I do the same thing, @mintjulep break out my grocery food and snacks/junk food. It’s enlightening for sure.
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@sthom I have a question for you…does breaking out the junk food help you in passing up the purchase? A lot of time it does not work for me! LOL!! Need to put more effort into it!
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I have to watch what I eat before going to the store, if I eat fruit, I am literally instantly hungry no matter where I am. No idea why, just have noticed this.
I am sure I have a well balanced meal before leaving the house, rarely buy junk food. But as we all know there are exceptions!
Shortly before the new year began, I stopped eating anything with any form of sweetener in it. This led to a primarily plant-based diet since around 80% of food in grocery stores contains some form of sweetener and the switch caused me to lose interest in eating much meat.
I generally make a big pot of soup and one other multi-meal item every weekend. Those last most of the week. In between, I eat a lot of eggs with sauteed vegetables. I snack on fruit or nuts.
Since almost everything has sweeteners in it, eating out doesn’t happen. I go out for coffee once a week at most. Yet another cost savings.
I wasn’t specifically tracking food costs so it’s hard to calculate my savings, but this, in addition to being in the middle of a no-buy year, is substantial. I increased my 401K contributions to 19%, increased my corporate stock purchase plan to 10%, eliminated my credit card debt and doubled what I was putting towards mortgage principal payments.
Eating this way was a lifestyle change that wasn’t nearly as difficult as I thought it would be. To me, it’s an extension to the minimalist lifestyle change that I’ve been working towards for a couple of years.
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@mintjulep Funny you should ask does breaking out the junk food category from the grocery/food category help me. No, I still buy junk food for cryin’ out loud?. But, I punish myself by marking that cell Red in my spreadsheet, hoping it will deter me somewhat.
I love the minimalist style of thinking and doing, it is great to see the refrig & freezer have space in it and the pantry without all the frills of this and that which never seem to be used or go away. I look at all the spices that will never be used up in at least 5 years, let alone their shelf life!
Junk food is rarely bought by me, it is my husband who wants cookies, crackers, and candy and is pretty unstoppable about it. What I do is leave the snacks alone that he has bought. We would be spending a lot less money if he eliminated all these snack bargains. Gotta admit he hits the clearance section frequently for his treats.
So we are at an impasse.
I’m definitely going to try the plant based diet and see if I see a difference in my grocery bill as well. I do think ordering my groceries and doing curbside pickup saves me from the random purchases I hadn’t intended on making as does having a weeklong meal plan…only buy for what I’m making that week.
That is so great that you are being proactive about your budget and health. All of the replies are wonderful, too. We are all responsible for ourselves and this forum shows how many people are taking this to heart in many ways. We don’t go out to eat very much. We just spent a week in Vermont on vacation. Having a timeshare helps very much because I make food ahead of time and freeze it. We only had to go out for 1 lunch and breakfast because of bringing frozen meals prepared at home.
Using Groupon or coupons for food is also a great idea. I sometimes buy frozen dinners but I never pay full price - I buy them when they are on sale. My husband goes to a store in our area that has senior citizen discount on Tuesdays and looks for bargain meat and fish.
