# Grocery Shopping



## Stompie79 (Aug 21, 2009)

Hi All

I was reviewing our budget the other day after making some little changes. I first created in 3 years ago when we bought our appartment and at that time we were spending about $400/month on groceries for two adults. Fast forward to this year and add a six month old baby and I found we've been spending about $670/month for the last three months. 
I realise food prices have gone up and wondered how this compared to other forum users and if those with children found this sort of increase upon arrival.

Keep in mind that 
1) we're mainly using cloth diapers around the house and only buy disposables for camping or day trips. 
2) I've pulled my wife back from buying any baby clothes that aren't on half price sale. That and family gifts are keeping keeping us going fine.


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## Rickson9 (Apr 9, 2009)

My wife and I spend $150 a week on groceries. Just the two of us.


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## Berubeland (Sep 6, 2009)

I use save.ca a lot and coupon clip. Food is expensive. My hubby does the groceries and it does cost at least $600 per month. We use disposables with coupons and take all the deals we can get !!!

Baby clothes we usually get at the grocery store where it is pretty cheap. No Baby Gap here. He doesn't mind at all when he's playing stompy stompy in the mud puddles


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## michika (Apr 20, 2009)

Rickson9 said:


> My wife and I spend $150 a week on groceries. Just the two of us.


Same. Our biggest cost is in fruits and vegetables, and meat.


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## Alexandra (Apr 3, 2009)

Yes our grocery bill went up when we had our daughter two years ago. But our "dining out" bill reduced to nearly nothing, so it balanced out.

I also noticed that I bought better quality food for her than I would have normally bought for myself - basically organic everything. 

Now that she is two, I have eased up on the organic stuff, but I find food waste a big problem as she often rejects the meals I have made for her and after trying to give it to her several times at various meals it often ends up in the garbage.

My advice would be not to be stingy with buying quality food for your baby. The cost of healthy food is far outweighed by all the health benefits. Save money by buying the raw ingredients and cooking them at home. This way you control the salt and can eliminate all the preservatives, and if you make and freeze you will save a ton.


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## Alexandra (Apr 3, 2009)

Oh and at six months, your child will be starting to eat real food. A real money-saver is to buy seasonal fruit and veggies. Boil them, stick them in a food processor or blender, then pour the mush into ice cube trays to flash freeze. After a few hours in the freezer, pop the the food cubes out into a Ziplock bag, and voila! You have your own cheaply produced, single-serve, no preservative-added baby food that will keep for several months in the freezer.


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## lister (Apr 3, 2009)

For the two of us we're typically around $60 per week though that can fluctuate between $50-$80 sometimes.


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

Alexandra said:


> My advice would be not to be stingy with buying quality food for your baby.


You might also want to consider going organic until your child is closer to 10. There's a paper that will be coming out in the scientific literature (Environmental Health Perspectives) later this year showing that children up through age seven have trouble detoxifying organophosphate pesticides, residues of which can be found on many food products. Between 10 and 25 percent of foods sampled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture contain detectable residues of organophosphate pesticides, including fruits, vegetables, grains, and a variety of food and drink products commonly consumed by children.

Personally I don't think there's any evidence that going organic is better nutritionally, but reducing a child's exposure to pesticide residues is definitely a good thing. Adults are better at detoxifying that stuff than kids are, and given their small size and different diet, kids can be exposed to relatively higher levels of pesticides than adults are.


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## Stompie79 (Aug 21, 2009)

*Thanks*

Well thanks for the info. The pesticide stuff is pretty interesting, especially how it effects children differently to adults. I'll be on the look out for that paper, any pointers on where I might eventually find a copy Brad?

Lister I've got to ask if you are doing anything special e.g. grow some of your own food, scratch cook a lot, as your $60/week is a lot lower then myself and other posters?

I think we'll take a look at save.ca and try and cut down on the meat a bit. I was looking at a "Frugally Green" blog suggeted that by cutting out meat completely you could save $600 annually/person. It's just a shame it tastes so good, cutting it out completely is never gonna happen.


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

Stompie79 said:


> Well thanks for the info. The pesticide stuff is pretty interesting, especially how it effects children differently to adults. I'll be on the look out for that paper, any pointers on where I might eventually find a copy Brad?


The paper's really technical, but if you want to read it there's a preview copy online at:

http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2009/0900870/abstract.html (there's a link from that page to a PDF of the full paper).


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## sprocket1200 (Aug 21, 2009)

buying organic does not mean the foods are pesticide free. they are legally allowed to use pesticides and still maintain their orgranic labelling.

there is only one way to be sure, grow your own veggies...


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

sprocket1200 said:


> buying organic does not mean the foods are pesticide free. they are legally allowed to use pesticides and still maintain their orgranic labelling...


