Frugal Family Food Plan: How We Slashed Our Grocery Bill
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I love to cook and bake. If I'm being honest, I don't always love to cook or bake with children around, but I try my best to slow down and include them. My favourite time to cook or bake is when Mark takes the kids and I can crank up some tunes, work away in the kitchen and never have to worry about anyone getting my way. Ahh, bliss!
Now let's cut to the chase, shall we? We spend WAY too much money on food. On average we EASILY spend $1000+ on groceries a month. I have tried weekly meal planning, we even tried eating a whole food plant-based diet for a year, and recently we reverted back to your standard Canadian diet. But no matter how we ate or how we planned, that number on the grocery bill always remained the same.
BUT NOW IT'S TIME TO GET FRUGALICIOUS! We Westmans are buckling down on our meal planning and grocery spending. Then, I created a frugal meal plan and grocery shopping plan that will hopefully work for our family of five. And of course, the whole point of this post is to share it with you!
Before I lay it all out for you in detail, I created a step-by-step list of how I approached slaying my current system and implementing a Frugal Family Food plan.
FRUGAL FAMILY FOOD PLANNING TIPS:
1. Save on Supper. We simplified our meal plan by removing our most expensive meals from our list and keeping our top 10 most frugal recipes. After I did that, I added a couple more extra frugal meals! Now, all my supper recipes are easy, quick, delicious, and inexpensive. Winning!
2. Budget Breakfast, Snacks, and Lunches. From now on, there will be only 2 options for breakfast. Our favourite steel-cut oats (these are our favourite) with nuts and fruit, or breakfast cookies. That's it. Goodbye cereals and bagels! As for snacks, my list consists of 5 frugal snack ideas that we will rotate through. No longer will fishy crackers, store-bought granola bars, cheese strings, individual yogurts and the like be a part of our regular snack items. We will keep it simple and mostly homemade. As for lunches, it can't get more simple than this: we're going to eat the same extremely frugal thing every day. I'm not even worried about it! I will, however, have a couple simple options to make for the kids' lunches.
3. Bulk the Staples. I had to think long and hard about what our staples are, but once I had all of my frugal recipes in front of me, I could create a list of the staple items I intend to buy in bulk from Costco or Amazon Prime. We plan to do a bulk shop every two months. We will be experimenting here with how much of each item we REALLY need in a two-month period, and will keep you updated!
4. Simplify the Meal Plan. Gone are the days where I find myself slaving away at a meal every single night of the week. I have created a meal plan that looks like this: meal 1, meal 2, easy night, repeat meal 1, repeat meal 2, easy night, Frugal Friday Fun night. Out of the meals on my frugal recipes list, I created 4 weeks worth of supper meal plans for our family to rotate through. I plan to double or triple every meal I make and freeze anything that we won't need for the week to use later on. Also, we plan to adopt the Frugalwoods family tip to ALWAYS have cheap, totally unhealthy frozen pizzas on hands in case of an emergency!
5. Frugalize the Weekly Grocery List: Now that all the hard work was done, I created my weekly grocery list. And it's SMALL! I am so excited right now and it feels equally weird and awesome. There will be zero deviating from the list. I wrote down the exact amount of ingredients we will need for the week based on the recipes I will be making. I double-checked our fridge, freezer and pantry items to make sure that I wasn't forgetting anything, or worse, buying something I forgot we already had!
Now that you have a good idea of my approach to Frugal Family Food, I will share exactly what I have on my meal plans and below that, I'll share my grocery lists! Prepare yourself for the nitty-gritty details!
FRUGAL FAMILY MEALS:
FRUGAL FAMILY MEAL PLANS (Suppers):
Ok, now that that's out of the way, I'll share my bulk shopping list with you and then my BASIC weekly grocery store list!
BULK GROCERY LIST: (if needed, every 2 months)
- Mozzarella cheese (x3)
- Cheddar cheese (x3)
- Basmati rice
- Olive oil
- Peanut butter (x6)
- Diced tomatoes
- Whole wheat flour
- All-purpose flour
- Pasta
- Baking supplies: baking soda, baking powder, vanilla extract, cocoa powder etc...
