2012 Grocery Budget Reduction Challenge

**pcaltman** · 05-24-2012, 09:06 AM

Wow Becky you did great!!!!!

Working on reducing things a bit too. Determend to reduce my food budget by $200. We have 6 people (3 teen boys) UGH!!!!!!

**pcaltman** · 05-29-2012, 09:49 AM

Hi all,

I have $75 to last 2 weeks for food. I will be buying cream today for $4, but other then that I will be holding on to that and see if I can do this.

**Ginariffic** · 05-30-2012, 02:01 PM

I have a budget of $20 per week. It's much easier than I thought it would be. That $20 per week is everything that isn't tuition, books, and rent (my rent includes a cap on utilities that is seemingly impossible to exceed...must not test). For a student, everything that isn't tuition, books, and rent is food.
I'm a vegan, which makes it ten times easier than if I ate meat. I don't drink or go out or eat junk food. Twenty times easier than if I did.

**qsaver704** · 06-02-2012, 09:51 PM

I am trying to envenlopes for June. I also am focusing on eating out of the freezers. The garden is starting to come in, which helps with produce costs as well, but I still have frozen food from last summer, so I need to eat through it! I usually spend around $300. With the fresh garden supply, frozen, and tons in the pantry I am trying to only spend $150 this month!!!

**bev1970** · 06-20-2012, 07:41 PM

I have been trying to cut way back on the groceries and I am still trying to do less of the convenience foods and more things from scratch. Last night I spent $12 on stuff for beef and broccoli with rice. It is a really cheap meal and no leftovers so nothing goes to waste in the fridge. Still working on doing better though. I will try for $500 a month. If I do not spend that much I will put the rest in my EF. No EF so far-really need to get that started.

**wunsagin** · 06-21-2012, 07:14 PM

finally updated my totals and even though I'm over for Jun already I'm still below for the year.

**Paws** · 06-21-2012, 10:26 PM

The last few months, I've been over my monthly budget. Mostly due to stockpiling many items that I had really great coupons on. Upside to that is...I've got close to a year's supply of numerous items, so won't have to buy them for quite a while.

For the last couple of weeks, I've been cooking out of the freezers as much as possible to save on the grocery budget...hopefully as the year wears on, it'll all equal out.

**Sophiasmama** · 07-25-2012, 09:27 AM

Jumping in again(keep forgetting about this challenge) We have $500.00 to last Us until August 30th. So $100 per week...We have over 100lbs of organic chicken in the freezer from a local farmer. So produce from the farmers markets...minimal processed crap.

**Sophiasmama** · 07-31-2012, 11:07 AM

Okay we have 300.00 to last Us until August 30th...already did a big shopping...lots of meat in freezer...pantry items etc...should not have to do another shop until August 10th.

**Sophiasmama** · 08-24-2012, 10:34 AM

Looking forward to Septembers budget...had to up it to $600 as many food stuffs have gone up. The $600 includes food,cleaning,HBAs.

**piney** · 08-25-2012, 06:47 PM

I haven't posted on this thread in quite awhile i have got to raise my budget instead of readucion it went up from $200. to $275 now i am raising it to $300.That is for grocery and hba.and stockpiling this time last year i had a fairly large stock pile for one person and it sure did help but now got build it back up some.

**oheoh's momma** · 08-25-2012, 06:55 PM

well hubby is sick and missed this week and will miss next..!/2 month income gone..ugh
well glad I am stockpiled it is going to get depleted badly...
oh well that is what it is for

**i.m.cheap** · 09-04-2012, 01:54 AM

I have got to reduce our grocery budget! We have really been adding to the stockpile the last few months, so it is getting very large. I don't have a lot of meat in the freezer, but we do have a lot of canned meats, like tuna, chicken, ham, and corned beef. I only have about four pounds of ground beef, 3 pounds of boneless pork chops, and 3 pounds of boneless chicken breast in the freezer. I spent over $500 in August on food. This is a huge amount for us. It is just my husband and I and my 16 year-old daughter stays with us on the weekends. We also have two cats.

I am going to try to keep our grocery budget at $200 or less each month for the rest of the year. We already spent $72 today, so one third of our budget for the month is gone. This is going to be challenging.

**MakeADollarHollar** · 09-05-2012, 05:37 PM

We got a second (much larger) deep freeze about a month ago. Blew the budget completely out of the water getting it stocked. I did an inventory and we have 300+ meals in there but I don't want to deplete it, rather I want to maintain it at its current level, or as close as possible. Since this is a new month I really want to buckle down hard to help recuperate some of what we spent last month. Gonna be a huge challenge. Our normal budget is $80 a week and I almost always go over.

I have to finish our menu for next week and do some number crunching before I go shopping on Friday.

**MakeADollarHollar** · 09-06-2012, 12:15 PM

Got the menu finalized and did some number crunching. Here's what I'll be picking up and my guestimated costs:

Produce Market
Dill - 1.00
Parsley - .50
Cilantro - .50
Onion - 4.00
Broccoli - 3.00
Red Pepper - .50
Tomato - 3.00
Lettuce - 1.00
Carrots - 1.00
Lime - .10
Celery - 1.50
Total - $15.10

BJ's
Bacon - 10.00
Cheap Steak - 10.00 (I have some Ribeye in the deep freeze but am doing a stir-fry next week and hate to use such an expensive cut but if I can't find anything in my price range I'll use it)
Milk - 6.00
Bread - 3.00
English Cukes - 3.00
Total - $32.00

Aldi
Vegetable Stock - 3.00 (I'm not even sure I've seen this item in the store so if not I'll use Chicken Stock that I have in the pantry)
Half and Half - 2.00
Sour Cream - 1.00
Swiss Slices - 2.00
Snack Cakes - 1.00
Fried Onions - 2.00
Fruit - 5.00 (whatever looks best and freshest)
Total - $16.00

Grand Total - $63.00

I was hoping to keep it closer to $50.00. Hopefully I over-estimated. Will update tomorrow when all is said and done.