So I’m just one dude and 10k a year just on food seems incredibly high. I don’t go out that often, ~$1600 was at restaurants. I’m not really sure what I’m doing wrong while shopping at grocery stores and want to track grocery purchases better. The store I typically go to doesn’t have online receipts to use.
I’m wondering what kind of apps are available for tracking grocery expenditures that Lemmings would recommend? It would be nice to be able to go back and check prices/sizes of things too, so what is being shrinkflated/skimpflated
I’m not sure about tracking your spending, but I can tell you that you’re grocery shopping is way too wasteful. That’s like $200/week on groceries for one person. Unless you have a very limited diet, you’re paying more than double what you should be at the grocery store. For context, when I get groceries for me and my wife, I rarely spend over $50. Get store brands, buy bigger sizes, and shop at cheaper stores like Aldi. Stop buying frozen and processed garbage; buy fresh meat and vegetables and cook big batches and have leftovers. This time of year is great for a big pot of soup/chili!
I think if I were interested in tracking spending like that, I might just build a simple spreadsheet with dates and costs, maybe add variables for the unusual things like stocking up to have guests to feed or whatever. Sorry I can’t be more helpful on that front. If you’re not experienced with cooking, there are some really good YouTube channels that can teach you some good, versatile recipes that are very budget-friendly.
It really depends on where you live. $200 doesn’t get you that far in places like Manhattan or San Francisco. Especially if you’re cooking for every meal for more than one person for a week.
You’re not wrong. But for context, my wife and I live in Ashburn, VA (NoVA is super expensive but not quite Manhattan or San Francisco expensive). A lot of it comes down to choices though. Of course eggs and bacon for breakfast are not gonna be in the budget I mentioned, but oatmeal with some frozen berries fits just fine. No you can’t get steak to fit in that budget all the time, but if you have a vegetarian meal every once in a while then you get some flexibility in your budget to allow steak sometimes because meat is way more expensive than a can of black beans.
I also make my lunches and pack them for when I’m at work, so that’s a lot of the food I eat and it’s way cheaper than it would be if I ordered something somewhere, and it doesn’t take much time to make a whole batch of sandwiches for the week. Idk I grew up poor, so these things are just in my nature, and now even though I don’t have to be so frugal I still choose to because it just doesn’t make sense not to.
I don’t think it’s as simple as coming down to choice. Planning, shopping, cooking, and cleaning takes a non-trivial amount of time and effort that not every person can afford even if they can afford ingredients. It’s not uncommon for people in the city to come home exhausted after 70 hours work week and hour long commutes.
Sometimes it’s not physically or mentally possible to sustain the kind of min-maxing lifestyle of cooking under a tight budget. Cooking is hard, cooking affordably is even harder. Sometimes, having a steak for dinner is one of the few things that keeps people happy enough to not kill themselves in an exploitative work culture while being crushed by unaffordable housing.
I don’t think OP is necessary overspending because it really depends on where they live, how many hours they work, what their living situation is like, how much of their own mental load they carry.
I’ve lived on a tight budget before. For a time I made do with $30 a week in an expensive town, albeit almost a decade ago. I skimmed on everything I could and bought as many $1 bags of spoiled vegetables as I could, trimmed off all the moldy parts, and just made whatever vegetable soup I could every week. This is one of like 50 other things I had to do to get by. And it wasn’t great for my mental health. It sucked to have to spend so much time and energy when I had so few hours left in a day to do all this.
Living cheap has a cost too. I don’t think it’s fair to assume that OP is necessary choosing to waste money when we don’t know where they live or what else is going on in their life.
I understand that there are many variables that we’re not privy to, but that doesn’t change that fact that quick, cheap, simple, nutritious meals are possible, and OP has internet access to find all the info necessary to make it happen. I work 12 hour, highly active shifts, so I’m no stranger to being tired, but it’s pretty easy to throw a decent meal together in 15-20 minutes.
