Master the BIG Stuff – Food

This is the last post on the Master The Big Stuff Series. Typically, the final monthly expense that tends to round out the top three is food. If you missed our earlier posts from this series, check out Master the Big Stuff – Housing as well as Master the Big Stuff – Transportation.

If you can substantially decrease your three largest monthly expenses, you can exponentially propel your way to Financial Independence. Cutting out an item you splurge on here and there helps, but try focusing on the ways you can save hundreds, if not thousands, each month on the BIG stuff instead of pennies or dollars on the small stuff.

Nom Nom Nom

Ah food. We all need it, yet there are so many views on food. Some of us are foodies and love experiencing high quality cuisine. Some eat food solely to fuel our bodies. Others struggle with food and are constantly on a diet. Some of us don’t have enough time to think about food and end up eating more junk food then we wish to admit. Others have food allergies. Some of us enjoy cooking food at home and trying out new recipes. Some are picky eaters. Others will try anything once. Some of us are gluten intolerant. Some are vegetarians or vegans. Then there are some who are all about that meat and potatoes life.

Whichever category (or categories) above that you fall into, you need to purchase and consume food to stay alive. How much food you spend each month varies greatly. 

Time to Math Shit Up

Let’s look at an example of someone buying EVERY meal out each month. Each day you’re spending on average let’s say $5 for breakfast, $10 for lunch, and $15 for dinner. That comes out to $900 a month assuming a 30 day month time frame. Ouch! I’m not even going to throw any nicer meals out that are more expensive than $15. Or the daily run to Starbucks for that $6 frappe, or additional weekend costs of avocado toast, green juice, and cronut brunch with your besties.

At the other end of the spectrum, if you purchased all meals at a grocery store, shopped for sales, and prepared these items at home you would likely spend about $2.00/meal/day. Here you’d be looking at $180/month. 

That’s a difference of $720/month! If you invested that money in the stock market each month over the course of 30 years and assumed an average 7% return, you’d have $878,379 in your account! That’s nearly 1 million dollars just by shaving ONE category in your monthly expense budget.

Saving on Food Doesn’t Need to Compromise Health

Now I’m not telling you to only live off rice and beans and ramen. That $2/meal example above will actually get you a lot more variety than cheap staples. It’s pretty crazy to compare how much more expensive eating out is compared to cooking food yourself. And what to you get from eating out all the time? Typically it’s less healthy, larger portions that you don’t need, extra salt, extra sugar, extra calories, and tipping someone just to bring you your food. To each their own, but that does not bring us joy.

For those that think $180/person/month is too extreme, let’s look at a happy medium. Let’s say you spent $250/month on groceries and $100/month on eating out, so $350/month. Compare that to our first example ($900) and that’s a difference of $550/month. If you invested that $550 each month and assume a 7% growth your future self will have $670,984 in your bank account in 30 years time. Not too shabby eh??

The Latte Factor

Let’s add on to these massive savings of $670,000-$878,000 that you will earn by cooking meals yourself by talking about the Latte Factor. While we aren’t a fan of saying you will reach FI by cutting out only your latte each morning (it’s the BIG stuff that really matters), making slight adjustments like switching to making your coffee at home instead definitely helps propel you to your FI number faster. If your morning latte really is bringing you joy with each sip, by all means, order away. But let’s look at what that latte is costing you.

Say you normally drive through Starbucks each morning on your way to work because you just have no time in the morning to make your own cup of joe and spend $4 on your grande caramel macchiato – we’re out of touch, is this a realistic price?? If instead, you bought a canister of coffee at the store and made your own brew each morning, it would likely cost you closer to $0.10 for that dirty water.

So a difference of $3.90/day x 5 workdays a week x 52 weeks per year = $1,014. Doesn’t sound too crazy. Over 30 years, you’re looking at $30,420. But if you invested that money and it grew at 7% annually, were talking another $105,967 for your future self 30 years down the road. Thank you compound interest!  And shaving $1,014 per year off your annual expenses mean you need $25,350 less in your portfolio to reach your FI number.

And let’s be honest, it likely would take you LESS time to prep your coffee maker the night before and turn it on in the morning than waiting in line at the Starbucks drive thru (while wasting gas too of course).

Save the $4 coffees out for the special occasions to catch up with friends at your favorite local mom & pop coffee shop, have an actual face to face conversation, and strengthen your relationships. If you value these as treats, you will learn to enjoy the experience more.

Our Real Life Scenario

Ok ok, here’s a look of what we spend each month on food:

We don’t keep a budget but we aim to keep our monthly food spending around $465 for the two of us. It’s now closer to about $535 per month for the three of us as our I swear our little monster eats more than me.

