Have you been wondering what I learned in my month of tracking my grocery purchases? I have! I am finally taking a moment to review the information and my shopping habits for the month past. November was a fairly typical month for our family even with Thanksgiving. We had a small gathering of just Great-Grandma plus everyone in this crazy house* for Thanksgiving and we didn’t really go overboard with the food.
What I thought: We buy more pre-packaged food than I think.
What I found: Interestingly enough we don’t buy that much pre-packaged food. But when we do it gets eaten twice as fast as the made from scratch equivalent. Even in review I’m not certain why that happens? I also noticed that if I am shopping shortly after a meal or after giving the boys a snack we are much less likely to come away with impulse purchases. The old “don’t shop when hungry” adage.
What I thought: Our grocery bill hasn’t changed much in the last six months because it’s perpetually a crazy number to feed this family.
What I found: That’s not quite true. In fact many of my regular purchases have crept up a few cents there and a few cents here. I knew food prices had gone up for much of what I don’t buy but I hadn’t really internalized how much they’ve got up for what I DO buy. Additionally we’ve moved to much more brand specific purchasing than in previous years (read:poor college graduates). The brand specific purchases eat away at our budget quickly because we usually don’t look at the price.
Some other random things I made note of:
Coupon clippers I don’t get it. I read through the coupons every week and can only come up with maybe 3 that are actually for food. Most of my cart is raw or unprocessed items which don’t seem to have coupons available. I can however watch for the good coupons for some of our household items and our pet supplies. But even then I am not really clear on how to save any significant amount especially since there is no double coupon day around here.
Our main store for groceries is the best on average price. There is no point to shopping at the other options because their prices are higher on the whole. So cherry-picking the ads is the way to go. I snagged unbleached flour for $1.48 for 5 pounds but did my main shopping at the other store.
The local stores don’t carry enough for you to really “stock up” on a good sale. For instance the above good price on flour I was only able to buy 50 pounds which given that it’s baking season will only really last a month or possibly two. (I average about 5 to 7 pounds of flour a week at the moment – it’s the biscuits and the cinnamon rolls 
) I’m looking at finding a co-op for bulk orders.
*This crazy house includes: a Grandpa, a Grandma, a Daddy, a Mama, Jr., Lil’B and at the moment an Auntie too. (The boys say we need to also count the 3 dogs, 2 cats, 3 toads and our lovely lady praying mantis who is still with us.)
