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With food prices skyrocketing, I'm seeing a lot of...
# budgeting
m
With food prices skyrocketing, I'm seeing a lot of people struggling with their grocery budgets, including myself. Does anyone have any tips? Kosher grocery hacks on a budget? Specifically, would appreciate any advice for home cooked meals, since the easiest way to save money would just be switching to pre-made dinners and pasta, so I'm hoping to get some better tips than that. Gut shabbos.
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r
Costco has cheap Empire chicken and cholov yisroel shredded cheese. But anything you make from raw ingredients would be cheaper. Using a crockpot, pressure cooker and making most of the meals for the week on Sunday works for us. We usually try a combination of cheap starches like rice / potatoes + vegetables and some sort of a protein.
m
That sounds exactly like what we are doing. But I can't get our grocery bill much lower than 1800 for my wife, myself, and our two daughters (3 and 1.5)
r
You may have to track your exact grocery purchases + meals for a week or two to see what you can do.
m
Yeah we keep trying to do that but it's hard because we buy things in bulk to get it cheaper so it's not as easy to track over time.
r
It comes down to a balance of what your family will actually eat, how much effort you want to put into running around looking for the bargains/clipping coupons, how much time you have to actually cook, and how healthy the food will be.
m
Yeah healthy is a big factor. I've noticed in my meeting with families, average unhealthy grocery bill is 1000 and average healthy grocery bill is 2000. no one in the middle.
r
Unhealthy meals turn out to be more expensive in the end with higher bills and obesity. Regarding ā€œhacksā€, one thing we did recently is buy metal pans for cooking to save money on disposables. We also donā€™t use disposable forks/spoons except for kids lunches. Downside is having to wash pans and dishes šŸ˜ž
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m
Yeah we don't use disposables already. No plastics or paper in the house! Though we finally started using paper towels bc the laundry for the towels was getting too crazy.
l
How much is the savings for not using disposable?
f
My average grocery bill per month is about 1300 for myself my wife and two kids. We use almost all disposables but we tend to eat a lot of pasta. I canā€™t even imagine what would happen if we started eating fruits and vegetables. Iā€™d probably have to take out another mortgage.
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m
Yeah that fits right about with what I'm seeing. No pasta with fruits and vegetables are the 2000$ budgets from what I can tell.
Someone message me a few tricks that I'm going to try out from this thread. They have a lower budget than me, live in the same town, also eat only protein and veggies, and have six kids vs my two.
@fast-megabyte-10597 do you know how much of that budget is disposables? Would be helpful for others to help make that decision.
f
Hard to know without looking through every receipt but my gut feeling is somewhere between $100 - $200 per month and probably closer to the $100 than the $200
r
I find proper menu planning an great way to save on purchases. This could go as far as planning what to eat per week, and being consistent for a month or 2. For example if I know I'm having gefilte fish and shabbos soup each week and my kids love the carrots I will get either a 1 lb bag or 3 large carrots, no more and for sure no less.šŸ˜‰ Etc etc.
a
1) I do all my shopping at Aldi first and then fill in whatā€™s missing at other stores. 2) Store brands
r
@acceptable-angle-23240 do you also shop in bulk at a club like Costco or BJs?
a
No, mainly because I didnā€™t look into. I do get household supplies at 15% through Amazon subscribe at save.
m
Yes I love the 15 percent off subscribe and save. We do a lot of stuff there, so we still do Costco because there are certain things that they have that are just so much cheaper
r
Be careful with Amazon subscribe and save, since they sometimes will change the price on you (not in a good way)
a
True. I have 100+ subscriptions and itā€™s a monthly task to review, see what we actually need and that the prices make sense
m
I do the same thing as Mendy. Over 100 and my wife and I check together monthly.
t
Wow just scrolling through this here. We donā€™t have so much dairy in the house because only the kids eat it, but i was stressing at us going to $1k-$1200 for groceries and I see we are way lower than a lot of you! Disposables are a separate category also. We eat a pretty balanced diet, fruits, veggies, healthy food, some organic, and a good amount of snacks for my wife and kids. We donā€™t really shop at Costco because we saw we were spending SO MUCH more. And the same thing with Amazon subscribe and save. I love SNS but it was crushing the budget, and I have found that things are actually much cheaper in store. For example, a small jar of pickles was $10 on Amazon and the larger jar was $4 in ShopRite! We split up our shopping at ShopRite, Trader Joeā€™s, Whole Foods, and a local farmers market (we donā€™t go there as often as we should because they are dirt cheap but farther). When we spend over and beyond Iā€™ve noticed itā€™s because we bought more on Amazon, more at whole foods, or it was time to restock Olive oil, vanilla extract, or something off the sort.
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m
Update. It appears after recalculating we are more around 1600/month than 2000 so now i feel much better but I still think my family has a lot to learn from you all about grocery savings. The biggest tip I received I need to try is the cooking one time a week meal prep trick. Let's you do much bigger portions so you can get an economy of scale.
t
Yeah for sure. Personally, I alternate between eating the same thing for breakfast and lunch and then my wife plans dinner. Most of the time she can eat the leftovers for lunch as well. Couldnā€™t recommend that more.
