USDA Thrifty Food Plan - How do you compare?

[MoneyCat]

We are at the "low cost" level because we eat meat and live in a HCOL area. Overall, though, not too shabby. I could easily get it to the "thrifty" level if I was willing to do without a few fancy food items.

[charis]

Wow! $382 for a couple is the lowest they get? If we spent anywhere even close to that, I would assume someone must have stolen my credit card and gone caviar shopping. Crazy land.

We've been spending around $230/month for the last five-ish years, though like DTaggart I couldn't be bothered to split the cleaning stuff and toilet paper out of that. Maybe $200-$210 of actual food?

Depends on what you eat. We buy no red meat and hardly every processed stuff. But usually spend $150/week, sometimes $200. Lots and lots of fresh fruits and veggies, wild caught fish once per week and try to buy food with little crap added (i.e. $3 peanut butter rather than $1). I mean just the fresh spinach for my wife's salad is $4 for a box. And I don't even buy organic (I think it's nonsense) or whole foods. We are in one of the more/most affluent and expensive counties in the country though.

I've looked hard at our grocery spending multiple times and not found a good way to lower it without compromising our health, which I'm not willing to do. Fresh and healthy food is expensive.

Fresh caviar, maybe. You can't possibly have looked very hard if you're spending $600-$800/month. "Healthy eating is just expensive, my health is on the line here people!" is a massive cop-out. If you (and all the posters saying the same thing) changed your mindset from that to "Hey, these Mustachian people are all kicking my ass, I should learn from them", you'd see that number cut by 50% at least.

Yep, it would actually cost us more money to eat crap.   We have a garden and we eat fresh and healthy food.  But we save money by buying in bulk, on sale, and in season. 

[seattlecyclone]

ABK, thanks for the reminder.  I've done a lot of work cutting expenses in other areas and the grocery bill line item definitely sticks out on the budget in flashing red lights now.  We are at the moderate cost level according to the chart.  Groceries are the next thing I tackle, but I think to solve it I'll have to diplomatically relieve my wife of her grocery shopping duties.

OP here.

We live in Hawai'i, so we have to use the other USDA document, the one for Alaska and Hawaii. To tell the truth, I was relieved to see the prices they predict, since the amount we spend on groceries would make most MMM forum readers choke: $900/month. That's right, you read that correctly. And we consistently buy in bulk, eat a lot of dried beans, cook in large quantities, everything that the rest of you do in order to slash the grocery bill. We simply can't get it any lower than that, no matter how hard we try.

We are two adults, plus two kids who are with us half of every week, so really our $900/month bill puts us right where we should be for a thrifty plan: squarely in between the USDA rate for a couple and a family of four. I'd like to try to get our bill a bit lower if possible, but frankly it's a relief to know that we are actually doing fairly well for where we live. We forget how insanely expensive groceries are here compared to the rest of the US, especially when I read the forum regularly and see figures like $200/month for a family of 3.

I'm curious, are there things that are cheaper in Hawaii or at least less relative to other food than on the mainland?  Maybe like fish or pineapple or something?  There must be some things that get produced and sold locally. 

When I visited Hawaii we stopped at a farmer's market and they were selling fresh papayas 4-7 for a dollar, depending on vendor. It's more like $5 for one papaya here. I probably ate more papaya that week than the entire rest of my life.

[ABK]

ABK, thanks for the reminder.  I've done a lot of work cutting expenses in other areas and the grocery bill line item definitely sticks out on the budget in flashing red lights now.  We are at the moderate cost level according to the chart.  Groceries are the next thing I tackle, but I think to solve it I'll have to diplomatically relieve my wife of her grocery shopping duties.

OP here.

We live in Hawai'i, so we have to use the other USDA document, the one for Alaska and Hawaii. To tell the truth, I was relieved to see the prices they predict, since the amount we spend on groceries would make most MMM forum readers choke: $900/month. That's right, you read that correctly. And we consistently buy in bulk, eat a lot of dried beans, cook in large quantities, everything that the rest of you do in order to slash the grocery bill. We simply can't get it any lower than that, no matter how hard we try.