OP has said nothing about working long hours or being tired or anything like that. I’m not sure it’s wise to assume anything specific about details of their lifestyle too much. I know I was speculating with regards to spending, but they said that they don’t eat out much and they still spent a pretty absurd amount just to feed themself, so I gave the possible out of having a restrictive diet. Halal/kosher costs more, gluten-free costs more, most seafood is pricey if they’re pescatarian, etc. If that’s not a factor, then there’s zero legitimate reason to spend $200/week feeding one person aside from ignorance, so I was just trying to introduce them to some thrifty tips and basic shopping/cooking educational resources. An approachable favorite of mine is the Pro Home Cooks YouTube channel because he has some videos where he’s doing the prep and cooking in real time while talking to show how fast and easy it is, targeting 15 minute dinners for 2-4 people.
I’m not trying to be a dick so I’m sorry if I’ve come off that way. I’m sincerely sharing habits and strategies that I’ve found to be helpful. <3
I’m not sure how I became the one making assumptions about OP’s lifestyle. I was asking you not to make assumptions because you said that spending $200 on groceries was a choice to overspend, and now you’re saying it’s due to ignorance. Even if it can be improved upon, I don’t think either is necessary true and really depends on OP’s living situation.
It’s apparent to me now that you’re just looking to have an argument, so I’m going to disengage. They are explicitly reaching out because they themself believe that they are overspending on groceries, hence their post. Have a good day.
I was only asking you to be mindful about high cost of living in some cities and how high spending habits aren’t always a product of moral failure. Not sure how that is constituted as looking to have an argument, but you do you.
$200 a week is easily enough for a family of 4. I have no idea how you even get to this level.
$50 for two people for a week? That’s about $1.20 per meal and rivals what companies like Aramark spend per inmate/school child per meal. I have a tough time believing this holds true for more than a week unless you’re just eating beans and rice.
I had taken a picture of two receipts to show that buying one bag of groceries from Giant costs as much as most of our week’s grocery run. I would typically buy a little more than this, and what I would buy in addition is the pricier things admittedly, but it’s usually $35-50 depending on what needs replenishing and what’s on sale.I’m looking at that receipt and it would be one day of food in our household. One supper for 4, and 3 lunches (one kid gets free lunch, their school gives it to all students), one round of breakfast , maybe. You eat this all week? Two cans of beans? What is your calorie goal for a day?
It doesn’t look like much, but this was probably like 20 pounds of groceries. This wasn’t a full week of groceries because I was using some stuff I already had on hand in addition to this, but that’s also why it’s so much cheaper than the price range I said is typical. Some of this was ingredients for oatmeal or overnight oats, but I already had a big thing of oats at home. Some of this was supplies for my lunches I pack but I must have had enough bread at the time for my sandwiches, etc. Whatever sweet potato black bean thing I was cooking used two cans of black beans, a whole 3 pound bag of sweet potatoes, and probably 4-5 tomatoes. Maybe we had rice with it which we would’ve had on hand like the oats? But remember it’s just feeding two people for us, so this easily makes us a few days worth of leftovers. OP said that they are only feeding themself, so shopping and cooking for two will be a closer approximation than your expectations while shopping and cooking for four.
I don’t usually take pictures of my receipts, so I unfortunately don’t have evidence of a typical weekly trip. It’s almost always more expensive than this because I usually wouldn’t choose a vegetarian option for a big batch to have lots of leftovers. For example, I am cooking a big batch of clam chowder right now, and because Aldi didn’t have chopped clams, I had to go to Giant for that, so getting stuff for lunches and breakfasts and clam chowder all cost about $55 this time. And I don’t expect to need to get groceries again until probably Friday or Saturday. 5 cans of clams aren’t cheap, but they go a long way when you’re stretching it with cream, carrots, onions, celery, and potatoes!
