february grocery spending

In May 2024, I challenged myself to reduce our grocery bill. At the time it was about $1,300. At the end of January 2025, I had brought it down to $1,007. Unfortunately, for February, we were back up at $1,320.91. Granted this includes Valentine’s Day shopping, dessert for my birthday, pizza from Domino’s for my son’s friends, and a Costco order.

Food prices are going up. Whether it’s a short-term situation or a long-term one, which I think it is, prices are going up. As CFO for my family, I need to keep my eye on the long-term plan of saving money for retirement. That means getting better at the skill of spending.

I’m also working on how I see what we have in our lives. While I wouldn’t have described myself as having an attitude of scarcity, I do think my approach to buying food does have a sense of scarcity though I’m not sure where it came from. I didn’t grow up lacking food, and I raised my family of 5 kids with plenty of food. Maybe it’s the focus on stretching our dollars as much as possible that led me to think of us as not having enough when we actually had plenty.

March Food Budget Challenge

For March, I am challenging myself to reduce our grocery bill to $900. It’s achievable though it will take some work. And, it will take mental discipline. This is not the time to chase ALL the deals to save money.

You know and I know these strategies, but let’s go over them again.

Strategies:

• Maintain a price book. How do you know you found a good deal if you don’t track the prices?
• Having a running list of needed items and items your family frequently uses. I’m working on this myself. The Reminder app on my iPhone has many lists for this purpose. If I run across an unexpected deal, I can check my list and check my price book.
• Check out the grocery store ads and compare them. Comparison is the birth of savings.
• Check out cash-back apps and compare them to the grocery store ads. I stick to ibotta, rakuten and fetch when doing my comparisons.
• Shop loss leaders – let’s add a caveat that one needs a plan for loss leaders. 4 containers of blueberries can get moldy in the fridge or frozen for later use. No buying stuff for the trash or compost.
• Make less food. That sounds crazy, I know. I found a statistic that says 32% of Americans forget about leftovers. If you make less food, you have fewer leftovers to manage.
• Utilize a cash-back credit card. This strategy is not for everyone, only for those disciplined enough to pay off the credit card. I pay mine off every Friday.
• Shop at a warehouse club with a plan. We have a Costco membership which I’ve paused for now. Going to Costco is a round trip of 3 hours, plus time shopping. I took advantage of a $20 deal to sign up for Sam’s Club which is 20 minutes away. I am getting 4% back on my new membership from Rakuten. Again, this is not for everyone. However, single people, couples, older people could find like-minded people to join together on a membership.

I will be posting my progress every Friday. Let the challenge begin!