We are two adults, plus two kids who are with us half of every week, so really our $900/month bill puts us right where we should be for a thrifty plan: squarely in between the USDA rate for a couple and a family of four. I'd like to try to get our bill a bit lower if possible, but frankly it's a relief to know that we are actually doing fairly well for where we live. We forget how insanely expensive groceries are here compared to the rest of the US, especially when I read the forum regularly and see figures like $200/month for a family of 3.

I'm curious, are there things that are cheaper in Hawaii or at least less relative to other food than on the mainland?  Maybe like fish or pineapple or something?  There must be some things that get produced and sold locally. 

When I visited Hawaii we stopped at a farmer's market and they were selling fresh papayas 4-7 for a dollar, depending on vendor. It's more like $5 for one papaya here. I probably ate more papaya that week than the entire rest of my life.

Not really, no. I've never seen papayas as cheap as seattlecyclone, but even if I did that would only be during papaya season...and you can't really live on papayas for long. Fish and pineapples are just as expensive as on the mainland, other local produce is expensive because garden land is at a premium. Some of the abundant wild foods are awful -- avocados and mangos are nothing like what you are used to from the store (they are small and lack much flavor) if you can even get them. Our avocados come from Mexico.

Maybe the situation would be better if we lived on an outer island and had access to land, trees, and fishing, but we live in the city in an apartment, so there's not much we can do.

[cats]

We clock in at a little less than the "thrifty" cost.  We do eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, but get them mostly at the "final sale" shelf of a local high-end produce market.  The shelf has things that are cosmetically imperfect or that are maybe closer to going bad than items being sold full price, but still perfectly edible.  We regularly get things like heads of organic cauliflower for 50 cents, a bag of 6 avocados for $2, a 5+ lb bag of apples for $1.50, etc.  The trick is that we're willing to work with whatever is available on the day we go shopping.  Some weeks that means we eat mostly bell peppers and eggplants, other weeks we might get a wide variety of vegetables.  We have a few other vegetables that are reliably cheap (cabbage, onions, carrots) that we use to round things out and fall back on when the final sale shelf has unappealing offerings.  That plus the usual of buying dried beans and rice in bulk, cooking from scratch, etc. definitely keeps the grocery bill down while also keeping the crap factor low.

I can definitely see how you get to the "liberal" end of the plan though.  At the place where we get our produce, I'll see people go through the line with a half filled grocery basket and ring up at close to $100.  Doing stupid stuff like buying strawberries in the middle of December will kill you!

[Well Respected Man]

In November and December of last year, we were liberal+, so I took over the grocery shopping after the new year. Since then, we are between low and moderate, not including alcohol or restaurants, of which there are plenty.

I agree with the sentiments of posters who are urging more vegetarian/vegan meals. We are doing a gradual approach for ethical and environmental reasons. We started with no farm-raised seafood, plus at least one vegan meal per week. My wife generally eats vegan breakfast and lunch, and is pushing for "flexatarian" dinners.

One problem I have is educating on seasonality. Avocados are now 3/$5 instead of 4/$3, blueberries are $6/1.5 pints, etc. Another is that I probably need to take over the Costco runs. A third is the outrageous cost of some of the organic or natural ingredients -- quinoa, flax seed meal, almond butter ($14/lb.!). I'll figure out ways to reduce those costs eventually. Part of it is again education to look at prices and think.

[Cranky]

My aldi's regularly stocks quinoa, flax seed, and almond butter.

[wenchsenior]

My aldi's regularly stocks quinoa, flax seed, and almond butter.

I really wish my city would get an Aldis. We don't even have a Trader Joes. It's crazy for a city this size.

[dougules]

All the comments about $2/lb chicken are hard for me to read. Just thinking about what that price means for the quality of the product (and the animal who gave its life) is...... upsetting. I would encourage meat-eaters to consider rotating in more vegetarian meals and using the savings to buy higher quality meat items.

