Progress or debacle? Well, our month of paying attention to our grocery expenditures and usage has ended. Time for the great reckoning.
I would have to say that I’m generally pleased with how it all turned out. We did reduce our costs … for the short term anyway. Additionally, we are planning what we eat in advance, and paying much greater attention to where we shop and what we buy. So that’s all good. But, as they say, the devil is in the details. Let’s drill down.
So How Much Did We Spend on Groceries in March?
To review. When I went back over the six months prior to March I calculated that we were spending $735 dollars a month on groceries on average. The original $735 figure did not include any spending on takeout or home delivery.
In retrospect, I decided that probably wasn’t the most transparent way to look at this. In order to get a clear picture of what we’re spending on food we needed to include what we were shelling out on takeout/delivery as well. Again, I crunched the numbers, and came up with the fact that we were spending $1060.00 per month on groceries and restaurant orders. Quite a difference from the original amount. This did make me feel good about the fact that we were doing a reasonable job of supporting local restaurants during the pandemic. Pat on the back.
So, how did we do? Quite nicely thank you very much. The original goal was to reduce our grocery purchases by 25%. In March we spent $557.71 on groceries. This was a 24.12% decrease from the $735 a month we were averaging.
Even better than that, our total food expenditure including takeout/delivery was $634.34 compared to the $1060.00 we were averaging for the six months prior. That is a full 40.16% decrease. I am confident that with a little bit of effort, we can put a noticeable dent in our food expenditures every year if we continue to follow our plan. You can check out the spreadsheet below with all of our numbers before moving on to read about the specifics of how our plan worked out.
So, let’s look at how the plan worked out. To jog your memory, the plan that I came up with was as follows:
Plan our meals ahead of time
Create an inventory of the food we already have in the house
Use up food we already have in the house
Check weekly flyers for savings on the things we need
Plan out a shopping route of various places to buy from rather than just going to one store
Look for interesting and less expensive food products
Use up points or collect points for future purchases
Make sure all leftovers get used up
I will go through each of these individually, but before I do so, I’m going to insert the following screenshots from my phone because I think they will help you get a sense of how we worked our way through this.
Plan Our Meals
What Worked – Planning our weekly meals in advanced was really helpful in ensuring that we were using up things that we already had on hand. It also reduced the amount of food we ordered from restaurants and kept us from rushing out to grab stuff at the last minute… probably not at the best prices possible. For this task, we used the “Notes“ App on our iPhones. By sharing this particular “Note” (Figure 1) we were both able to see what the plan was each week. Planning ahead is a good thing to do.
Room for Improvement – We could have used the shared Note function to be more collaborative in our meal planning. I ended up doing most of it because I created the template to begin with.
Create a Food Inventory
What Worked – We created a Note for this task as well (Figure 2). This is probably the thing that helped us the most in our effort to reduce our grocery costs. Knowing exactly what we had on hand made it very easy to plan for meals each week. It also inspired me to try out a couple of new recipes. I used part of my stockpile of chicken stock to create a new soup I had never made before, “Stuffed Red Pepper Soup”… delish. I really should post the recipe here on the website for you to try. I will give that some thought.
Room for Improvement – The food inventory really only got used to list meat products, and a few other non-meat items we already had in the freezer. In future I need to do this for all the dry and canned goods we have in our pantry.
Use Up Food We Already Had
What Worked – Creating an inventory and planning weekly meals, and actually using them to determine what we were eating, virtually eliminated rushing out to grab something to cook. Additionally, we were using up money that was spent a long time ago. Even at the end of a month there is still plenty left in the freezers for future use. This will positively impact are food costs for several more months. Bottom line… these parts of the plan worked out very nicely.
Room for Improvement – My original thinking was that I would also begin to use up “stuff” that we had in the pantry. I thought I would be inspired to pull out some things that I knew I could put together and make up a recipe. That did not happen because I didn’t have an inventory list to refer to. Definitely still room for improvement in this area.
Check Weekly Flyers
What Worked – In retrospect, I would have to say that we were doing a better job searching out bargains in flyers a couple of years ago compared to how were doing prior to me starting to work on these articles. Part of the reason for that is that during the pandemic they stopped dropping off bundles of flyers to our home. This delivery continues elsewhere in the city, but they appear to have stopped in our neighbourhood.
