Each month, I share an update on exactly how much my family spent on groceries, plus what we harvested from the garden, complete with pictures!
Last month, I decided to lift my self-imposed limit of shopping at only two grocery stores each week. The intention was to score the great deals at each store, but it also meant the potential for spending more of my time grocery shopping. Which is why I tracked my time shopping as well.
For time tracking, I only included my driving time on stops that were out of my way. Most of the time, I stop at the stores that are en route to my daughter’s school, so I don’t include that driving time since it’s time I would have spent driving anyway. Since I’ve never tracked my shopping time before, it’s hard to evaluate, but I’ll continue to track it for comparison sake. I spent 4 1/4 hours grocery shopping in November.
While I did make extra stops at the stores, they generally weren’t planned out at all. In fact, it was typically, “I forgot to get ___”. With Thanksgiving and a birthday thrown into the mix of an already busy month, I admit, I didn’t always shop the sales. And it shows in the expenses.
I’m still going to allow myself to shop at as many stores as I want in December, but try to plan/prepare and shop the sales more carefully. The key will be to adequately prepare for the week of Christmas well in advance.
November Total
So, what exactly did I spend on groceries in November? November’s groceries came in at a grand total of….$343.42. Yikes! Over my goal of $300!
As I’ve mentioned before, Hy-Vee offers fuel saver rewards on some of the products purchased. This month we earned $0.53/gallon credit for gas up to 20 gallons. Since we use the full 20 gallons at the discounted rate, the amount saved in gas through these grocery purchases is $10.60 for the month. If you figure that into the grocery expenses, it brings my total down to $332.82.
How do I shop? Check out this post and this one too for more details. If you are wondering exactly what I include in my grocery category, I list it out here.
Want to save more on your groceries? Start a grocery price book! How to start a grocery price book (free printable)
So, here you are, grocery voyeurs – the photos of the actual food purchased, stores I shopped and money spent! Enjoy!
Not pictured (oops lots of these this month!!):
HyVee: $3.98 (butter)
HyVee: $12.48 (avocado, cucumber, nori, sushi rice for Homemade sushi night!)
Fareway: $4.33 (bananas, celery, apples)
HyVee: $8.00 (4 boxes of cereal)
HyVee: $9.92 (sausage, butter)
Aldi: $34.84 (ice cream (2), pomegranates, pretzels, 3 gallons milk, almond milk, eggs, cauliflower, buns, summer sausage, lemonade, deli ham)
Way to go Amanda! While you came in over budget, you still fed a family of four for a crazy small amount, especially with Thanksgiving in there – good luck in December!
Thanks, Jon! I may need the luck in December. I held it together really well in November until Thanksgiving week. Hopefully Christmas isn’t a budget buster.
I like the idea of tracking time and spending together. After a few months you would be able to look for relationships between the two and decide if the extra time being put in is worth the extra money being saved or vice-versa. Or maybe you decide that you have no extra time in December and would rather spend more, but in January you have plenty of time and would rather spend extra time to save more. This gives you a cool scale to measure that against.
Exactly, Matt! It’s an experiment to see what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes spending a little extra is worth the time savings. I’ve also thought about adding in the time spent meal planning and combing the weekly ads (I’m guessing it’s less than 20 minutes/week total).
You make a good point about time spent shoping. I’ve also been trying to minimize my trips to the grocery with a little more planning. Now that I am not going to work everyday those trips out have become more obvious. Minimizing them saves time and money that’s better spent elsewhere 🙂
Planning is definitely the key here. I need to take a little more time in December planning ahead for when everyone is home all day, everyday. My lists need to be better thought out so I’m not running to the store for just a few items at a time.
We are saving money by loading up on beans, rice, and vegetables like kale and spinach. I regularly make burritos, taco salads, stir fry’s, so our grocery spending is usually pretty low. Maybe try incorporating more of those foods? Good luck next month!
Thanks, Alexis! Those are great suggestions. We eat a lot of rice, so that does help. I think it’s simply the fact that we have teenagers that eat a ton of food – and crave crackers, chips, cheese and sweets. I think if I were to take a bit more time to bake/cook, we could cut back further.
Love these posts! Keeping track of grocery spending like this sure is more fun than I thought 🙂
Good point keeping track of your shopping! I usually try to minimize my time at the store unless I’m actually “shopping” around instead of knowing what I want. I think I’ve almost perfected the science of picking the fastest cashier at the store haha!
Thanks, Andrew! I’d love to learn your strategy for picking the fastest cashier! I haven’t perfected that yet.
Home made sushi? Yum!
I find it interesting that you’ve started to track time spent. I’ll be interested to see what that data shows and how it will help you optimize over time.
I go to the same two grocery stores the vast majority of the time so I know where everything is stored, and have a set pattern to help me zip through the store. This a) saves time and b) prevents me from randomly browsing and picking up things on a whim. So it drives me completely crazy when they decide to move things around for no apparent reason and completely screw with my shopping efficiency. Aaaargh.
Yes, homemade sushi! We’ve never made it, but had a lesson at a local restaurant that day and we just couldn’t help but try it at home. My daughter made it herself and it turned out really great!
Going to the same stores and knowing where most of your items are located is a huge time saver. I arrange my grocery list according to store layout. I understand the pain of the store moving items – Costco is famous for this – it’s a very strategic, albeit frustrating, move on the retailer’s part!
I’m hoping my time and money spent shopping will go down now that I’ve moved. I’ve signed back up for the local meat CSA, so theoretically all I will need to get from the store is some occasional starches and fruits/veggies every week. The farmer’s market will be great for that when it starts back up in the spring.
Nice job on feeding the teenagers for so little money!
Thanks, Gwen! I love the idea of a meat CSA! We used to belong to a produce CSA and I sooo looked forward to see what surprises I had in my box each week.