I don’t really target a specific calorie goal. We eat until we are no longer hungry. Rest assured, we aren’t starving lol. We just really like vegetables, and they’re relatively cheap compared to meat and processed stuff. I think it would be clearer if you saw the sizes of some of the things you see on the receipt. Like “sweet potatoes” doesn’t explain that it’s 3 pounds of starch yet it’s only $1.59 lol. “Vine tomatoes” for $2.89 was 4-5 medium size tomatoes. Idk why vine tomatoes are so cheap compared to tomatoes without the vine, but I’m not complaining. For comparison, if you shop at a typical store, you can get 6 pouches of gushers in a box for a similar price (usually more), and that’s less than 1/3 pound of food. Cooking really saves a shitload of money at the cost of some time, but you also choose leaner portion sizes because the sooner you finish that food, the sooner you have to cook something else.
I know kids make this way harder, but that’s not something OP has to worry about right now.
No receipt, but I have the pending Aldi and Giant charges on my bank app! I got my wife something for Valentine’s at Giant, but if you ignore that it’s a total of about $55 for the groceries like I said.
Do you eat meat?
Yes, but I buy bigger packs, so I don’t always need more. That’s why this receipt was so much lower than the $35-50 I was talking about. A big pack of chicken thighs from Aldi is under $10, usually $7ish. But based on that receipt, I was probably doing a sweet potato black bean something or other. Hearty, satisfying vegetarian meals can be as delicious as they are cheap.
I would focus on it the from a different angle. Instead of tracking grocery spending, I would set a number that you aim to not go over for a given month. Based upon the numbers you provided you spend an average of $700 per month on groceries. If you, for example, aimed to start with reducing your by 50% to $350 per month you would save $4400 yearly. That’s a sizable sum of money that you could put towards a vacation or a buttload of smaller purchases.
As far as how you could go about saving that much, I would advise setting a limit on both how many grocery trips you make and how much you allow yourself to spend on each trip. So lets say you decide on about 4 trips a month (roughly weekly). In that case, spending $80 per trip would safely stay within the budget of $350. There would even be ~$30 leftover for a couple of mini trips for one or a couple items.
To help stay in the budget, it might be helpful to take a small notepad along and log how much each item costs at as soon as you put it in your cart. You can stretch your dollar further by buying the products that tend to be more out of sight and less convenient. The products that are highly visible like the endcaps of aisles and that are at eye level tend to be the more expensive options since they are usually rented by the brands to get the prime attention real estate. Stores with a less than traditional layout, like Aldi, are also a great way to save since they are usually cheaper and let you get more bang for your buck.
Another useful practice might be a simple grocery list. After you write it out but before you go in the store, you could order the items based on how important they are to have. Something like sweets < Potato chips < crackers < fruit < veggies < presliced meat < spreads / oils < bread. If it seems like your running total for the trip won’t cover all that’s on your list then you could forgo some of the less important or more expensive items. When calculating the running total keep in mind that there’s usually a ~10% tax on that will be added to the total. So $70 worth of groceries would end being ~$77 after checkout.
As far as apps, I’ve tried some of them and I found they were too tedious for my taste. Even receipts often obscure what the actually product is your getting with a product shorthand that is illegible. That’s why I have ended up breaking out a smallish notepad for tracking purchases instead of using receipts.
I guess this comment got a little long winded for lemmy, but oh well.
I hate to say it, but one way to do it is using a spreadsheet. Every time you shop, you create two new columns – the item and it’s individual price, and at the bottom the total.
At the end of the year, you can add up and graph the totals.
That was our approach, with columns for different stores to identify the better price points where we were buying an identical/equivalent item. Turns out Costco tends to have the best pricing for non-perishable items.
Oh and we only had to maintain the list for about 3-6 months to understand pricing in our area.Good luck OP!
Add a column to track how much of it you’ve thrown out as well.
May I interest you in firefly III?
I use the price tags in the store. They show how much each thing costs. If it’s too expensive I don’t buy it. Make potatoes and chicken your reference point. If it’s more expensive think about a substitute. Next trick is that I think what I’m going to cook before I go to store, check what I’m missing and put it on a list. Then I buy things on that list. This helps me not to throw away food.
