I'm about to make my first big Costco run today as an aspiring Mustachian. It is just me and my girlfriend, girlfriend is an accountant and I am graduating college in December, hopefully working 5 minutes from home at a cool ad agency. Each week, we require about 42 meals plus snacks, and we are trying to slim down a bit. My WEEKLY grocery expenses are the following:
Breakfast: We each have 1 orange, 1 banana, and a handful of nuts
1 bunch of bananas (about 10): $1.50
10 navel oranges ($0.69 each): $6.90
1-2 lbs raw almonds: $0.85*
1-2 lbs roasted cashews: $1.25*
Lunch + Dinner:
- White rice: every 6 months, we get a big 20 lb bag from the Chinese market, which is like 300+ servings, $18 per bag, at 300 servings per bag, which is about 6 cents a serving, plus 21 servings so about: $1.26 per week
- Meat, usually 3 lbs of pork at the Chinese market, diced and marinated in Chinese BBQ sauce overnight, $2.50 per pound, plus the $3 jar of sauce, good for about 21 meals (lunch + some dinners all 7 days), is about: $10.50 per week
- 2 lb bag of carrots, which I roast with a lot of spices: $2.79
- (substitute for carrots on some weeks) Various peppers (poblano, red bell, green) and onions, which I sautee: $3*
- 4 cans of beans, $0.60 each: $2.40, but I usually buy them on bulk when they're on sale for less than 50 cents each, so an average of $2 per week
Snacks/Miscellaneous stock items:
Snacking fruits/items: $3
Occasional clearance rack steals: $3
Stock items (toiletries, etc): $4
$36, for 42 meals + snacks and living items, less than $1 per meal, not too shabby, but I'd like to improve it. How can I do this?
*I buy these items for super cheap by bagging them in the self-service isles, and instead of writing the number of the actual product (i.e. almonds for $7.99/lb), I write the numbers of dirt cheap products like rolled oats, for $1.25/lb, and do the self-checkout so no cashier can check it. Is this unethical? There's always a huge surplus of the items I take, and a friend who works at this supermarket tells me they end up throwing them out anyway, wasting money, so I feel no shame in taking them at a "discount".