Tyler came in from a twelve-hour shift last Thursday, opened the fridge, stood there with the door open long enough to let all the cold out, and said, "We have a lot of ingredients and no food."
He wasn't wrong. There was a pound of ground beef, half a head of cabbage, eggs, tortillas and a jar of pickles. That's a dinner if somebody has the energy to make it, and at 7:30 at night after twelve hours on his feet, nobody did. We had cereal. Then I opened the sheet to see what February had cost us anyway.
February was our first full month with a real budget, and groceries got $600 of it. That's our number for two adults, one of whom works a physical job and eats like it. We spent $617. Close enough that I'm not upset, far enough that I wanted to know where the extra $17 went.
Where the $617 went
| What | February |
|---|---|
| Weekly trips to the Walmart in town (4) | $338 |
| Monthly Aldi run in Columbia | $142 |
| Family packs of meat, split and frozen | $64 |
| Paper towels, dish soap, trash bags | $41 |
| Milk and bread fill-ins at Dollar General | $32 |
| Total | $617 |
Paper towels and dish soap count as groceries in our sheet because they come off the same receipt, and I'm not going to sit in the Walmart parking lot splitting it out. That's part of why our number is $600 and not $500.
The Dollar General line is the leak. It's close, it's open late, and I never walk out with only the milk. Four of those trips had something in the bag I didn't go in for: a bag of chips, a box of granola bars, a scented candle on clearance.
Eggs didn't help either. They were $5.87 a dozen at the Walmart in town in February, and we go through two dozen a month between breakfasts and Tyler's lunches. That's almost $12 on eggs alone, about double what we paid this time last year.
What keeps it near $600
Nothing fancy. A handful of habits do most of the work.
Five dinners, not seven. I plan five dinners a week and make enough of two of them for leftovers. The other night is breakfast for dinner or "fend for yourself," which in our house means grilled cheese.
Tyler packs a lunch. Most days, anyway. He takes two sandwiches, some fruit and whatever leftovers there are. On the days he doesn't pack, he ends up at Casey's, and those stops aren't in the grocery number. That's a separate conversation, and we're going to have it.
Long-shift nights get planned first. When the pharmacy is short, I work until 9 a couple of nights a week. Those are the nights we used to fall apart, so I plan them before anything else: something in the slow cooker in the morning, or tacos, which Tyler can make without calling me.
Meat in family packs. We buy the big packs of ground beef and chicken thighs and split them into freezer bags the same day. A five-pound pack of thighs at $1.67 a pound is $8.35, and that's three dinners plus a couple of lunches.
One trip to Aldi a month. We started making a monthly run to the Aldi in Columbia, about an hour south. It's too early to say whether it's worth the gas, so I'll report back once I have a few months of receipts.
And then there's Moose
Moose, our 70-pound red hound, has his own line in the sheet, so his food isn't part of the $600. His 40-pound bag runs about $42 and lasts a little over a month. It's the kind the vet recommended, with real chicken as the first ingredient. Meanwhile, Tyler and I eat store-brand everything. I'll let you decide who's winning.
For March, the budget stays at $600, and the goal is fewer Dollar General stops. I'm going to buy two gallons of milk on the weekly trip and freeze one, which my mom swears works fine. If it does, that's four fewer trips a month past the clearance shelf.