If you do both things and still spend $10.000 on food you’re only choice is to eat less or eat things you like less which is silly if you can afford it. Tracking each transaction is an interesting hobby but will consume your time and not help you much more than simply being concious about what you buy and not buying things you don’t need.
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Always have a folded up piece in your pocket and a pen. As you complete your transaction write “grocery $37” on it. Later enter into a spreadsheet (do the same with a phone by using a note taking app, Google sheets, or whatever)
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have a set of folders, one for each month, in a file drawer or a hanging file box. This month’s file is first. When you get home dump your receipts in it (and bills, etc). At the end of the month pull out the file and track what you want to track and shred any unneeded paper. You can leave useful reminders in there so they turn up next year and remind you to renew things, etc. Place the folder in back. Now this month’s folder is in front.
And so on.
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Get one credit card you only use at the grocery. If you get one with cash back or points you will get money back.
I’d like something that will take a photo of a supermarket receipt and record every item. I want to be able to, for example, check the price history of my favourite breakfast cereal or a bottle of milk. I’ve got a shoebox of receipts dating back a few years and I’d love to be able to do some kind of price comparison on them but with minimal effort coz I’m lazy.
Yeah, this would be great.
Where do you live? Share a typical grocery list and what you paid for certain items. Do you eat meat? Pre-made meals? How often do you cook?
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I’d recommend an alternative to ynab such as Actual Budget or one of the others mentioned in this thread. YNAB is great software but the subscription price of it is getting ridiculous.
I came to plug ynab. It’s not just for groceries, obviously. But by using it, you will accomplish your goal.
I can’t stress enough how good ynab and its system are. It can be hard to wrap your head around, but once you do, it’s a game changer.
I just got Monarch and it works amazing for tracking everything. Used to use Mint, but they decided to merge to CreditKarma and screw themselves.
There is KitchenOwl and Grocy off of Fdroid if you want.
I recently tried to find the same thing and came up empty. What worked best (though with noticeable shortcomings) was simply making a spreadsheet and comparing prices I found online for the stores I could think of. What I found is that it takes a lot of time, some places don’t have their prices or even all their items on their websites, and that sometimes you end up spending a little (or a lot) more now in order to save money in the long run.
BUT. I also found that some things are consistently cheaper at certain places, and that if you bother to track individual items over time you can start to paint a pretty clear picture of what stores will have the cheapest items. Like, when it comes to chicken breasts and ground turkey, I’m going to Aldi almost every time. But for canned goods, my local H‑E‑B tends to fare a bit better, and is a good second choice for ground turkey.
I used a toss away email address and signed up for this budget…
https://thefrugalgene.com/freebies/
Basically you copy their master sheet and you get a Google doc… you enter your expenses and it tracks it month to month and annually. It’s pretty snazzy.
My wife and I did this for several years. It’s really nice to see where your money is going
Why did you use a burner for this? Just curious as I’m all for hiding myself from massive corps, but I think if I’m taking something like this the least I can do is let the person who took the time to create it and share it send me emails. Or I’m overthinking, I do do that.
Idk… just wasn’t interested in being spammed. I’ve taken to using 10 minute mail for a lot of that stuff.
I’m not crazy super privacy minded… I just don’t want all the emails ever.
That makes sense.
I wasn’t judging you, merely just curious really. Thanks for answering.
PaperlessNGX can take pictures of receipts and usually OCR them into a useable list that you can manipulate in a spreadsheet.
Oo that looks workable. Great suggestion! Did find that I can get email reciepts if I do reward program and remember to scan it at checkout. Between those things I can probably build something. Maybe it’ll fill this niche that looks like a number of people would find helpful
Nothing fancy, I mainly use credit card(s) for grocery spending so with each monthly statement will record that’ month’s grocery spend totals in a spreadsheet for spending/budget tracking.
For price comparison I just take a picture of the price tag for something I’m curious about & bring it up on my phone when shopping at a different grocery store. Not the most advanced price tracking but it sort of works :P