- Spices: sea salt, pepper, cinnamon, etc...
- Steel-cut oats
- Rolled oats
- Nuts and seeds
- Coffee
- Popcorn kernels
- Nacho chips
- Salsa
- Black beans
- Chocolate chips
- Frozen berries
- Bubly (carbonated water)
- Carrots
- Maple syrup
- Lemon juice
- Frozen pizzas
Other non-food items include toilet paper, paper towel, kleenex, ziplock bags, parchment paper, tin foil, dog food, toothpaste, etc...
I know this looks like a long list, but we may not need to buy some of these items every two months. For example, parchment paper lasts me probably closer to 6 months. It's possible that we may find out we go through some items quicker than we thought. We will then need to evaluate whether or not we need to slow down on our consumption or buy more next time.
Now for my basic weekly grocery list! We shop at the Real Canadian Superstore and enjoy racking up those free grocery points. We only go to another store if we HAVE to. Why? To save time. We usually have our 3 kids with us when we shop, so time is definitely of the essence!
Of course, I may need to add different proteins and vegetables to this list depending on what meals I'm making that week. This is my basic, staple weekly list.
WEEKLY GROCERY LIST:
- Apples
- Bananas
- Oranges (maybe every 2 weeks)
- Cucumber
- Broccoli
- Mushrooms
- Garlic
- Onions
- Eggs
- Greek yogurt
- Turkey bacon
- 1L Nonfat milk (for my coffees and overnight oats)
- 4L 2% milk (for the kiddos)
- Pita bread
I can't tell you how excited this very small list makes me feel! I am ready to slash our grocery bill!
Before I finish up, I feel I should add a full disclaimer that as I am writing this, we have not yet implemented our plan. I can't wait to update you on how our Frugal Family Food plan turns out! Ideally, we'd love to see our monthly grocery bill go down to around $600-$700 once we get into the groove with our bi-monthly shopping trips! That could be $400 a month in savings!
DO YOU HAVE ANY FRUGAL FAMILY FOOD TIPS FOR US? WHAT DO YOU BUY IN BULK?
We'd love to hear from you. Please leave us a comment below!
*UPDATE* Instead of spending our average $250 on groceries, this week, using this plan, we only spent $73.75!!
 |
| Pita bread, homemade hummus! |
Now let's cut to the chase, shall we? We spend WAY too much money on food. On average we EASILY spend $1000+ on groceries a month. I have tried weekly meal planning, we even tried eating a whole food plant-based diet for a year, and recently we reverted back to your standard Canadian diet. But no matter how we ate or how we planned, that number on the grocery bill always remained the same.
BUT NOW IT'S TIME TO GET FRUGALICIOUS! We Westmans are buckling down on our meal planning and grocery spending. Then, I created a frugal meal plan and grocery shopping plan that will hopefully work for our family of five. And of course, the whole point of this post is to share it with you!
Before I lay it all out for you in detail, I created a step-by-step list of how I approached slaying my current system and implementing a Frugal Family Food plan.
FRUGAL FAMILY FOOD PLANNING TIPS:
1. Save on Supper. We simplified our meal plan by removing our most expensive meals from our list and keeping our top 10 most frugal recipes. After I did that, I added a couple more extra frugal meals! Now, all my supper recipes are easy, quick, delicious, and inexpensive. Winning!
2. Budget Breakfast, Snacks, and Lunches. From now on, there will be only 2 options for breakfast. Our favourite steel-cut oats (these are our favourite) with nuts and fruit, or breakfast cookies. That's it. Goodbye cereals and bagels! As for snacks, my list consists of 5 frugal snack ideas that we will rotate through. No longer will fishy crackers, store-bought granola bars, cheese strings, individual yogurts and the like be a part of our regular snack items. We will keep it simple and mostly homemade. As for lunches, it can't get more simple than this: we're going to eat the same extremely frugal thing every day. I'm not even worried about it! I will, however, have a couple simple options to make for the kids' lunches.