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m
We eat Shabbos leftovers until Tuesday or Wednesday usually. And I don't eat breakfast
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a
Of course location makes a difference. Many of the budgets mentioned here are far higher than ours, we live in L.A. - an expensive locale, but NY-area May be even more expensive.
m
@able-egg-66803 How many people are you? I am in baltimore which is much lower cost of living than LA.
a
We are 3 at this point
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m
So given my rogue estimates for Baltimore, that would be less than 1200 with shabbos hosting if that helps you out. Are you way below that? Maybe I should move to LA haha
t
How are we doing so low in NJ? Family of 4 and with hosting we are close to 1000. What do you guys eat??
a
That does help, Bā€EH we will start hosting soon. So we do get by on a bit less but full honesty a local kosher food pantry Bā€H helps out too.
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m
@thousands-sunset-8939 for me it's bc we don't eat processed foods. Every meal is a protein with veggies. Which are a lot more expensive than like pasta.
t
For us, the only thing we eat processed is snacks. And I hate pasta so we never have it. Veggies are never expensive when compared to processed foods. We eat ground beef, steaks, chicken on the bone, chicken cutlets, salmon, and have healthy cycle zucchini, salads, sweet potatoes, bananas and apples, frozen veggies and the like.
a
Chaim-Aaronā€™s scenario is the way to go.
Great also if someone in the family bakes breads, muffins, tortillas - even healthy cookies and cakes. We love beans in all forms which are nutritious and economical combined with rice, corn products or wheat products and vegetables - but not all families like that.
m
oh maybe thatā€™s the difference, for us fruits and veggies are more expensive that processed foods in baltimore.
The only people I know in baltimore with multiple kids and a budget under $1000 are eating lots of pasta/carbs and hot dogs (not insulting them, just a fact)
r
LA is closer to where the fruits/vegetables are being grown, Baltimore is closer to where meat/poultry is being packed
m
Makes sense!
r
Govt benefits definitely chip in when living in NY šŸ™‚
a
Oh wow! That does make so much sense. Never did think of our proximity to produce growers as a factor - but in a visit to Crown Heights, surely noticed kosher meats, cheeses and packaged food WAY more affordable than in LA
r
Try Seattle - kosher food there is sky high because it is so farā€¦
a
Itā€™s truly a dream of mine to be an AFORDABLE kosher food producer
r
@able-egg-66803 how much is salmon in la? Any cheaper than ch, roughly $10 per lb? Since you're on the West Coast, Pacific salmon for my understanding is a little cheaper. correct?
t
Thatā€™s what it is by us @rapid-pilot-58802 (in NJ). @mysterious-tomato-10057 wow I wouldnā€™t have thought that with produce, Iā€™ve always thought that it was misconception that produce was more expensive because one has to actually make them lol
m
I feel like some food is everyone's main expense for the most part, or even at the very least the thing that can fluctuate the most It would be helpful if we had some way to all compare both locally and nationally so we can learn from others and how they are optimizing their grocery budget. Any ideas for how we could collaborate?
a
@rich-insurance-32675 salmon is roughly $10/lb here, maybe a couple bucks less at most but more often about $10.
t
@fast-megabyte-10597 I would love to figure out how I can help here. Maybe I donā€™t know the prices of food by you, but this sounds very high
r
@able-egg-66803 Looking at my local kosher supermarket, atlantic salmon is $13.99-$18.99 per pound. Costco frozen is about $13/lb. The chain supermarket is about $12/pound.
t
@rich-insurance-32675 sounds like the chain supermarket is the way to go! Also if you can make it in a way that you can have leftovers for either next day lunch or a second dinner that would stretch it.
a
Fresh Salmon is $8.49/lb in Aldi, upwards of $16/lb in jewish stores here (Baltimore). There may be a difference in quality that I'm missing but it's all the same to me.
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t
Is it with a hechsher or do you have to bring your own knife and cutting board? Here in NJ, the ShopRite has a OU salmon and you have to buy the whole side
a
It's prepackaged in the fridge. Ask your LOR if salmon needs a hechsher...
t
Gotcha. Ours here is already cut etc
r
In case of fish and produce, knives might be used exclusively for those items but I would ask your LOR.
t
Yeah this article is pretty much what I thought with fish. Canā€™t buy a cut up fish from a non kosher store basically. Still reading what @acceptable-angle-23240 sent me
a
@thousands-sunset-8939 this is from the star-k article: Buying Commercially Packaged Fish with Skin/Scales Still Attached Fish that has the skin/scales intact and is sold packaged from a commercial fish company (NOT cut up in the store) may be purchased and used without any concern of non-kosher fish residue. The reason for this is that commercial fish processors typically produce fish in large quantities on dedicated equipment, and therefore there is very little concern of residue.
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t
Ah cool, I see. Also I get the difference between pre packaged and at the fish counter like we were discussing in DM
f
Just closed out my budget for food for December and itā€™s creeping up. $1435! That could also be because we end up spending more for Chanukah, latkes, donuts etc.
a
Should holiday food expenditures be assigned to the corresponding monthā€™s good budget, or should holiday food be amortized over the year such as how someone (sorry forgot who) mentioned about cost of the etrog for example?
t
I make separate categories for yomin tovim. I used to even do ā€˜candlesā€™, ā€˜latkesā€™, ā€˜giftsā€™ for Chanukah but I stopped that this year. In terms of other yomin tovim, for sure it is all split up. Tishri is one big category with small line items like ā€˜gift for wifeā€™, ā€˜gift for kidsā€™, ā€˜Dalet minimā€™ etc.
m
Yes, the frum.finance team and budget sheet recommends keeping halachah/yom tov separate. for example, I recommend taking x/12 aside every month for your esrog
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