Undeterred, I did start going online to check out Flyers (Figure 3), and I even signed up to receive some to my email inbox. BUT, I can’t honestly say we actually went out in search of things that appeared as sale items in a flyer more than a couple of times during the whole month.
Room for Improvement – Attention to flyers is definitely an area that can be improved upon. We have to get more focused on searching out bargains in weekly flyers, particularly for canned and bottled products we use like tuna, salmon, and pasta sauce.
Eliminate Going to Just One Store
What Worked – Well we pretty much eliminated doing most of our shopping at the large Loblaws Group store that we previously tended to frequent. During the month of March we only went there once, and that was to buy one thing, a 14 ounce can of fire roasted tomatoes that I need for a recipe… couldn’t get it anywhere else.
We primarily shopped at a Valu-Mart within walking distance, for many of our day-to-day purchases. It is a member of the Loblaws Group, but more of smaller neighbourhood grocery store than the one we have traditionally used. However, we did go to a number of other stores, including Sobeys and a couple of small local chains. We are definitely planning to continue to shop at these other stores in the months ahead.
Room for Improvement – Although we have been frequenting a number of different stores we have not really mastered the art of lining up our purchases well in advance and establishing a day where we make a circuit between these places. We really do need to get on top of going through flyers when they come out on Thursday and add the things we need that are on sale into our grocery shopping list (Figure 4). I am stoked and raring to go. Never thought I’d get so worked up about shopping for groceries. J
As you can see, I have already added in the names of some local grocery hotspots into our “Notes” grocery list (Figure 4). The Halal section in my list is there to remind me that I need to get to one of the local Halal grocery stores to buy some goat so I can whip up a nice Goat Curry at home. Seriously, I love Goat Curry … you should try ordering it from your favourite Indian restaurant sometime. It is also a good place to pick up items we use and would normally grab out of the “International section” in the big grocery store we frequented… at a lower cost as well.
Less Expensive Options
What Worked – I would have to say that we were on top of this before this month-long food adventure began. You may want to try out a couple things that we recently adopted. The first is the cooking of a Pork Butt Roast. These typically sell for about $2.49 a pound when on sale. They are heavily marbled, so very tasty and they produce great gravy.
We’re not eating a lot of beef these days but occasionally I will dabble with Steak Tails. They are a cheaper form of beef, around $5.99 a pound when on sale. A little tough if just cooked on the barbeque, so I use a recipe that generally slow cooks them until they are falling-apart-tender. I tried making a beef stroganoff with them during our special food month, but the meat was still just a bit too chewy.
The one new thing we did start buying and eating during March is chicken legs with bone in and skin attached. Normally we like to buy boneless skinless chicken thighs for any chicken dish we are preparing for health reasons. I have been trying to recreate a recipe that my mother used to make with chicken legs (thighs and drumsticks separated) and cut-up potatoes and carrots cooked together in a frying pan. Not terribly heart healthy, but very tasty.
The other inexpensive thing I whipped up was the Stuffed Red Pepper Soup I mentioned. It primarily consisted of red, yellow, and green peppers, canned tomatoes, homemade stock and rice. The recipe I use does call for a pound of hamburger, but we have totally stopped using hamburger and have substituted ground dark turkey meat in all recipes.
Room for Improvement – Hmmmmmm… all meat dishes, and one soup involving meat??? I must check into finding more inexpensive vegetarian recipes. Although, I do make a mean spinach and feta pie. Not good enough? Sorry.
Cash Back and Points
What Worked – I would like to think that I had already mastered the “cash back” option. Everything we buy goes onto a cashback charge card. We even vary which card we use based upon higher rates offered for specific types of purchases. For example, Costco’s card offers 3% cashback on restaurant purchases and 2% on gasoline purchases… and their gas is cheaper than everybody else is to start with. We use our regular MasterCard for all other purchases because we get 1.5% percent back, while our Costco card only offers .5-1% on regular purchases.