Every month I log into our credit card accounts and add a line item in our grocery tab whenever there is a food purchase so I do keep track of our monthly totals. Sometimes we are under and sometimes we are over, but on average, we come out to right around $465/month these days for us adults or $233/person/month.

This comes out to $2.58/person/meal and includes purchases at BOTH grocery stores and eating out. Typically we will eat a $20-25 meal combined once or twice a month and the remainder is coming from a budget grocery store. Maybe once or twice a year we will eat a meal that’s more than $50.

Here are some examples of typical meals we eat at home:

Breakfast:

• Nic makes ~2 cups of coffee in our french press each morning and Court makes a “latte” which is really lots of milk with a splash of espresso
• Homemade banana chocolate chip muffin
• Sesame seed toast with natural peanut butter, banana and creamed honey or butter and homemade jelly
• Scrambled eggs with veggies and cheese & hash browns
• Bagel sandwich with cream cheese, fried egg, veggie patty, banana peppers
• Overnight oats with berries
• Waffles with local Saskatoon syrup
• Yogurt with granola and berries
• Kodiak protein pancakes with natural peanut butter
• IKEA veggie cakes

Lunch:

• Grilled cheese with avocado, onions, and Franks hot sauce (a staple in our house)
• Open faced sammy’s
• Homemade soup such as: clam chowder, hamburger soup, wonton soup, potato leek & Italian sausage soup, cauliflower & cheese soup, broccoli & cheese soup, mushroom soup, vegetable soup, kimchi ramen soup, creamy miso ramen, lentil soup, spilt pea and ham soup, borsht, matzo ball soup, tom yum soup, tom kha gai soup. Can you tell we LOVE soup!
• Vegetable gyoza & edamame & ponzu sauce
• Frozen margherita pizza
• Leftovers from the night before

Dinner:

• Typically a meat and veggie combo 4 nights a week and a vegetarian supper 3 nights a week. Maybe every other month we will have steak (unless Nic’s parents are visiting – pretty sure her dad grills steak every time we see him). We try to use our grill as much as possible. Examples include:
• Grilled chicken thighs, potatoes, and veggies (note: I never used to eat chicken thighs, it was always chicken breasts, but now I am 100% on team chicken thighs. Tastier, juicer, and cheaper!)
• Kielbasa with onions, potatoes, sauerkraut, and mustard
• Salmon, rice, and veggies
• Pork Piccata, mashed potatoes, and veggies
• Lemon butter chicken and veggies
• Homemade spaghetti and meat sauce (yes Nic enjoys making homemade pasta let alone homemade meat sauce, I’m spoiled)
• Veggie pancakes (potatoes, zucchini, carrots, onion, broccoli, egg, breadcrumbs)
• Stir frys with whatever leftovers are in the frig
• Texas Caviar (veggie and bean salad) over greens
• Tofu tacos
• Fish & Chips
• Shepards pie

Snacks:

• Fruit
• Veggies with dip
• Cheese
• Olives
• Pickles
• Hummus and pita chips
• Nuts
• Granola
• Chips
• Gummies 
• Kefir
• Veggie Springrolls

As you can see, we are not living on rice and beans (although I do love me some rice and beans and homemade chimichurri every so often). Nic loves to cook so eating at home is never seen as a chore. She is constantly trying out new recipes, coming up with new marinades to grill with, digging into her Grandma’s recipe book, and trying out new things to make like homemade pasta, Challah, bialys, muffins, Lara bars, beef jerky, goldfish crackers, and key lime pie. I really enjoy cleaning (I know, I’m weird) so I have no issues doing the dishes by hand each night.

The Little Human Who HOUSES Food

Our little lady just lovesssss blueberries which are so damn expensive but she is definitely getting in her antioxidant fix daily. We spend about $50-70/month on her food. 

In a day, she typically eats:

• bun with natural peanut butter for breakfast,
• a Lara bar, seaweed, & fruit for stroller ride pre-lunch,
• cheese, 1/2 a veggie patty, mustard, & pickles for lunch,
• olives, puffs, artichoke hearts & homemade fruit leather for pre-supper,
• whatever we are having for supper,
• frozen yogurt tube for post-supper “treat”,
• prunes for bath snack

I wasn’t joking when I said I think she eats more than me!

How do we stick to less than $300/adult/month?

I’ll be the first to admit, we are terrible at meal planning. Pretty much every day at 3:00 pm one of us asks, ‘what are we going to have for supper tonight?’ So don’t follow us and do a better job at meal prepping ha!

Deep Freeze for the Win

Our hack to being terrible at meal prepping is that we have a deep freeze that we keep full of items we pick up when they are on sale and we defrost something for the next meal. We have no issues buying large quantities of an item if it’s on sale and we use it often.

