around 10$ each but are small bottles that go pretty fast. It's cheaper to buy them in bulk but it gets stale and quickly loses complex, volatile, flavors, so they are a "luxury" item to me.

Other ingredients we usually buy are, lots of ketchup for Gramps, tartar sauce, lots of Kewpie mayo, pickles, a Chinese amount of garlic (like a pound and a half a week), coffee creamer, dairy, snacking cheese for ma and probably some other stuff. All of which I excluded from the monthly spending because they don't provide much in substance/sustenance and would skew the "bare minimum" figure. A typical grocery bill, including ALL food items, a larger variety of produce and meat, and more meat in general, would probably be 250 to 300 per month. I probably eat around 150$ of that and are probably more representative of your family members, if not a little over representative (trying to lose some weight right now haha).

So I guess our spending, accurately adjusted, isn't that far off after all lol.