Hello Savvy Saver!
This is why knowing what’s going on with your money is so important. Armed with excellent information, you make excellent choices.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this yet, but I read this terribly interesting book called The Omnivore’s Dilemma. This is a savings tip, so I’m not going to go into the book much at all. Suffice it to say that once I had read about half of it, I decided that I wanted to drink milk that came from cows not on antibiotics or growth hormones. I’ll leave it someone else to explain the why behind it.
The why isn’t even relevant for this extremely short, and surprising savings tip.
So, I approach Julie, “Hey, what would you think about having our milk delivered? It’s special kind of milk that is fresh, and doesn’t have any growth hormones in it.”
She responded, “Is this because of that BOOK you’ve been reading?”
[Silence]
She continued, “How much does it cost?”
And then I really knew I’d probably lose if this came down to cost. Here’s why. Utah has very inexpensive milk. We regularly get it three for five dollars (Costco). At $1.66 per gallon, that’s a great price. Well, I’d been looking at Winder Farmsand saw their pricing: $3.49 for ahalf gallon of their skim milk in a glass jar.
Granted, it’s delivered in a cooler right to your doorstep, so the intangible benefits are great, right? It makes me feel like I’m living in some classical novel where I should also have a piece of straw in my mouth, wear suspenders, and build a wrap-around porch for our house — with the accompanying swing. Also, the milk is fresh. It tastes fantastic.
So I did the classic marketer/infomercial tactic on Julie and she wasn’t any the wiser (or at least she pretended not to be).
I said, “Well, let’s just try it this week and if we decide it’s not worth it, we’ll cancel.”
Four weeks later we still haven’t canceled. And that’s a good thing. It has nothing to do with whether or not I’m drinking milk from cows treated or not treated with hormones. It has everything to do with our bottom line.
A few days ago Julie and I were working on our budget for the month. We always go over what we spent last month, talk about it, and then move on to what we will spend this month. I took a gander at our Food : Groceries category and my jaw dropped so far it almost hit the space bar on our laptop: $383.62. I moused over the Outflows column of the Food : Groceries category so I could see the breakdown.
It lookedlike everything was there…
Julie stated the obvious, “That can’t be right.”
My response was full of jubilant surprise: “It IS right! Woot! Milk delivery all the way baby! We SAVED money!”
The blinds on the sliding glass door were closed, so I proceeded to do the Milk Delivery Jig — with our cull-d-sac neighbors none the wiser. You may say it’s a fluke, but I have excellent data to back it up. We usually spend at LEAST $600 on groceries each month. Julie’s an excellent cook, and groceries is an area where we just don’t like to cut back. If she wants to use seven varieties of rare peppers in some new soup she’s discovered…she does. She does an excellent job of seeing what’s on sale and cooking toward that end, but there are times when she just wants to make something, and she makes it.
I’m here looking at our budget file now, as I write this, and am still not quite believing it. In the previous month we had spent over $700. Also, in the month before that we’d spent just a hair below $800 (special occasions mixed into that one a bit). I’m not going to go so far as to say that we cut our budget for food in half, but we came darn close. I grilled Julie on this:
Did you just clean out our pantry?
Did we not eat any meat?
Are you not feeding the kids while I’m at work?
Her answers were satisfactory (she does feed the kids), and she basically summed it all up quite nicely: “Well, I only went to the grocery store twice because I didn’t need to keep going back to get milk.”
I’m going to keep a close eye on groceries for this month, but so far we’re tracking for it to be another record low. Alright, what I’m NOT going to do is tell you to pay four times the normal amount for your milk. But I would like to encourage you to do the following to save trips to the grocery store:
Buy the largest amount you can of your staple foods.
Freeze milk (it works just fine) so it doesn’t go bad. Freeze bread. (Haven’t tried freezing eggs). I’ve heard people say before that you should “consolidate” your grocery trips. I’m talking about taking that to the next level. Extend the time from one trip to the next as far as you can. Make it a game. I guarantee your grocery bill will plummet.
Keep in mind, this is superior to the tactic of making a list and then only buying what’s on your list. Why? Because you only make the list when you know you’re going to the grocery store, and if you’re not going, you don’t need to make the list and you won’t be spending the money (even on those things you “need” that would have been on your list). I’m not going to cancel our milk deliveries. The milk tastes too fantastic. I AM going to enjoy the fact that our grocery bill is much smaller and we are none the hungrier for it. I wonder what will happen if I have our eggs delivered as well?
I love your tips and positive attitude about even the simplest of things. You are doing a great job of keeping me actively budgeting, and laughing too!