+1, but even if the treatment of the animals doesn't factor in for you, you should still think about all the antibiotics and hormones pumped into them.  You're eating those and it has a direct effect on your health.  There's a decent possibility that antibiotics may be a factor in the obesity epidemic. 

And $2/lb chicken is still expensive compared to a veg meal.  I'm not saying everybody should stop eating meat.  Just working some veg meals into the rotation will save you money on top of helping your health. 

I'm curious, are there things that are cheaper in Hawaii or at least less relative to other food than on the mainland?  Maybe like fish or pineapple or something?  There must be some things that get produced and sold locally. 

When I visited Hawaii we stopped at a farmer's market and they were selling fresh papayas 4-7 for a dollar, depending on vendor. It's more like $5 for one papaya here. I probably ate more papaya that week than the entire rest of my life.

Not really, no. I've never seen papayas as cheap as seattlecyclone, but even if I did that would only be during papaya season...and you can't really live on papayas for long. Fish and pineapples are just as expensive as on the mainland, other local produce is expensive because garden land is at a premium. Some of the abundant wild foods are awful -- avocados and mangos are nothing like what you are used to from the store (they are small and lack much flavor) if you can even get them. Our avocados come from Mexico.

Maybe the situation would be better if we lived on an outer island and had access to land, trees, and fishing, but we live in the city in an apartment, so there's not much we can do.

That's kind of sad, really.  Java has a higher population density than Oahu by itself, and produces enough to feed its people.  Doesn't Hawaii have the same fertile volcanic soil?  It sounds more like resource mismanagement to me. 

We clock in at a little less than the "thrifty" cost.  We do eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, but get them mostly at the "final sale" shelf of a local high-end produce market.  The shelf has things that are cosmetically imperfect or that are maybe closer to going bad than items being sold full price, but still perfectly edible.  We regularly get things like heads of organic cauliflower for 50 cents, a bag of 6 avocados for $2, a 5+ lb bag of apples for $1.50, etc.  The trick is that we're willing to work with whatever is available on the day we go shopping.  Some weeks that means we eat mostly bell peppers and eggplants, other weeks we might get a wide variety of vegetables.  We have a few other vegetables that are reliably cheap (cabbage, onions, carrots) that we use to round things out and fall back on when the final sale shelf has unappealing offerings.  That plus the usual of buying dried beans and rice in bulk, cooking from scratch, etc. definitely keeps the grocery bill down while also keeping the crap factor low.

I can definitely see how you get to the "liberal" end of the plan though.  At the place where we get our produce, I'll see people go through the line with a half filled grocery basket and ring up at close to $100.  Doing stupid stuff like buying strawberries in the middle of December will kill you!

Those December strawberries aren't just expensive.  The taste is really disappointing, too (assuming you're not in CA or FL).  Eating in season generally tastes way better aside from being cheaper.

[Rightflyer]

We're at about 93% of thrifty. I used the current exchange rate, however I have noticed a lot of the food is cheaper just across the border from us (in upstate NY).

We really do eat well (meaning a lot of fresh whole foods including protein most nights). 

[Philociraptor]

even if the treatment of the animals doesn't factor in for you, you should still think about all the antibiotics and hormones pumped into them.  You're eating those and it has a direct effect on your health.  There's a decent possibility that antibiotics may be a factor in the obesity epidemic.

Per the USDA: Hormones are not allowed in raising hogs or poultry. I'll have to do some research on the antibiotics --> obesity claim.

[charis]

All the comments about $2/lb chicken are hard for me to read. Just thinking about what that price means for the quality of the product (and the animal who gave its life) is...... upsetting. I would encourage meat-eaters to consider rotating in more vegetarian meals and using the savings to buy higher quality meat items.

+1, but even if the treatment of the animals doesn't factor in for you, you should still think about all the antibiotics and hormones pumped into them.  You're eating those and it has a direct effect on your health.  There's a decent possibility that antibiotics may be a factor in the obesity epidemic. 