Although we do not do an excessive amount of shopping at Costco, we do get 2% back on everything else we buy there because we have an Executive membership. In theory, without doing the math, when we use our regular card to make purchases there we are getting back a total of 3 ½%. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. J
Room for Improvement – On the points thing, we are not really doing much of a job. We do receive points when we make purchases at Loblaw’s Group stores (Figure 5), and we occasionally get to use some of our accumulated Airmiles at Sobeys. But in general, we don’t really focus on collecting points anywhere. The Love-goddess did just remind me that we do collect Airmiles at the liquor store on a regular basis. Not sure that this is actually a good thing. LOL!
Leftovers and Food Waste
What Worked – Again, this was something that was not really a problem for us before. We remain very good at eating leftovers, and do not let a lot of food go to waste. I did use up some older vegetables that were in the fridge when making stock from a duck carcass in March. So even the unusable stuff is getting used.
Room for Improvement – One thing I would like to try is using some leftovers to create a totally different meal. While I was researching leftovers and food waste, I came across sites that offered up recipes for that specific purpose. I will have to go in search of one the next time I’ve got an appreciable amount of leftovers and would simply like to try doing something different with them.
Grocery Wrap Up
There you have it – my attempts to improve our food situation in all its full glory. I am convinced that we will be able to reduce our overall grocery bill by continuing the strategies we invoked in future. Good luck with your own efforts.
My Inspiration for All This
You are probably wondering what made me decide to take action on our grocery expenditures when I had already stated that we don’t really worry about it at all. No, you’re not? Well, I’m going to tell you about it anyway.
I generally do not worry about whether any of my friends are reading my blog or not. They are all retired and have plans in place. And thoughts on how to go about it. However, every once in a while I will write something that I think will tickle their fancy. The latest being my piece on sleeping in retirement. I knew it was the one thing I could write about that everyone I know could relate to.
One of my friends, “The Wonderful Bloke from Manchester” wrote back in response to my mailout and told me about what he and his partner ,“The Beautiful, Intelligent, Irish Born Woman” were doing during the lockdown. It was an epistle.
I am pretty sure that I am clinically OCD … but as I always say, if you have to have a diagnosis. It’s not a bad one to have. 🙂 The net result of all of this is that I really appreciate it when I see other folks doing things meticulously, in great detail, and usually to excess.
So, it was with great joy and enthusiasm I read the reply from “The Wonderful Bloke from Manchester” because he went on at length, covering many subject areas. However, one in particular led me down this food rabbit hole.
Here is the part that caught my imagination, and yes, he gave me permission to reproduce it here.
“I have photographed and excel-listed all items in our condo and storage unit, with estimated replacement values and cross-referenced to original purchase receipts (where available) to come up with a list to support our condo Contents Insurance value – we were quite surprised at the accumulated value of all the stuff we have…
The result is that I now have lots more things to do to fill the endless time I have until travel starts again – namely – maintain the many new excel lists; assist in the food shopping; act as sous-chef, and occasional chef for our 3-healthy-meal-a-day regimen. YIPPEE!
Finally, I attacked the ever-growing collection of cooking books and “The Beautiful, Intelligent, Irish Born Woman” had selected the “blood sugar diet” as our mantra to counter our ever-growing waistlines, “The Beautiful, Intelligent, Irish Born Woman” went through the books and marked all the recipes that we might actually enjoy. I dutifully photographed each one, converted to PDFs and you guessed it, I excel-listed them all. We have just started our weekly meal planning in which each B, L & D is selected and then I prepare a binder with a single page copies of each recipe. But, you ask, how do I know if we have the required ingredients? Well, I did sort the pantry and extensive spice-jar collection before we started and made an excel list of all our food supplies, with quantity and status of open or not…. Now it’s easy to generate the “shopping list”.”
Wow, I thought. That is over-the-top fantastic. I have to ramp up my own food game. I am not sure that “The Wonderful Bloke from Manchester” is OCD like myself… he is an accountant by trade so contractually obligated to be a detail person. But, his exhaustive effort was inspirational, and I can only hope that he approves of my own efforts, pathetic in comparison to his own of course, to improve our own food endeavours. Gracias amigo!
Eat well everyone!
Title Image by Sabine Soellheim
