Cutting Grocery Budget for family of Five

[MMMintraining]

Hello! My hubby and I wanting to cut down our grocery/house supplies budget from $500 a month. Is this reasonable for a family of five? I have three children 1,3,5 who are all really tall for their age and eat as much as I do! Their ped just says they are growing kids and will be quite large. I have tried it all from Cosco, coupons, etc. Can I get this under $500?

[FoundPeace]

That is doable. Do you do meal planning? I think that is the most important thing you can do to reduce your food budget. Try https://www.pepperplate.com or their app (if you aren't using one already). If you plan carefully you should be able to make a more accurate budget.

We also try to only do meat 2-4 times a week and we make just about everything from scratch.

Good luck!

[1967mama]

www.theprudenthomemaker.com has 6 or 7 kids now and keeps her food budget extremely low.  Lots of great ideas there.  The best way I've been able to keep my grocery budget low is by buying in bulk and making everything (including bread products) from scratch.  Instituting a few meatless meals a week, and using less meat in meals in general, can really make a difference.

Edited to fix link

[NEMPLS]

If you have an Aldi grocery store in your area they will save you 25% or so right off the top. We can do a complete shopping trip in about 15-20 minutes because the stores are well layed out.

[Baboo]

Echo the recommendation for Aldi.  They have great quality items, especially produce/dairy products.  Buy meat in bulk, portion out and freeze.  Scour sale ads and stockpile when items are at their lowest - Prudent Homemaker website is very inspiring with this.  Also check out her menus for each season. We have 5 in our family, as well, and I never go over $400 per month, which includes toiletries/cleaning supplies (most of which come from Dollar Tree).

[Elliot]

We've found almost no saving with aldi, at least for how we eat. The butter is cheap amd sometimes tortillas are 70c/10 so we still venture there occasionally and stock up.

I think Aldi is most useful for people who plan their meals based on what's on sale that week, and we do not. I meal plan obsessively (ask me what I'm eating any given day in 2015.) so they don't always have what we need that week.

[fields]

Went to Aldi's for the first time today.  They are new in our area.  I was disappointed.  Selection is poor, prices not much better than my usual store.  Going to try Costco. 

[mm1970]

It really depends on several things:
1.  What do you eat?  (Are you paleo, vegetarian?  Do you eat organic, local?)
2.  Where do you live?  This is a huge factor.  I live in California - you'd think that it's cheaper because we grow the stuff here, but overhead is huge.  You can buy strawberries grown in my county for cheaper in Georgia than you can here.
3.  How much do you cook?

What I've found for trying to cook for less:
1.  Step one, figure out what you buy and figure out how to get it cheaper.  Check ALL stores (including Asian/ Mexican stores) and keep a price book.  It helps to have a hard copy for several months.  The goal here is to get everything for rock bottom prices.  If you eat a pound of pasta once a week, then buy it when it goes on sale for $0.50/lb.  If this happens every 4 months, buy 4 months worth (16-20 pounds).
2.  Step two, figure out the cost per meal for your favorite meals.  And put the cheaper meals more often in your rotation.  Beans and rice are cheaper than steak. 
3.  Step three, add cheaper meals to your repertoire - this may very much involve eating in season (loss leaders), and checking out websites like The Prudent Homemaker, Cook for Good, and Budget Bytes
4.  Step four, don't throw away any food.
5.  Step five, figure out how to make some things that you buy - yogurt, bread, granola, applesauce, smoothies.

For me, it's snacks.  The snacks kill me.  I can tell that my grocery bill goes crazy with the snacks.  I'm focusing more on bananas and popcorn and less on crackers and applesauce pouches.

For my family of 4, I would find it very hard to hit less than $500 a month in my location, unless I went vegetarian.  As I'm trying to give up wheat and drastically reduce my carbohydrate intake for weight control reasons, that's not in the cards.  I still try though.

[Firefly]

This is one area where I struggle. We don't go out except for special occasions like birthdays, cook everything from scratch and plan our meals. However, since my husband and I started a low-carb diet last April, our food bill skyrocketed.

[MMMintraining]

We eat mostly chicken as I get it at cosco in bulk for $1.99 lb. I rarely buy red meat unless it is on a good sale. We live in Ohio and in the summer, we can get our veggies for super cheap since there are so many farms here. We just moved here cross-country before the summer so perhaps our initial higher costs have been because we were getting established again.

I try to cook alot from scratch. We rarely eat already made food and only go out to eat from our "discretionary money" so we consider it a luxury not a regular thing.

I have never mastered "buy the item at its lowest price" deal. I guess it is a long term strategy since you must know the circulars. I will have to look into it though. We could definitely get better at not throwing out food and using cheaper meals more often. I used to think my husband was opposed to eating simpler, cheaper meals but I ran this by him and he said great. So I will be trying this. Adding rice and beans to my chicken meals will definitely stretch the budget. 

Thanks for the tips!

It really depends on several things:
1.  What do you eat?  (Are you paleo, vegetarian?  Do you eat organic, local?)
2.  Where do you live?  This is a huge factor.  I live in California - you'd think that it's cheaper because we grow the stuff here, but overhead is huge.  You can buy strawberries grown in my county for cheaper in Georgia than you can here.
3.  How much do you cook?

What I've found for trying to cook for less:
1.  Step one, figure out what you buy and figure out how to get it cheaper.  Check ALL stores (including Asian/ Mexican stores) and keep a price book.  It helps to have a hard copy for several months.  The goal here is to get everything for rock bottom prices.  If you eat a pound of pasta once a week, then buy it when it goes on sale for $0.50/lb.  If this happens every 4 months, buy 4 months worth (16-20 pounds).
2.  Step two, figure out the cost per meal for your favorite meals.  And put the cheaper meals more often in your rotation.  Beans and rice are cheaper than steak. 
3.  Step three, add cheaper meals to your repertoire - this may very much involve eating in season (loss leaders), and checking out websites like The Prudent Homemaker, Cook for Good, and Budget Bytes
4.  Step four, don't throw away any food.
5.  Step five, figure out how to make some things that you buy - yogurt, bread, granola, applesauce, smoothies.

For me, it's snacks.  The snacks kill me.  I can tell that my grocery bill goes crazy with the snacks.  I'm focusing more on bananas and popcorn and less on crackers and applesauce pouches.

For my family of 4, I would find it very hard to hit less than $500 a month in my location, unless I went vegetarian.  As I'm trying to give up wheat and drastically reduce my carbohydrate intake for weight control reasons, that's not in the cards.  I still try though.

[RootofGood]

We spend around $500/mo for a family of 5 (2 adults and a 2, 8, and 9 year old).  We cook at home for almost every meal and eat lots of fresh fruits and veggies and plenty of meat and don't really skimp on anything. 

I skip costco because I can get most stuff for less elsewhere and don't really need most of the stuff they sell in bulk sizes.  You'll find me at Aldi for most shopping, with the rest rounded out by sale items at a couple of local grocery stores, plus ethnic stuff from the asian or latino groceries, and harder to find items from Walmart.  Costco is also 3 miles away while all the other stores are 0.3-2 miles away so way more convenient. 

I put together a photographic summary of all the groceries I bought for one month and there's a very detailed price list of what I paid to compare to what you're paying.  And here's my general take on saving money without couponing. 

We rarely throw out anything and rarely buy pre-made foods like frozen tv dinners, canned soups, meals in a box, "just add meat" type veggie/pasta meals, etc.  I'm looking at price per pound or price per ounce to see if I'm getting value.