January '05 Peanut Gallery

I try and keep my grocery bill at around $100 a week (this doesn't always include Costco trips for paper products and bulk items, but I do not go to Coscto every week).  DH and I were talking tonight about trying to cut this down and just out of curiosity I thought I would ask my favorite ladies ;)

TIA!!
Karen  ;)

My monthly grocery expenses are about $500, so around $125 a week for 5 of us.  That does vary a bit, and it includes paper products, cleaning supplies, Pull-ups for nighttime, toiletries, random household supplies, etc. 

Last year I was spending more and was determined to cut back.  I started meal planning, which really helped.  And I also created a master grocery list - it's a laminated sheet with pretty much everything I ever buy on it.  As I need something, I highlight it with a dry-erase marker and then I take the list with me.  It has saved me from assuming that we probably need ketchup, and then ending up with 4 ketchup bottles in the cabinet because we actually didn't need it, but I kept assuming we did.  LOL  Buying only what I really need has really saved a lot!

I buy a fair amount of generic stuff, look for sales, and use coupons occasionally.

We've gone from spending about $200 a week to spending around $80 with the occasional mid-week trip for something I forgot.

My way to chop the spending was to stop taking DH.. stop making it a "date" because we would just toss things in the cart. When it's just me with Charlie I hurry through the store so he doesn't start crying before we're done and I try to go when Hannah is at preschool I have a limited amount of time to waste wandering around the store. Plus, I shop a lot healthier w/o DH and don't buy a lot of extras.

I try to make a list but usually end up losing it half way through the store. I do think meal planning and coupon clipping would help.. but most of the time coupons seem to be for things that I don't use, so it doesn't really help me save money when I woudn't have bought it in the first place:)

We also cut out purchasing pop and now buy 100% juice -juice boxes so that Hannah wastes less juice in the morning. She's more likely to finish her juice box than a glass of juice, so we're not ending up pouring out half a cup. or she can take it with her to school because it's not as likely to spill. and it frees up space in our fridge! They're not as cool as Capri suns or hi-c juice boxes so she doesn't drink them up as fast either.

I've been buying bags of baby carrots and putting them into snack sized bags so that Hannah chooses them as a snack instead of buying so many bags of crackers or other presized snacks ((do the same thing with crackers, instead of 100 calorie packs I use snack baggies and put goldfish, pretzels, crackers in them so she can grab a baggie)). that's a hekc of a lot cheaper than buying the individual sized snacks.