5 Grocery Budget Busters and How to Defeat Them

Grocery prices have been on the rise lately due to inflation. If you are anything like me, you are paying closer attention to your grocery budget! 

Each time I go to the store lately there is something that makes my eyeballs pop out – last time it was bacon prices! Just so you have an idea of where I am coming from, we set our family’s grocery budget at $500 per month for the five of us.  That includes our food, paper products, and regular household cleaning products.  I believe that $100 per month for each person is a reasonable budget where we live.  There is some variance depending on the costs of food where you live and what resources are available to you.  Whatever your budget, here are five of our top “Budget Busters” and how we’ve learned to fix them plus a FREE EBOOK with favorite recipes, meal planning tips, and advice for making things allergy friendly.

Hospitality is Costly 

We believe strongly in showing hospitality and that often includes feeding guests or bringing meals.   Hospitality comes at a price whether that be time, energy, or resources.  However, it doesn’t have to break the bank!  Here are some things we have done to lessen the financial cost. 

We have a separate budget line for “hospitality foods”.  Setting aside money specifically for hospitality helps us to feel free to be generous while still maintaining our weekly grocery budget.  We calculated this by considering how often we typically have guests and/or bring food to people and then we simply did math.

We have a list of “company foods”.  Come up with 3-5 company meals (and/or potluck dishes, sides to bring, meals to bring to a friend, etc.) that aren’t ridiculously expensive.  We tend to feel a little more insecure about feeding other people. As a result, we buy really expensive foods to compensate for our anxieties.  Your guests care a lot less than you imagine about what you feed them. 

You can repeat meals for company and it will make you feel a bit more confident.  The Johnsons won’t know that you fed the identical meal to the Smiths last month!  Some of our favorites for these occasions are chicken thighs cooked slow in a Dutch oven, ham and bean soup or chili, a baked potato bar, deviled eggs for potlucks, tacos with pulled pork in the slow cooker, or homemade chicken and rice soup as a meal to bring to a sick friend.  Having go-to budget friendly meals helps boost my confidence without boosting the price!

Convenience Foods Can Break Your Grocery Budget

My oldest daughter started Kindergarten last fall. As I packed lunches hurriedly each morning I really understood why people shell out big bucks for prepacked applesauce, go-gurt, Little Debbie’s, and prepacked chips.  There are occasions where the convenience is simply worth it, but recognize that the convenience is costing you! 

Rather, buy a big bag of chips or crackers and pack them into little sandwich bags yourself.  If you have some small plastic containers you can do the same with applesauce or yogurt.  Juice boxes are fun, but you can buy juice in a frozen concentrate and send it along in a bottle.  We pick up those Good2Grow juice bottles with the characters on the lids every so often at the gas station. Those bottles are fantastic for sending juice along in lunches! Ours have been through the dishwasher countless times and they really don’t leak.

Spending a little time prepackaging things yourself once a week will save you quite a bit of money in the long run.  If you homeschool and don’t need to pack lunches simply do your best to resist the temptation to buy convenience foods even if your kids are begging you for them.  Another challenge might be if you allow your children to grab their own snacks from your pantry. (We don’t allow our children to get their own snacks, but every family has different systems.) The conveniently packaged snack might be an easy natural limit for your children but you could still prepack snacks yourself for that scenario. 

Meal Planning Is Essential 

We tend to break our budget when I haven’t adequately planned/prepared.  This happens especially after church on Sunday when we are all hungry and I don’t have anything I can whip up immediately upon arriving home.  On those occasions Culvers, Freddie’s, and McDonalds all sound so tempting!  Plan out meals for the week and pay particular attention to the times you’ll be rushed.  If you can have something made ahead, easy to whip up, or prepared ahead in the crock-pot you’ll have an advantage over the temptations of every fast food joint you drive past on your way home from church. 

If you’d like to have a peek into how our family meal plans download my FREE EBOOK! I included a picture of my actual grocery list, favorite family recipes, and tips for making things allergy friendly.

