The year we got married we saved up to pay for our wedding in cash, and it was not a small wedding, and we paid off all of our combined credit card debt. So in addition to living in the Bay Area, California and having to buy a car, pay some medical bills out of pocket, and you know – live, we put away $50,000!
And for context – know that we made what we considered to be a good, but not a high, income for our area at the time. We were both working full time, salary jobs which helped us have predictable cash flow. But it was because of the changes we made to our spending that we were able to achieve our financial goals, NOT because of the level of our income. We had already demonstrated we were perfectly capable of being broke at that income level too, lol.
Now with inflation it feels appropriate to turn back to the time when we imposed spending limits to return to the wisdom of eating well while reducing spending. We eliminated extra spending however we could, including with food. But we were still into quality, nourishing food, as we are now, so here are 8 strategies that we used to eat well while saving like crazy.
Grocery Outlet
Or “Gross Out” as my Aunt Jacque calls it 😅
Most people would probably place cutting eating out as the first thing to do to eat well while saving money, and I’ll get to that. I’m putting Grocery Outlet as the number one thing we did because we used it for everything:
- cheaper grocery staples,
- fun foods,
- treats,
- and even entertainment
We regularly went on Grocery Outlet dates (and still do on occasion) where we would go together, browse every aisle, and if there was something we needed and they had it, then we were allowed to buy it. This was a form of spending freedom that we didn’t allow ourselves anywhere else, but we needed in small doses. We seriously prioritized shopping at Grocery Outlet, and recommend shopping at any equivalent store as well.
We did have certain rules for shopping, even at Grocery Outlet, which I will put further down the list of strategies we used to eat well while saving major money.
The staple things at Grocery Outlet became our staples, and when they had fun foods or other things rotate through their stores we enjoyed the variety. Plus they have some good stuff! Depending on your local store’s availability. I could probably write a full “Love Letter to Grocery Outlet” as a separate post 😊
Limit or eliminate eating out
Limiting or eliminating eating out is an obvious strategy to eat well while saving money. There is a big price difference between buying your own ingredients, preparing them, and serving them at home compared to paying for the service of a business and its employees doing the same for you.
That being said, we did allow ourselves a small, and I mean small, budget to eat out. We each had $25 per month. I’ll repeat: $25 per MONTH. That wasn’t a lot then, and it certainly isn’t a lot now. I mean that would barely cover the cost of mayonnaise these days!
Typically we would not actually go out for meals together with this budget, but when we did we really tried to make it count. Often this money would allow us to grab a coffee or meal out when we found ourselves without prepared food from home. My ritual at the time was to go out to Chipotle for lunch while I was working. Once or twice a month I would get a burrito bowl with 2 large tortillas on the side which I would roll into 2 burritos – one for then, one for later. So I could squeeze 4 meals out of my $25.
No single serving drinks
This one is short and sweet. Basically we translated bulk buying principles to beverages to save money. We did not buy small bottles of kommbucha or juice in our groceries. Instead we bought bigger bottles that contained many servings and costing significantly less per serving. We also bought ingredients to make our own coffees at home (nothing fancy, but it did the trick).
Replacement only shopping
There may be other names for this strategy, but I’ve always thought of it as “replacement shopping” – replace what you need that you’ve run out of. Define what your household and grocery staples are and only make purchases that maintain your supply of those items.
Some of our staples at the time were:
- Organic pasture raised eggs (when possible)
- Organic tortillas – we ate egg breakfast tacos as a weekend tradition
- Organic fruit – fresh, and frozen, whatever kinds were cheap
- Organic vegetables – greens, cabbage, zucchini, carrots, onions, etc
- Yogurt – Grocery Outlet had great deals ($0.79 specials)
- Condiments – Chunky Garlic Pepper Plant, jam, butter, honey
- Organic meat – at the time I was vegetarian, so this one was just Thomas
Set a budget and stick to it
Obviously budgeting is a huge part of saving money. We budgeted and tracked our spending diligently while we were saving for our wedding and paying off debt. We actually continue to budget diligently to this day, although we do enjoy more flexibility now.
I’m not going to go into detail about how to budget here. We use Dave Ramsey’s EveryDollar app and website to run our budget and it’s worked well for us.
Even if you simply find out how much you naturally spend on food and cap your budget there – then you can know how much money you have permission from yourself to spend on food and what you can go ahead and allocate to other things.
Still get the good stuff
This will be a theme on this blog. Get. And. Eat. Good. Food.
It is such a worthy investment of whatever budget works for your life. Food is fuel and especually if you are trying to make something big happen with your money you want to be fueled right. Plus it feels luxurious and reassuring to still have a stocked pantry, even when you are running a shoestring operation overall. We developed a running list of what we liked to get organic and local, for example, and what we were fine getting more generic or cheaper versions of.
Know how hardcore you are going to be and why
Now-a-days we still use a food budget because we truly could go really crazy with food spending if we didn’t, and it’s just wise for everyone. However we intentionally operate it at a different level now than when we were saving $50,000 in one year. We were hardcore then because we chose to accelerate our goal of getting out of debt. We didn’t KNOW going in that we would even have enough money for our wedding in time to pay cash. We HAD to do everything we could – short of going insane – to strive to make it possible.
Spoiler alert: we did have enough cash on time, and even enough extra to buy a car one week before our wedding when BOTH of our other vehicles died.
So we were driven. And it was hard, but rewarding to save money on food given our drive to reach our goals.
Learn what is cheap, where
Get creative with your shopping. Maybe try new stores. the experience of switching it up can also be valuable when you are trying to save money on food. Again, Grocery Outlet 💕, but also Costco, Azure Standard, Amazon (selectively), and local stores.
What were our actual food budgets for 2019?
Our average monthly food spending was $830.28 including groceries, eating out, and food while travelling.
I was honestly a little surprised by this number. I wanted to present something lower I guess, but I’m glad I can attest that we spent this much on food and were still able to save $50,000 that year!
Are you already using some of these strategies to eat well while saving? Is there a strategy that you want to add in? Please let us know in the comments below 😊