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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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