Great article…I’m buying organic mild and fresh organic eggs as much as possilbe. I think I need to look into milk deliver because my grocery bills are insanly high. Thanks ….
Interesting read. My wife and I buy unhomoginized whole milk from our health food coop that is hormone and antibiotic free. It is $3/half gallon and comes in the glass bottles. We do not have delivery service, but the milk sure is delicious!
I was just looking into purchasing raw milk from a local farmer. This milk would be the same price but would cost us more since we would have quite a drive to go pick it up. The farmer also sells grass-fed, healthy meats and eggs, so we may be purchasing that there too… so hopefully the gas money will be balanced by the amount of goods we purchase there.
Milk Delivery Jig: classic.
Eye opening! We don’t drink milk, (keep powdered in the pantry always for cooking,) but we do have to run out for 1/2 and 1/2 for our coffee……will be evaluating shopping trips……
Hmmmm. This is simply not possible. It begs the question, what were you eating the months you spent $700-$800 per month? It sounds to me like you over-bought those months and are now living off your stock. If you were truly eating $700-$800 of food per month and are now consuming half of that, prepare for one of two things, baggy cloths or a bare cupboard.
My wife tries to pull this one on me as well. I have an idea to determine the root. Take an inventory of your pantry at the beginning of the month. Add your monthly expenditures and subtract the month end inventory. THAT’S your food bill. Everything else is smoke, mirrors, and mind games.
Your software is great, but this latest email is a stretch.
@Jon,
You’re dead on, to a degree — I should probably update this post with more data now that I have it.
We certainly were living off some of our pantry items, I have no doubt. We’re no longer doing the milk delivering (tightening the belt) but we HAVE still been purchasing lots of milk at once and then freezing it. In the past two months or so (I’d have to look at the budget to really see) we’ve “normalized” back up to about $600. My excitement (as evidenced in this post) should be tempered a bit now that I have better data.
HOWEVER, I stand by the fact that decreasing the frequency of your grocery shopping will decrease your spend, even holding pantry levels (and waistlines) constant UNLESS you are one of the very, very few that stick completely to a pre-made list of items and never deviate from the list once you enter the store. I’ve noticed with us there’s always some small fringe items that are completely unnecessary that have crept into the shopping cart. If we don’t go, that can’t happen.
I appreciate your scrutinizing eye :)
Better yet, get 3 or 4 chickens. They are legal in most city limits, they LOVE snails, and take little to no work. You will have more eggs than you need.
I have another tip here — I recently joined a natural foods grocery-buying co-op. Groceries are a big spend in our house too. A large percentage of what we buy is organic and I shopped a lot at health food stores. (on the flip side, I also cook most of what we eat from scratch and we don’t eat meat, so we save a lot there).
The co-op has most of the stuff that’s carried in the natural food stores near our home, and now when I go into any of them I walk out nearly empty-handed because I know I can buy most of the stuff cheaper through my co-op. There are trade-offs, i.e. our group places one order every 4-6 weeks and the food is delivered about two weeks after the order is placed, so I have to plan ahead (and there is a bit of sweat-equity involved since it is a co-op) but a number of our staple foods are significantly cheaper.
I think an internet search would turn up co-ops that serve areas near you. I’m in Ontario, Canada and the one I’ve joined is called Ontario Natural Food Co-op.
Great idea and way to tell the story. We have a very convenient grocery store so we go often. WE know we go too much and have talked about cutting back trips. So, now that I see how the less frequent trips helped your family I hope it will help ours too.
This principle is basically true. The more often you go to the store, the more you end up buying by the end of the month. I buy lots of staples and canned foods once a month. I fill the cart as high as I can and come out spending about $200 a month. My cupboard is full. As the month goes on and we eat our food, we have to do a bit of creative cooking and sometimes go without milk, since we tend to drink it pretty quickly. A few extra small trips to the store for milk and we come out spending less than $400 a month on food to feed a family of 6. Granted, 4 children under 8, but still, I don’t know anyone who spends that little on food. It CAN be done! But I urge you to avoid buying instant, frozen, or pre-packaged food. They make the bill creep up fast. The months where we have gone significantly over that amout I took a look at the handy list available in YNAB, and it shows significantly MORE trips to the store! Do some of your own homework and I’ll bet your highest grocery budgets are the months with the most receipts. Another way to get your grocery bill down is to buy generics. Even when the name brand goes on sale, almost always the generic brands are still cheaper. There are always a few items I refuse to substitute because of taste, but the generics are pretty good nowadays. Keep in mind the transition factor. If the generic tastes different you may not like it right away, but after awhile, you won’t notice anymore. In the long run, you will save significantly more!
Thanks Jesse for the reminder!