True, but the amounts are likely to be lower. Oddly enough, though, I met an apple grower once who showed me results of a university test for pesticide residues on a bag of organic apples from Whole Foods Market versus a bag of apples from his orchard, which uses Integrated Pest Management (which involves prevention to the extent possible, supplemented with pesticides when necessary). The organic apples had considerably higher pesticide residues, because there were conventional orchards in the vicinity and the wind drift of pesticides from those orchards deposited some chemicals on the organic apples.


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## 411guy (Jul 27, 2009)

lister said:


> For the two of us we're typically around $60 per week though that can fluctuate between $50-$80 sometimes.


That is excellent budget management. Here in Ottawa, the two of us can manage to cut our groceries down to around $90/week, despite scanning for coupons at local groceries and at 

http://www.save.ca/english/coupons.php and 

http://www.frugalshopper.ca/links/category.php?n=88&page=3&sort=&direction=

I guess, like anything else in life, there is room for improvement.


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

Cooking from scratch is probably the best way to save money (in most but not all cases); a lot of people go for packaged foods because it saves time but it doesn't really save that much. I've got several books of recipes that take 30 minutes or less to prepare, and most of those produce excellent food that is much better than anything you can get in a package. There's shopping, and menu planning and cleanup to be added to that, but apart from the menu planning and a little more cleanup, I don't think scratch cooking takes much more time than buying packaged stuff. And it's usually cheaper (not always -- due to economies of scale you can sometimes find packaged foods that are cheaper than what you can make from scratch).

I even make most of our own bread from scratch, using a simple no-knead recipe that takes approx 10 minutes to prepare; it cooks in a covered cast-iron pot in the oven for 30 minutes with the cover on and another 17 minutes with the cover off, and produces bread that's as good or better than what you'll find in a local artisanal bakery (and light-years beyond what you could make with a bread machine). I've only bought 5 or 6 loaves since January.


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## groceryalerts (May 5, 2009)

We post a lot of weekly specials and coupons on groceryalerts.ca

I also try to scan weekly flyers as much as possible and buy items at the sale price.


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## tom_ford (Oct 29, 2009)

Most of what we pay for when doing the groceries goes to junk food -- candies, chocolates, chips. They are just too tempting! We spend more or less $500 a month (for a family of 3).


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## Ben (Apr 3, 2009)

Our grocery bill is around $300/month, for two. We stay away from packaged foods and junk foods. Stick to the outside circumference of the store folks!


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## Rickson9 (Apr 9, 2009)

Ben said:


> Our grocery bill is around $300/month, for two. We stay away from packaged foods and junk foods. Stick to the outside circumference of the store folks!


Wow, where do you live where you're paying only $300 a month for fresh food? We need to move there!


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## Ben (Apr 3, 2009)

Rickson9 said:


> Wow, where do you live where you're paying only $300 a month for fresh food? We need to move there!


Not so far from you really...my wife is bargain happy (or mad, whichever)!


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## moneymusing (Apr 3, 2009)

Have you heard of the 30 bucks a week blog? http://thirtyaweek.wordpress.com/

It's about a couple living in Brooklyn, NY that spend a combined $30 a week on food ($15 per person). It's downright impressive. It often times even looks more appetizing than the stuff I'm cooking up.


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## junkyardbottles (Apr 3, 2009)

moneymusing said:


> Have you heard of the 30 bucks a week blog? http://thirtyaweek.wordpress.com/
> 
> It's about a couple living in Brooklyn, NY that spend a combined $30 a week on food ($15 per person). It's downright impressive. It often times even looks more appetizing than the stuff I'm cooking up.


Don't know how they do it though. They purchased almonds for $0.87! Unless that's 10 almonds, that's ridiculously cheap. Brussel sprouts for $2.30? I paid $8 for 2 lbs of brussel sprouts. 

--

We spend about $100-$120 a week as well - I don't think we purchase anything that's pre-packaged. But fruits and vegetables are expensive...we don't buy organic either....

I bake a fair bit - make our own bread (made baguettes last night!), desserts, etc....


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## Dave (Apr 5, 2009)

I am at 120$ per month for one person. I used to spend less than that but I try to include some healthier choices now such as probiotic yougourts, red wine, green tea, more exotic fruits and veggies... it brought my expenses up. 

On the other side, a good trick to decrease expenses is to eat less. I calculated how much calories I need per day for my age and weight and I eat five small meals of roughly equal caloric value through the day every three hours. When I started doing it, I was amazed how much I used to overeat. I buy less and spend less as a result.

Dave


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## thebomb (Feb 3, 2012)

I'm reviving this post. I cant believe how expensive food is. I thought I would take out 200 for groceries and try to make it last for 2 wks for the 2 of us (as a challenge). What a joke. GRANTED....we eat well. BUT we dont dine out. I am running roughly 650'ish a month for 2 of us. Now- if I HAD to make it work I am guessing I can be cheaper (sorry-more fiscally responsible), but man...crazy. Thanks for listeninig- just needed to vent

And yes- I cook everything at home.


