How are you all making it right now with grocery store prices?
How are you all making it right now with grocery store prices?
I don't know how they think we're all going to survive with these prices.
Wife has been canning for a few years now and we have a pantry of fruits, veggies, and dehydrated food. She goes to the farmers markets during harvest time and goes to town on entire cases of tomatoes, corn, beans, etc. That will last all year for our family of 5. We also pay a friend to raise a pig on her ranch and butcher that once a year. Just got ours (over 400 lbs!). Pork is A LOT cheaper that way. Haven’t found anyone to go half or a quarter in on a cow. We also would need another deep freezer and don’t really have room for it.
We also meal plan weekly so we only buy groceries for what we need to make meals. That saves a ton of money as you aren’t wasteful as much. Oh and we either do pick up or delivery as you spend more when you’re in the store and see things you want but don’t need.
We make almost everything we can from scratch. Wife recently found a recipe for baked oyster crackers with butter and seasoning on them that make dirt cheap snacks and they’re fantastic. The store brand oyster crackers are $1 for 16oz. That’s almost cheap enough to not make those from scratch too. We haven’t bothered yet.
with a fair amount of help. food pantry, when i can get there--once or twice a month, for a bag of close or past-date produce and other perishables, and a few other things; and 'leftovers' brought to me by others a 2-3 times a week.
my 'grocery bill' hasn't gone up--because it can't. i spend the same, but get a lot less for it.
I haven't reached the point yet where I'm personally dumpster diving, but I have a friend who has an inside connection at a major grocery store. They call when it's time to take out the garbage, set it outside the compactor, and my friend swings by to snag it. It's incredible how much gets thrown out. He preserves what can't be used immediately and gives it away to those who don't have a problem with the source. I've benefited from a 5 lb bag of jerky and a box full of dried fruits, veggies, and other items.
Otherwise, I'm always on the lookout for sales and deals. When I find one I stock up, like the one going on now at Amazon for Sweet Sue canned chicken that worked out to 78 cents for a 5oz can.
I'm fortunate enough to have a few acres and access to water at agricultural rates, so I grow enough produce to supply myself and a few other families that subscribe to my farm-to-home service. It's enough to pay the costs and buy the grandkids some nice presents, but I ain't getting rich off it.
Stay away from prepared foods and buy more cheap staples like rice, beans, and potatoes. Shop the meats that are the best price per pound and know the highs and lows of fresh fruits and veggies to get better deals. Beef and fish have been basically unaffordable lately while pork and chicken have been more reasonable.
The prepared foods and snacks are getting ridiculous. A half gallon of cold brew coffee is up to $7. I can make it myself for a fraction of that, but it's more labor for me. A bag of cool ranch doritos was going for $7 a bag... I chose some cheaper chips I don't like as much, but got 2 bags for $4.50. A can of pad-Thai sauce is $12 at my grocery...
I buy staples as cheaply as I can, and most other things I only buy on sale. Plan my cooking for the week around that.
Buy in bulk.
Buy lots of dried beans, rice, etc. (living in earthquake land, I like to keep our canned goods fairly stocked and just rotate out old ones only).
Buy from farmers markets when available, frozen veg when not.
Buy whatever the supermarket is trying to get rid of. In Japan, I end up with mystery seafood a fair amount, but just about anything is fine fried or in a stew.
Stay away from things out-of-season and pre-prepared foods.
Use any space you have to grow something. Even in my Tokyo apartment, I was growing herbs and chilis.
The above helps. I think everyone has some thing they don't want to give up and that's fine. When I first got out on my own in the US, I ended up surviving off of whatever I could get at the restaurants I worked at and boxed, instant mashed potatoes from the dollar store.
Starting with as raw an ingredient as I can. Processed foods adds a lot to the price per calorie. So I start with raw ingredients which is a ton cheaper, and then cook it from there.
Plus my stuff tastes like I want so that’s great.
On a similar note to what @lagomorphlecture@lemm.ee I have an instant pot and that's made cooking stuff that's cheap but usually takes time to make really easy, brown rice or a potato based soup are a click away. At of course the cost of an upfront investment.
Also, some recipes can be really cheap if you have the time. Rossotto, homemade bread (with yeast or baking soda), baked beans (from dry bulk pinto beans), pasta (homemade & store bought) naan bread & homemade wheat tortillas, and baked oatmeal are all things I enjoy that come to mind and might be worth trying. They taste good and can be made for super cheap.