3. Bulk the Staples. I had to think long and hard about what our staples are, but once I had all of my frugal recipes in front of me, I could create a list of the staple items I intend to buy in bulk from Costco or Amazon Prime. We plan to do a bulk shop every two months. We will be experimenting here with how much of each item we REALLY need in a two-month period, and will keep you updated!
4. Simplify the Meal Plan. Gone are the days where I find myself slaving away at a meal every single night of the week. I have created a meal plan that looks like this: meal 1, meal 2, easy night, repeat meal 1, repeat meal 2, easy night, Frugal Friday Fun night. Out of the meals on my frugal recipes list, I created 4 weeks worth of supper meal plans for our family to rotate through. I plan to double or triple every meal I make and freeze anything that we won't need for the week to use later on. Also, we plan to adopt the Frugalwoods family tip to ALWAYS have cheap, totally unhealthy frozen pizzas on hands in case of an emergency!
5. Frugalize the Weekly Grocery List: Now that all the hard work was done, I created my weekly grocery list. And it's SMALL! I am so excited right now and it feels equally weird and awesome. There will be zero deviating from the list. I wrote down the exact amount of ingredients we will need for the week based on the recipes I will be making. I double-checked our fridge, freezer and pantry items to make sure that I wasn't forgetting anything, or worse, buying something I forgot we already had!
 |
| Cute little hungry fingers! |
FRUGAL FAMILY MEALS:
FRUGAL FAMILY MEAL PLANS (Suppers):
Ok, now that that's out of the way, I'll share my bulk shopping list with you and then my BASIC weekly grocery store list!
BULK GROCERY LIST: (if needed, every 2 months)
- Mozzarella cheese (x3)
- Cheddar cheese (x3)
- Basmati rice
- Olive oil
- Peanut butter (x6)
- Diced tomatoes
- Whole wheat flour
- All-purpose flour
- Pasta
- Baking supplies: baking soda, baking powder, vanilla extract, cocoa powder etc...
- Spices: sea salt, pepper, cinnamon, etc...
- Steel-cut oats
- Rolled oats
- Nuts and seeds
- Coffee
- Popcorn kernels
- Nacho chips
- Salsa
- Black beans
- Chocolate chips
- Frozen berries
- Bubly (carbonated water)
- Carrots
- Maple syrup
- Lemon juice
- Frozen pizzas
Other non-food items include toilet paper, paper towel, kleenex, ziplock bags, parchment paper, tin foil, dog food, toothpaste, etc...
I know this looks like a long list, but we may not need to buy some of these items every two months. For example, parchment paper lasts me probably closer to 6 months. It's possible that we may find out we go through some items quicker than we thought. We will then need to evaluate whether or not we need to slow down on our consumption or buy more next time.
Now for my basic weekly grocery list! We shop at the Real Canadian Superstore and enjoy racking up those free grocery points. We only go to another store if we HAVE to. Why? To save time. We usually have our 3 kids with us when we shop, so time is definitely of the essence!
Of course, I may need to add different proteins and vegetables to this list depending on what meals I'm making that week. This is my basic, staple weekly list.
 |
| Mount Banana |
- Apples
- Bananas
- Oranges (maybe every 2 weeks)
- Cucumber
- Broccoli
- Mushrooms
- Garlic
- Onions
- Eggs
- Greek yogurt
- Turkey bacon
- 1L Nonfat milk (for my coffees and overnight oats)
- 4L 2% milk (for the kiddos)
- Pita bread
I can't tell you how excited this very small list makes me feel! I am ready to slash our grocery bill!
Before I finish up, I feel I should add a full disclaimer that as I am writing this, we have not yet implemented our plan. I can't wait to update you on how our Frugal Family Food plan turns out! Ideally, we'd love to see our monthly grocery bill go down to around $600-$700 once we get into the groove with our bi-monthly shopping trips! That could be $400 a month in savings!
DO YOU HAVE ANY FRUGAL FAMILY FOOD TIPS FOR US? WHAT DO YOU BUY IN BULK?
We'd love to hear from you. Please leave us a comment below!
*UPDATE* Instead of spending our average $250 on groceries, this week, using this plan, we only spent $73.75!!
I love this - nice work guys!
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