And $2/lb chicken is still expensive compared to a veg meal.  I'm not saying everybody should stop eating meat.  Just working some veg meals into the rotation will save you money on top of helping your health. 

Higher priced organic or "free range" meats does not mean that the animals' treatment or conditions are any better than their lower-priced counterpart or that the final product is necessarily healthier.  I'm not paying more for some BS image that the industry has achieved by jumping on this fad.    Obviously it is better to go veg most of the time anyway or buy from your local farmer, but higher price does not equal better conditions.

Ditto to hormones.

[dougules]

even if the treatment of the animals doesn't factor in for you, you should still think about all the antibiotics and hormones pumped into them.  You're eating those and it has a direct effect on your health.  There's a decent possibility that antibiotics may be a factor in the obesity epidemic.

Per the USDA: Hormones are not allowed in raising hogs or poultry. I'll have to do some research on the antibiotics --> obesity claim.

Well, I learned something.  How long has that been in place?

The research on a possible link between antibiotics and obesity is still in its infancy, but there is definitely growing suspicion.  There is some new evidence that suggests it's the human microbiome that has a big influence on obesity and a lot of other health factors.  It's a really interesting idea that's only been elevated out of fringe science in the last few years.   There are way too many unanswered questions at the moment. 

Higher priced organic or "free range" meats does not mean that the animals' treatment or conditions are any better than their lower-priced counterpart or that the final product is necessarily healthier.  I'm not paying more for some BS image that the industry has achieved by jumping on this fad.    Obviously it is better to go veg most of the time anyway or buy from your local farmer, but higher price does not equal better conditions.

One of the benefits of buying local is that you can ask whatever you want about how the animals are raised or what they're given. 

Ditto to hormones.

If the livestock is taking it, you are probably taking it.  It may not be an issue, but do you want to bet your health on it?

[charis]

even if the treatment of the animals doesn't factor in for you, you should still think about all the antibiotics and hormones pumped into them.  You're eating those and it has a direct effect on your health.  There's a decent possibility that antibiotics may be a factor in the obesity epidemic.

Per the USDA: Hormones are not allowed in raising hogs or poultry. I'll have to do some research on the antibiotics --> obesity claim.

Well, I learned something.  How long has that been in place?

The research on a possible link between antibiotics and obesity is still in its infancy, but there is definitely growing suspicion.  There is some new evidence that suggests it's the human microbiome has a big influence on obesity and a lot of other health factors.  It's a really interesting idea that's only been elevated out of fringe science in the last few years.   There are way too many unanswered questions at the moment. 

Higher priced organic or "free range" meats does not mean that the animals' treatment or conditions are any better than their lower-priced counterpart or that the final product is necessarily healthier.  I'm not paying more for some BS image that the industry has achieved by jumping on this fad.    Obviously it is better to go veg most of the time anyway or buy from your local farmer, but higher price does not equal better conditions.

One of the benefits of buying local is that you can ask whatever you want about how the animals are raised or what they're given. 

Ditto to hormones.

If the livestock is taking it, you are probably taking it.  It may not be an issue, but do you want to bet your health on it?

I was referring to the info provided by the poster above, which you quoted here.   And, yes, that was my precise point about the local farmer.  But my larger point was not to conflate higher prices with better treatment, in response to the poster that I quoted.  Leaving out what I quote changes the meaning of my words.

[Rural]

 We've never spent as high as the thrifty levels, and that's including feeding two great Danes and three cats and buying all the household cleaning supplies along with the food for two humans. We're in a low cost of living area, but still. We buy what's lower cost rather than what we feel like at the moment - have been out of red meat for six months or so, for example, and can't stand the prices, so we're buying more chicken, turkey sausage, and some tofu (don't eat pork because of husband's gout). We eat some kind of meat 3-4 times a week, more during hunting season (we're also out of venison).