Just want to chime in for Utah folks that there are 2 grocery co-ops I am aware of. the community food co-op of Utah. http://foodco-op.net which has ordering and delivery once a month, and http://www.bountifulbaskets.org which has delivery every other week. (I live in northern Utah, there may be other co-ops I am not aware of)
I have extra kids during the school year, and my grocery bill was reaching insane amounts. having my produce come through the co-ops really drops my bottom line. I am not only skipping trips to the store but also supporting the local economy as well as our household economy! When I need produce I don’t get through the co-op I go to a local produce store. All you can get there is produce, milk, cheese, bread and some local candy and basic beverages. even if I want to deviate from my list there isn’t much to deviate too. I love that I support the local economy there as well as they buy local first and then outsource if they need other produce. I am in and out of the store in minutes which saves me time, no wandering aisles looking for one item and finding 20. lol. I personally can’t stand frozen milk–kudos to those of you who can do that–but it isnt for me. so I like getting it at the produce store when I go in. its a bit more than at the regular store but is also hormone free and comes from Johnny’s dairy and is in at about $3 a gallon. so not 4X’s the amount, just double–I get enough for 2 weeks at Sam’s club when I shop there once a month and then hit the other 2 weeks from the produce store. I don’t go to other grocery stores in between during the month.
I cook for 3 teenage boys as well as the 3 of us in my family. I also have an extensive extended family and we often entertain. I budget $600 a month for groceries and it also buys all our household items and pull ups for the month. (yup have a toddler) I’m stocking up our pantry as we go along as well and we have plenty of splurge items in the budget so we don’t feel we are going without. the best part is there are more veggies and fruits coming to the table fresh. We are eating healthier which usually added more to the bill but instead has cut it drastically. I recommend looking into a food co-op in your area if you aren’t already part of one.
I buy organic milk because I think it’s important, and it does cost a lot more than non-organic. However, for some reason the expiration dates on the cartons of organic milk extend to a month or more, and the “regular” milk expires in a week or so. I never need to make extra trips to the grocery store for milk anymore now that I am buying organic. I just checked my refrigerator, and right now I have three cartons dated, October 28, November 4, and November 4 (Today’s date–September 29.)
I agree not making the extra trips does save money. Now if I didn’t have to go back every week for deli lunch meat to pack for my kids’ lunches!
There are websites that make meal plans based on what’s on sale at the stores that week. They can save you a lot of money. I found one for people who live in the west called “Deals to Meals” http://www.dealstomeals.com/index.cfm. I live in the southeast and use E-mealz http://www.e-mealz.com/. You can use the code DAVE and get a discount. This will give you dinner meals for seven days for six people for the average cost of about $80 a week! They also have meal plans here for two or for low carb, low fat, and Weight Watchers.
Business opportunity in most states for milk delivery? In Michigan there are a lot of unemployed people who may be interested in such a venture :) What a great idea! I may have my retired husband consider it!
I’ve actually found the opposite to be true with my experience. I really hate going to the grocery store. I was the queen at extending the time between trips to the max by freezing meats, cheeses and bread and only picking up milk occassionally from the Walgreens on my corner (I live in a city so it’s not as easy to make a quick stop to the full store). Then when I did go I would make my big list of food I needed to tide me over til the next time. Since I hadn’t gone in a while I needed to restock a lot of what was in my pantry (i.e. cereals, pastas, etc) regardless of if it was on sale or not.
I found that I was spending a lot of money on those big trips and after blowing through my produce in the first week and a half (I’m single so had to make sure to eat it before it went bad), I didn’t have as many good food options at home. So not only was I not eating as well as I would have liked, I was spending a lot of money.
Now I suck it up and go to the store about every two weeks. This enables me to eat more fresh products because I go more often. And even better it lets me only buy what I need when it is on sale. When my cereal goes on sale I stock up with several boxes. That way if it’s not on sale the next time I go I don’t have to buy it because it’s my one trip for 4-5 weeks. So even though I’ve doubled the number of times I go to the store, I’m more focused on only buying what I need and have the flexibility to get the staples when they are on sale. By doing this I’ve brought my monthly grocery bill down by at least a couple hundred dollars.
Has any one tried the dryer balls? I was skeptical but I got them on sale for like $5. They really work. There are no static issues. They last forever. They don’t produce any scent though . All detergents have their own scents so there is always a conflict or overuse with the scents from the detergents and softener. So it makes sense to use one scent.
I do all my shopping at “wally-world”, Walmart and chose their generics at every opportunity.