This definitely helps keep the food costs low overall at the grocery store. We will gladly buy 40 chicken thighs when they are on sale and freeze them in bags of 6. Or buy 8 blocks of cheese when they are on sale and don’t expire for another 6 months (yes, we LOVE cheese). We don’t hesitate to buy 5 packages of bacon when they are half off and freeze all but one.

Stock Up When It Makes Sense

We are strategic, in that we can identify when something on sale is a good sale and we go for it. If it’s saving us $0.10 off the normal price, we aren’t going to stock up. But if we are saving $4/lb or if it’s half off, you better believe we’re stocking up. For the most part, buying in bulk provides the biggest savings and we just split it up when we get home into bags that will serve us for a few meals then throw it in the deep freeze.

Don’t Shop While Hangry

We also try not to go to the grocery store hungry or without a list in our hand. It’s very easy to be tempted to buy junk food if you don’t prepare beforehand. We bring our own reusable bags too as most stores in Canada charge $0.05/bag for (which I am A-OK with supporting – bring your own bags people! Mother Earth would be ashamed if you don’t!).

Go With Generic Brands When You Can

We also are big fans of buying the generic brand for most items. I’ll admit, nothing beats Heinz ketchup, but for most items the generic no-name brand is just as good, if not better in some cases. Most of the time the generic brand is 20-50% cheaper than the name brand item. Marketing at it’s finest!

Our Last “Secret” Tip

Lastly, make sure to look at the unit price for an item, not just the list price. Just because something is listed as cheaper doesn’t mean it’s a better deal.

For example, if you are buying a bag of rice and see one that’s normally $7 but on sale for $5 and another for $6 don’t just immediately grab the $5 bag. If the $5 bag has 2 lbs (32 ounces) of rice, that comes out to $0.156/ounce. But if the $6 bag has 2.75 lbs (44 ounces) of rice, that comes out to $0.136/ounce. So just because an item is on sale doesn’t necessarily mean its a good deal!

Often times, the larger packaged items (aka bulk items or club size) have a better unit price. And on top of this, the best unit priced items are typically not at eye level so make sure to look around.

*Hint: If you don’t feel like doing long division at the grocery store, the unit price is listed on the posted price sticker on the shelf, just REALLY small. Tricky tricky…

Where do we shop?

For my fellow Canadians, we typically shop at No Frills and we are all about those yellow no-name items. If there was a Superstore near us that’d be our go to as well (they’re both owned by Loblaws).

We do go to Safeway/Save On Foods for certain items like bread, buns, deli meat, Morningstar veggie patties, and Happy Planet smoothies but we never do a full on shopping trip there as staple items there tend to cost quite a bit more. We also learned that we can’t spend less than $150 each time we went to Costco so we canceled that membership years ago and just have our neighbor or sister-in-law pick up a few key items for us when they go.

In the States, we were loyal to Publix (Florida company slowly spreading to other states in the South where shopping really is a pleasure – love their BOGOs) and Trader Joes. Aldi is a low budget grocery store if you’re in the States. 

We often peruse the weekly flyers and make our lists of what to buy from each store depending on who has deals on staple items in our kitchen.

What is your typical monthly food budget? How do you stay on budget? Any other recommendations out there to keep your food budget on track? 

Support This Blog

If you liked this article and want more content like this, please support this blog by sharing it.  Not only does it help spread the FIRE, but it lets me know what content you find beneficial.  Writing is NOT my strong suit and it honestly takes me hours to write each post so the more encouragement the better!  Engaging in the comments below keeps me motivated.  You can also support this blog by subscribing to receive emails anytime a new post is published.  Thank you FImily!

We believe in stacking up life hacks to keep your enjoyment levels to the max without depleting your bank account.  Here are some ways to further educate yourself and save thousands of dollars over your lifetime by making some simple adjustments:

• Investing Newbies: Check out our free Investing 101 Series.
• How much are you paying for your phone plan?  Canadians, learn more about Public Mobile, and see how we are paying $3/mo for our cell phone plan.
• How much are you paying for internet?  Canadians, learn more about the various Independent Service Providers out there to see who services your area so you can lower your monthly bills.
• How much are you paying for home insurance?  We were able to reduce our rates by 25% by switching over to Square One Insurance.  If you live in BC, AB, SK, MB, and ON, check out Square One for your home insurance, landlord insurance, and/or tenant insurance.  Use this link to receive an extra $15 off your quote.  (Note that you must use this link to start the process to get the $15 off even if you prefer to pay over the phone.)
• How much are you paying for your monthly utility bills?  See how you can likely save on this monthly expense.

Sharing is caring!