Years ago when I read The Tightwad Gazette, Amy Dacycyzn advocated looking at your grocery patterns as a way to lower your overall expenditures because it is something you do have some control over. In some ways, we have lost a bit of our ability to do that because of our food intolerances, but we have made up for it by making most of our food from scratch.
As regular readers know, I don’t use many coupons for groceries. We eat mostly organic, made from scratch foods with the bulk of our groceries coming from Costco, Trader Joe’s and our meat and veggie CSAs along with the 1/2 side of beef we buy yearly.
Lately, I have wondered about our grocery costs, specifically, is it possible for our family of 5 to spend no more than the U.S.D.A.’s Thrifty Plan guidelines and still eat organic foods?
Using the U.S.D.A.’s guidelines from January 2012, our family, composed of a 2 year old, 3 year old, and an 8 year old in addition to me and my husband, should spend no more than $156.30 per week, or $8,127.60 per year.
We try to eat organic about 75% of the time, including our meat. We have milk and soy food intolerances, so we typically drink rice and almond milk.
Even though we rarely use coupons, eat mostly organic and have food intolerances, can we get by only spending $156.30 per week for a year? That is the challenge.
This challenge will begin today, July 13, 2012. I will record everything I spend on groceries and take pictures and share here every other Friday how I am doing.
Here is how I plan to stay within the thrifty budget plan for the year:
-Make all of our breads from scratch
-Investigate and begin buying some of our grains in bulk
-Have two pantry challenge months during the fall and winter
-Have two meatless dinners a week
-Buy in bulk at Costco
-Try to buy in season
-Avoid food waste
Advantages I currently have:
I have already paid for our two vegetable CSAs as well as our meat CSAs, which we will continue to receive through early October. Initially, that may skew my grocery spending lower than it normally would be. However, we will be buying the same CSAs again in the spring, so our expenditures will be much higher then.
Do you think it is possible to meet this challenge?
I shared this post on Frugal Fridays.
What a fun challenge you set here! I think it is more than possible While I do not buy completly organic as I have to buy what I can afford, I do spend a small portion of my monlthy food budget on raw organic honey , raw vinegar and such.
But yeah you can do this, it will be fun to watch how this challenge unfolds!
Yes, I am curious, too, to see if I will be able to do this.
Have you heard of theFresh20? They recently had a deal on Plum District for six months of meal planning for $15. I signed up and am in love so far!! They use 20 in-season ingredients (all fresh and encourage to buy organic) to make a total of 5 dinners that are supposed to feed a family of 4. (perfect for us so we have leftovers for lunch the next day). and because you’re only using 20 ingredients, the costs are way lower. I know it may be little hard for you guys since you have the CSA but you should check it out.
Thanks for the suggestion. I have heard of that, but I didn’t see a sample menu online. Do they have one and I missed it?
I have a tip for buying organic meat at the grocery store. The organic meat at the store in my town never seems to go on sale, so I drive to the next town over which isn’t as “ritzy” and they ALWAYS have organic meat marked down! I stock up and freeze it!
Thanks for the tip. I will have to try that.
I’ve got that USDA site bookmarked on my computer already – I don’t know why, but I find that spreadsheet so fascinating. Anyway, about your rice/almond milk – I have a friend (whom, I have to admit, is a little over the top) who swears that you don’t need to drink milk of ANY kind. She points out that humans are the only species that drinks milk from another species, and NEVER gave her kids anything but breast milk (and weaned them relatively early, considering). Of course, I still drink cow’s milk…
I don’t drink much myself, but we do want the kids to drink some milk, whether it is rice or soy.