Since my wife followed the low Cholesterol restricting diet list regular milk was not allowed. She did not like the taste of skimmed milk (too water down). She has been using creamer since then. We don’t drink milk (that’s for un-weaned babies – we are the only mammals who continue to drink milk after being weaned) except for with cereal. I have gotten used to the taste now. It does not have to be frozen.
This explains why, at least in our area, they have been building huge grocery stores seemingly around every corner. I didn’t understand how they could sustain this but now it makes sense. The more conveniently located the store is, the more likely you will drop in (for milk, etc.) and then inevitably overspend. I’m sure this more than pays for the overhead of the additional buildings, etc. No doubt they have all the research data to support this but it would sort of defeat the purpose to share it with us. ;)
We order our produce through an organic delivery service, http://www.greenling.com. This keeps us out of the store and we can more thoughtfully prepare a list of the produce we need each week. And it’s clean, healthier, higher nutrition produce which cuts down on health costs long term. I’m vegetarian so this covers the bulk of our food needs. We save on gas with not having to make trips to the store. For the items we do need from the store, we can buy in large quantities as Jesse suggests…
My family and I have had Winder Farms for just over three years and the grocery bill was one of the first things that I noticed (besides how amazing the milk tastes in glass bottles). That is so cool that you guys discovered it too because I always wondered if it was just me or not. We do the Milk, Eggs, and Bread thing and still save 100s of dollars each month and we eat great too. I love your tips and especially your software too. I always tell people about it when I can. Thanks for everything.
James Mills
True story.
My wife and I have bought mostly organic for years, and went to raw milk and pastured eggs after reading that same book. We’ve done this for years now. Our food budget always seemed a bit high to me. I am the son of a Depression era mother who always ate the remains we left on our plates. But when the price of gas went up in the waning days of the Bush administration, and the price of food jumped accordingly, I decided to take a closer look at what we were buying. It must be the organic food, I thought. It is so much more expensive than industrial food. But just to make sure, I did a survey of all my family and friends across the country, focusing on the statistical Family-of-Four. The single survey question was:
“How much, on average, do you spend on groceries in one month?”
It took months to do this survey because many people weren’t keeping track (I will pass you their contact info for YNAB bulk mailing campaigns). None of the people I contacted bought organic food. Many of them went to Costco for groceries. I expected to hear that they spent a few hundred dollars a month less than us, which I would then take to my wife and say, “Aha!”
It didn’t happen that way. When the results all came in, I discovered that only one other family out of the twenty I contacted spent less per month than we did.
How could that be? Further research showed that the difference wasn’t organic versus industrial food. It was ready-to-eat, processed (expensive) food versus prepared-at-home, raw (cheap) food. We are apparently one of a dying breed, people who still prepared the majority of the food they eat in their own kitchen from scratch. In fact, the one family who spent less than us was the only other family who made their own food to the extent we did, but they did NOT buy organic. They were also serious coupon clippers and they share meals with other families on their block.
So, the lesson for me was, I could save money if I didn’t buy organic. But I’m not about to do so. Local, organic, seasonal food is healthier, “greener”, and just tastes a whole lot better. To me that is worth spending money on. Not everyone has the time and money to switch to organic, though most could take steps in that direction without impacting their budget – start a garden, join a CSA, make your own meals, don’t eat so much high fructose corn syrup, etc.
Super Tip. Glad someone else sees the bene’s in delivered milk. We have been saving money due to fewer trips for over 10 years! Whaaaa Hooo Mooo. Ours also delivers Soy products for the Vegan in the family.
Thanks Jesse for putting the spotlight on the cost of frequent trips to the store.
A few years ago we shifted from me as the primary shopper to sending my spouse (the less impulsive buyer) to the store each week. The monthly total came down by about 25%. And the quality of our dining did not change.
Regarding milk, we order delicious fresh-frozen, raw, grass-fed, sustainable organic milk products direct from Organic Pastures farm over 300 miles away from our suburban neighborhood for about half of what is charged at the store. (But, some of that savings must be used to pay the shipping by UPS.)
The nutrition has to be better when the cows are milked out in the field on a mobile semi-truck milking parlor where the milk is immediately deep chilled. After milking it is tested, bottled, frozen & shipped to my home with far less delay and handling. On top of all of those benefits, I am less hungry for foods that are lower in nutrition density, saving money by not eating as many snacks. How can I go wrong?
By the way, I looked into some reviews for the book you mentioned and found the review by Eric A. Woods to be very insightful and even fun to read (on Amazon). In fact, I saved money by reading the review and satisfying my interest in the topic without having to buy the book! (Could be there is a money saving tip to be found in learning from online reviews before choosing to spend on items?)
In any case, this tip has really got me thinking about how we go about our shopping. Thanks.