Wishing you luck internet stranger
Rice, brother. Lots of rice.
I shop at Aldi, buy only basic ingredients (as little prepared foods as possible), and eat less. Snacks are basically out, though I may get peanuts from time to time.
Hallowed is the Aldi.
Decent cost of living wage increase, then switched jobs to higher pay on top of that. But I was never struggling to pay for food. Housing is the big one in my budget. But I have a fixed rate mortgage so inflation has not affected that.
Seems like prices have stopped increasing much lately too so I haven’t given it as much thought as a year ago.
My local grocery chain has decent coupons, and a debit card with cash back on their brand of products, so I've been making a lot of use out of those.
Been buying a lot of large orders of cheap dry goods that can last a while like rice and beans. Some rice, some beans, throw some cheese and some sauces in there, get creative with some seasonings, and you can make some pretty bomb-ass burritos at home for super cheap. I'm not vegan/vegetarian, but I often make them without any meat (but use some "meaty" seasonings), and you can easily just skip the cheese if you wanna make it vegan, I suppose.
I still have 50 lb of COVID rice in my pantry.
I've been slipping over to Aldi or Costco for produce. Sure I have to buy more at Costco, but the price is there are still lower per pound than they were at my grocery store before inflation.
I make a lot of stuff from scratch I don't rely on a lot of mixes. The price of bulk flour and the price of bulk rice hasn't gone up nearly as much as Purdue chicken breast.
I am lucky that my income to expenses is a good ratio so I can buy what I want without undue hardship but I cringe because I used to feed myself for about half the money.
I do buy items in bulk when the bulk unit price is significantly lower if it will keep and I will use it eventually. I will also try to get these items while they are on sale. This is a one time high expenditure that pays off in the long run and unfortunately the people who need to do this most are the ones who can't afford the extra expense at one time of buying bulk. I do this with things like rice, beans (I'm vegetarian so I'm not eating beans because I can't afford anything else, it's a big part of my diet). Also things like flour, salt, pepper, anything that doesn't easily spoil and will get used eventually.
I also allow the store to track the fuck out of me on their app by clipping store coupons. Unfortunately this is a necessary evil because it usually saves me $10 to $15 per week.
With fruits and vegetables, buying what's in season during the growing months saves a lot and buying frozen vegetables instead of fresh has the same or better nutritional profile but can be much cheaper.
I haven’t starved yet. I know from experience that if I get calorically restricted for too long, I will do anything to fill my stomach. So fortunately, it hasn’t got to the point where my morality starts to degrade yet.
"real food" is the most affordable. I stick to that. The outside of the store. Not the middle
Spending a few hundred a week for the two of us to eat a basic equivalent diet to that available in Europe. I brought back all my shampoo, body wash, moisturizers, etc in a 50 lb suitcase which I loaded up at carrefour on my last trip to France.
Carefully.
My spreadsheet shows my grocery costs are about 12% higher than last year. A difference of around $10/wk.
Buying cheaper stuff. Doing fine I guess
I shop at grocery outlet and ultimately eat very little.
I'm doing a lot more cooking that's for sure
Pancakes can really go with anything, they're basically a large flat biscuit. Not to mention they keep quite nicely if frozen or simply put in the fridge
i shop bulk as much as i can, eat oatmeal for breakfast daily, and after i had my gall bladder removed i got in the habit of eating 2-3oz portions of animal protein no more than 5 times a week. i spend a bunch of time in the kitchen every week but it definitely softens the blow. it also helps that i have a couple of cheap staple meals i can make for less than $5 per serving.
i also shop around for value. i live near 4 different grocery stores so i dont spend a lot of time doing it, but i do make a run to grocery outlet every month in order to get discounts on bigger items but it can be hit or miss.
I mostly buy ingredients and cook bulk batches of food. Before, we were splurging on instacart, but they got crazy expensive with their upcharges (MINIMUM 15% increase in item cost, + service charge, +delivery fee (or the annual delivery fee), +tip (it started to feel like 15% was too low, on top of the 15% grocery upcharge).
We stopped that and we actually spend less now even after this inflation.
I was actually contributing a fair bit to savings with the last job I did, but for anybody making 14 or less I can imagine it's a real struggle.
My prices have come down quite a bit over the past few months. It was a stretch to feed myself on $250 but now I’m ending the month with a few dollars left over
Bought instant noodles in bulk. I could have gotten the cheap, tasteless kind, but I prefer the more expensive Asian ones. Still ends up being much less expensive than groceries anyways. I have a good portion of the pantry filled with just different types of instant noodles, all of which were bought in bulk. I do buy groceries, but I avoid the more expensive foods as much as possible. Just stuff like milk, eggs, spinach, fruits, etc.