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## My Own Advisor (Sep 24, 2012)

$30 per week per couple is amazing. I suspect they don't buy many dairy products or meats. If you buy only produce, pastas and do a bunch of baking, I could see that.

That said, groceries are much cheaper in U.S. than Canada. Does their groceries include household items like cleaners, bathroom supplies and such? If so, that is very impressive. My wife and I probably spend about $125 every week for food and household supplies.


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## Plugging Along (Jan 3, 2011)

I haven't tracked in a while, but I was around $450 a month for 3 adults, and 2 kids, including some cleaning and toiletries. That was with alot of planning, sale shopping, coupon clipping, and making everything from scratch. We also had a pretty large stash of supplies for when there weren't good sales. 

Now, that I am working again, and not being as frugal as before. Without alot of effort, I probably spend $800/900 a month for 5 of us. I could spend a lot less, but have found we spend alot on produce now, because I have been eating healthier and losing weight. I find the biggest money and time saver has been bulk buying on sale. I picked up 30 lbs of chicken this weekend, and will be good until the new year. If it goes on sale cheaper than what I bought for, then I will buy even more, if not, I am sure that there will be something else on sale. 

If you never have to buy because you HAVE to, then you will save alot more money. It's still not cheaper than in the US, but there are lots of things that can be done.


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## colossk (May 11, 2011)

I've tracked our grocery budget on mint.com for about 8 months now. We spend about $1,000-$1,100/month on Groceries/cleaning supplies and diapers for a family of 5 (2 adults 3 kids) Diapers/cleaning supplies is about $150/month so about 850-950/month on food and we rarely eat out.

We do seem to waste a lot of food so we could probably do better.


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## crazyjackcsa (Aug 8, 2010)

I've followed our "grocery store" expenses for years. A direct comparison is hard, since five years ago we were a couple, and today we're a family of 4. But, grocery store costs sit at $600 a month, or about $140 a week and doesn't include diapers. Problem with kids (2 and 4) is waste goes up. Half eaten sandwich, forgotten cup of juice. Eating out is minimal but may add another $50-100 a month.

Nothing too fancy, nothing too plain. I can see spending more quite easily, or spending less quite easily.


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## MoneyGal (Apr 24, 2009)

"Wasting" food is normal and expected with little kids. I put it in quotes because it just isn't the same as the regular wasting of food I hear and read about. 

The other day my friend told me that her husband came home with 5 bags of groceries, and was putting them away, and said, "should I just drop one of these right in the garbage can?" because that's apparently the proportion of food that they waste in a week. Gah!

(My kids are big now; 8 and nearly 11; there really isn't food wastage attibutable to them. It gets better!)


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## Jim9guitars (May 5, 2012)

I haven't got a budget going right now but I happen to live within a 20 minute walk of 4 big grocery stores. The competition this causes is very beneficial to me because I can go to one store and buy only the items I want that are on sale, then go to the next store and see if anything I'm looking for is on sale there, etc..., sometimes I'll see the same jar of peanut butter for over $1.50 less the same day. I feel I should point out that until recently there were only 3 stores, but now we have a Farm Boy just a few doors away from a Freshco. I have only been to the Farm Boy twice and couldn't believe how high the prices were compared to Freshco! The real kicker was that Freshco has had a big sign out front since this new store opened stating "we match Farm Boy prices". The only way they could do that would be to raise them! The other kicker was that both times I was at Farm Boy it was so crowded I could hardly move, I guess people buy into the idea that if it's a new store the prices will be good, I don't know.


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## Jungle (Feb 17, 2010)

Last month we spent $153 on grocery (two people) and this month it will be $169

10 month average is $200 month. I would like to get this down. 

My favorite tips:

Prepare all your own food (avoid packed, pre-made stuff) 
Make dinner lists from what's on sale (ie chicken dish, pasta, meat, etc)
Your fruit for the week is what's on sale 
Buy the loss leaders
Price match all flyers
Waste nothing, eat leftovers. 
Only shop the discount grocery stores (10-40% cheaper for same product!)
Find and use coupons
Buy skim milk on sale and freeze
Buy meat on sale and freeze
Google cheap meals- make a couple of these per week (ie soup and sandwhich, tuna, etc) 

My favorite foods that are amazing and cheap:

bananas (daily fruit & banana bread) 
eggs (egg salad sandwich)
Chick peas (hummas)
Bread (sandwich) 
Tomato (for sandwich)

These are like stapes in our house and really help to lover grocery bills. 
I'm sure there are more.

Myth= you need so spend more money on food to be healthy.