Food Allergies Are A Grocery Budget Breaker

One of my daughters has struggled with significant allergies.  Treatment from the allergist is really helping her, but for most of her life she has had to avoid dairy, wheat, corn, soy, eggs, and tomatoes.  I also have allergies to sweet peppers and yeast.  I completely understand that food allergies can easily break the budget!  Whether you have a family member with allergies or are preparing for a guest with allergies these tips might help.

Cook separately.  I always make one pot of regular pasta and one small pot of gluten free pasta.  Yup, it is a pain in the rear, but gluten free pasta is much more expensive than regular pasta.  I don’t feed the expensive allergy-friendly foods to the people who don’t need them!  Sometimes I make two batches of cookies saving the allergen-free ones for my daughter (I try keep a stock in the freezer). I make the much less expensive ones for everyone else in my family. 

Gravitate towards foods that are naturally free from the allergens.  Rather than try to make pizza for my daughter who is allergic to basically all the things in pizza we just don’t do pizza very often!  We eat other things instead!  There are many foods that are already free from the things she is allergic to so we tend to eat those things instead. 

Many of our meals are some variation of meat, rice, vegetable and I don’t have to substitute anything.  Rather than chicken noodle soup we always have chicken rice soup.  I don’t make a lot of casseroles because they almost always have dairy.  I do make a lot of slow cooked meats in the crock-pot that are equally as heartwarming as a favorite casserole.  There is a learning curve with this.  The first two weeks you eliminate a food you’ll obsess over the things you can’t have, but it will get easier with time to focus on the things that you can have!

Utilize the allergy free processed expensive foods (Dairy free ice cream, store bought GF cookies, cauliflower pizza crust, etc.) for special occasions. I mean times where it will be hard to find foods that can be eaten or the person with allergies will be left out.  If all the cousins are gathering for an ice cream sundae party whip out that tiny container of DF ice cream that cost $6.99.  At home we just do popsicles instead.

Lifestyle Preferences Are Preferences

This one may cause some people to unsubscribe from my blog. Keep in mind that proverb about the wounds of a friend and bear with me!  By “lifestyle preferences” I am referring to choices to avoid certain foods (gluten, meat, processed, etc.) or ascribe to a certain diet such as organic, keto, or RAW.  (Note: this point is not about people with legitimate food allergies.  That is a different issue altogether and not a “preference”.)  There is nothing inherently wrong with these diets or preferences – many may indeed be healthier!  However, they are more expensive.  In our current culture we tend to believe these things,

“If I truly love my family then I must give them the best possible foods.”

“I am harming my kids if I don’t limit them to what is absolutely the healthiest option.”

“Because I know that this pattern is healthier, I have a duty to eat this way.”

“We are entitled to eat the best food even if we can’t afford it.”

 Ouch.  Rather, these truthful thoughts might have a broader benefit to your family:

“I love my family. So, I will balance our food choices with other wise financial decisions such as saving for piano lessons, investing for the future, tithing, and sticking to a tight budget that allows me to stay at home with the kids.”

“It is wise to weigh health benefits and costs of a specific diet and discuss them with my husband.  Together, we can make a prayerful decision and I can submit to my husband if he determines a different plan than I wanted.”

“God has given us a set amount of resources to work with.  We need to eat what fits within that amount.  If God provides more, then we may choose to eat more expensive foods.  We are in no way entitled to a diet that costs beyond what God has given us.  We can thank Him for his generous provision rather than demand that He give us more.”

“Mothers have fed their children “subpar” foods throughout all of history and it didn’t mean they didn’t love their children.  Also, consider all the children throughout history who have grown up on terrible foods and have gone on to live long and full lives!  Loving our children goes far beyond what we feed them.  I can make wise food choices while also being a good steward of my resources.”

Examine your budget with your husband.  Discuss any lifestyle preferences with your husband.  Pray about your budget.  Submit to the Lord and be content with what He provides for your family.  Submit to your husband if he decides against or for a certain lifestyle preference.  Remember that caring for your family is so much more than what you feed them!

I hope at least one of these tips will aid you though this season of inflated grocery prices! If so, please subscribe so that you don’t miss out on other helpful articles and give this article a share!