I don't eat instant noodles every day, but if I don't feel like cooking or if I'm running low on food, I can "supplement" the meal with instant noodles. Having instant noodles as "backup" helps takes a bit of the edge off with regards to grocery spending, although I do admit that I could take more drastic measures to save. Despite living in an area where the cost of living is absurd (one of the highest in the country), I feel somewhat well off in that I can get by with just supplementing my meals with instant noodles every now and then.
Woodman’s
I've been shopping at WinCo, it's a further bike ride than Fred Meyer or Trader Joes but the prices are hard to beat. This year I'm looking at buying into a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). The one I'm looking at is $400 for 12 boxes of food spread across 24 weeks. We'll see if it's a good deal. I'll be planting a garden soon too. Hoping to get a 3 sisters plot or two as well as some potatoes in containers
It ain't fun, not even close.
I am lucky enough to have a yard, so grow leafy greens in most seasons and some other veg.
Other than that, what I noticed about the food inflation is that prices converged, whole foods were already expensive but their prices came down a little while our regular grocery and the cheaper place increased theirs a lot, regular grocery prices worse than whole foods in quite a lot of the things I actually buy so I just buy stuff at whole foods and local ethnic groceries now, not much from the chain grocery.
Dried beans and canned beans we use for near every meal but have always done, that's not a change.
Housing here has increased way more than food. Rent and purchase prices went crazy and are now dropping so slowly.
For the past month I'm paying around 30% more than I was in July 2022, and 10% more than I was in April 2022. (I just picked two random months from where I wasn't yet either too lazy or busy to track everything I bought on the computer. Really need to catch up on that tbh because I haven't updated the file for more than a year.)
The amount of stupid bullshit such as energy drinks I buy varies so to get any actually usable stats I'd have to average it over a longer time frame but it seems fine to me.
Why, how bad is it elsewhere?
Grocery Outlet and Trader Joe’s. For GrocOut just go and see what’s cheap, don’t shop off a list. Make sure the prices of the stuff you’re buying is about 50% off or more. At TJ’s everything is priced pretty fairly, just buy what you want to eat.
Don’t drink alcohol or soda, or anything canned really.
Prices haven't gone up that much where I live, and some of the things that have risen in price have actually started going back down recently. But I guess it all varies from one place to another.
But in general, I shop the sales flyers, I get things that are discounted such as meat that will expire soon, and I get the cheap staples like rice and beans. I stopped buying name brand items and unnecessary snack foods. I also use the Ibotta app which gives me some cash back. Usually not a lot, but over the course of a year it's meaningful.
I started harvesting stinging nettle to replace spinach
Grow my own raspberries and strawberries. Blackberries grow on the property as do salmon berries, huckleberries, and elderberries.
I have a cherry tree but the squirrels and the jays get to those before I do lol
In the garden I can grow a handful of veggies that'll last the year.
For meat I hunt or buy directly from the rancher/butcher when I can. I can get crayfish out of the creek every now and then as well.
Where I live, the grocery prices aren't up anywhere near the double or triple that other people have mentioned. The basics / necessities have generally seen more modest price increases over the past few years. There have been obvious exceptions like when there's been shortages of specific things or like if I were to compare out of season produce prices to the prices of stuff when its in season, but in those cases I just go without (which also kind of proves they weren't necessities to begin with).
For the most part, any luxury items or luxury brands that have dramatically increased their prices and engaged in shrinkflation, I stop buying that stuff or cut way back. Even if I can afford that stuff, I'm not going to pay the prices. And if I weren't really able to afford to feed myself, I would definitely not be buying anything like that. No organic apples for me. No potato chips. No microwave meals. No soda.
In my adult life, I've twice experienced food insecurity. I can't speak to anybody's situation in specific, but for me what worked was willingness to be flexible and getting creative. I would grow as much of my own food as I could, even in a small shared living space I could grow some lettuce or spring onions in a window. I was also pretty knowledgeable about edible plants, including local/wild stuff, so that helped to supplement my diet as well.
Starting with as raw an ingredient as I can. Processed foods adds a lot to the price per calorie. So I start with raw ingredients which is a ton cheaper, and then cook it from there.
Plus my stuff tastes like I want so that’s great.
Woodsman's
No issues. Seems fine.
