Grocery cost: how much is yours?

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Sounds pretty average to me. We spend about 100 each week and there are 3 of us. We go to Sams or Costco about once a month and spend 200 there but a lot of that stuff goes to school with me.

 

We moved to a smaller town and had to get a PO box. Unfortunately, companies will not honor a PO box for rebates. Also, where I live now it's almost criminal to use coupons. They refuse to take coupons printed off on the computer, saying they are "copies" and if you have a coupon for a free item the store employees are convinced it's counterfeit. Just not worth the hassle anymore, although I do manage a few coupons for toiletries and an occasional grocery coupon, just not nearly the amount I used to have.

By the way, there are 4 of us and we budget about $100 a week for groceries. If I'm frugal and fix lots of beans and cornbread and soups, we can make it on $75.

 

We're a little different than you Gina in that all our kids are teens and a couple of extras come in and out depending on the day. So, I plan to feed 7 and then when I only have to feed four I get two meals from that day's menu.

Here lately I've been spending $400 around the beginning of the month and then around $200 a week thereafter. I don't coupon and only use the sales if I am going shopping, which means I'm not going to the store just because they are having a sale! I'm way more likely to overspend/impulse buy if I am in the store than if I just make up a menu and list and buy regardless of any sales.

Realize that is only food! I spend another $200-300 a month on pet food, paper towels/tissue, laundry det and other household supplies. Ten pets, plus 5 teens use a lot of supplies!

However, I don't buy school lunches anymore (used to spend $15 a week PER kid!) because we homeschool so you have add in an extra meal for two kids every day. We probably save money there in the long run though.

 

I don't know that I save money packing my lunch every day, but I know I eat better than anything they can serve at school! I fix an extra meal every night Sunday through Thursday for me to have the next day.

Sometimes I do that one the weekends too and put it in the freezer for surprise nights when there either isn't enough or we decide to go out. Although, most of the time if we go out, there is still plenty left over for me a lunch.

 

We probably spend 75-100 dollars a week on groceries for two adults and two toddlers.

 

LOL Gina, if this is OCD I suffer from it too! Nothing gets my goat quicker than a cashier that mixes up my groups! I now have a few select cashiers at Walmart who are specially trained in how I like my purchases packed! If I'm stuck using someone new, they get on the job training, cause I will tell them DO NOT PACK MY CHEESE WITH THE POTATO CHIPS!

I want things packed so I can take the entire bag to the spot in my house where it will live until it is used.

We are lucky here that we have very nice, very clean school kitchens with ladies who know how to cook. There are a few things they serve that make me wonder, but the kids don't even question it. My own kids HATE sandwiches so that made lunches hard to pack.

 

Did you bag groceries as a kid? I was so unhappy as a kid cause the local grocery store wouldn't hire me, a girl, to sack groceries cause they had always hired boys! LOL, that same store, STILL only hires boys to pack groceries! They get away with it cause they have been a fixture in this town since the early 1900's. Still, I can outsack any of their kids and do when I get a chance lol. Of course, since most of them are still teenage boys, I can boss them around fairly easy and in that store, the customer is always right, so they do as they are told!

At our "newly reorganized and remodeled" Walmart stores you can't sack your own groceries. The goods go over the scanner and directly into a sack. All one can do is put their own sacks back into the cart (which I do or my bread would be under my soda ). So instead, I train the cashiers.