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## Plugging Along (Jan 3, 2011)

^ That's pretty impressive. 

We do most of those tips. 

I have been trying to eat healthier the last year, specifically for weight loss. I do find that the 'healthier' version of at least what I eat tends to be more expensive. I am totally okay with that though. 

I don't eat a lot of pasta, breads, grains - starches in general (though I do make them for the family). I find those tend to be a lot cheap per serving. I do find eating a lot of produce, and meat tends to be more expensive, and I do buy on sale when possible.

Examples to me of more expensive healthy eating 
Organic is much more than regular, in almost all aspects. Even our farmers market isn't cheaper
Whole wheat breads are more than white
Greek yogurt is double the price of regular 
Low fat/low salt options 
Olive oil vs regular oil

That being said, eating healthy on a budget can be done, but it takes some creative ideas. 

I do find I spend alot for food for the kids. They tend to go through phases on what they will eat or not, if anything. Honestly, if there is a fruit or veggie or meat that they are liking, I will spend extra for it to ensure they eat. Of course, they will only eat part of it.... urggg...


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## liquidfinance (Jan 28, 2011)

Ben said:


> Our grocery bill is around $300/month, for two. We stay away from packaged foods and junk foods. Stick to the outside circumference of the store folks!


Very similar here. We're in Whitby and usually come in around $300 a month. 
It takes quite a bit of discipline but eliminate a lot of junk food and it's really not too hard. Although as that equates to around $5 a day per person I really don't think there is anything left to trim from it. 

I'm alarmed when I walk into Loblaws for example and see small pre made salads selling in the region of $12. Probably less than $1 to prepare the same quantity for yourself. 

Portion management as well works wonders.


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## liquidfinance (Jan 28, 2011)

Jungle said:


> Last month we spent $153 on grocery (two people) and this month it will be $169
> 
> 10 month average is $200 month. I would like to get this down.
> 
> ...


Wow! I'm going to get to work. I was happy with a $300 month budget.


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## Jim9guitars (May 5, 2012)

Jungle said:


> Buy meat on sale and freeze


Caution here: I recently read that sometimes stores put out meat that has been previously frozen, re-frozen meat has been identified as a possible health hazard.


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## marina628 (Dec 14, 2010)

I am a newly diagnosed Diabetic and we spent $230 on all the blue menu low salt low sugar stuff for my diet a couple weeks ago but on average we spend about $150 a week.My husband loves to cook and my brother lives with us who has cancer and going through chemo so he has to eat very well to keep his weight up so generally every dinner we have homemade soup ,salad and a nice entree with at least 2 fresh veggies.Probably once a month we will go buy some nice seafood and steak ,you can buy enough live lobster for family of 4 for same price the keg will charge you for one lobster dinner.


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## andrewf (Mar 1, 2010)

Jim9guitars said:


> Caution here: I recently read that sometimes stores put out meat that has been previously frozen, re-frozen meat has been identified as a possible health hazard.


They should be labelling as 'previously frozen'. Not to say that stores 100% follow all food safety regulations, but they are inspected and should not be doing this as a regular practice.


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## liquidfinance (Jan 28, 2011)

There can be some pretty amazing deals on WagJag Grocery as well. Certainally worth keeping and eye on. 
I'm going to have to start taking a look at these coupon sites as well.


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## thebomb (Feb 3, 2012)

Jungle....$130? wow....ok, maybe I just need to come to terms with being ok spending what I do on groceries. I am not sure I want to get that low...what do you give up to only spend 130? I do eat a fair amount of organic and eat chicken breast, steak and fish regularily. We have alot of fruit and fresh veggies in our house, that alone will cost more than 130 a month.


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## jack cash (Nov 17, 2012)

*Grocery hike*

We have cut our weekly grocery bill by $20 just by going to multiple stores every week ($85 avg now). We start by walking to the local veggie stand - half the price of the Metro/Loblaws, then Shopper's drug mart for milk, butter, and bread as they set these as lost leaders, and then finally the big box grocery for meats and bathroom/cleaning products. 

We still spend too much on a local/organic food basket every 2 weeks, but it makes us think of creative ways to cook things we normally wouldn't. BTW, anyone have a good recipe for sun chokes?


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## MoneyGal (Apr 24, 2009)

They are delicious just roasted with salt, like you would potatoes. Or do half mashed potatoes, half mashed sunchokes.


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## Plugging Along (Jan 3, 2011)

Our groceries are not walking distance, but close to each other. I have found that lob laws will price match, so. Save myself a lot of driving by just bringing my iPad, and then going having the, price match at the till. The trick thought is to have all your price match items groped by flyer. See, my pad has saved me money.


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## jack cash (Nov 17, 2012)

That was the best reviewed recipe I could find too. When in doubt..roast with salt... works surprisingly well with kale.


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