That’s true… but I haven’t really seen all that much price inflation as long as I stick to Aldi as much as I can.
Imperfect Foods has gotten hideously expensive though and we would cut it entirely if it were more clear whether we personally have to lock down and not go in stores again for a while. We cut that back to every other week but are afraid to drop in case we can’t get back in when SHTF with delta or another variant.
This is what I spent on:
Hiiii. My husband was vegan for a decade and I was a vegetarian for about 8 years. We had a really limited budget at the time ($200 a month). Some tips/ways to get started saving on groceries.
Circulars. Whatever your store is, start getting and reading the circular before you shop when you’re making your meal plan/list. Pay attention to the lowest prices for items and write it down, for example at my Aldi the cheapest I usually see canned goods for is .40 a can, so I won’t buy them if they are more. When something I use a lot (like canned corn, beets, tomato puree, etc.) goes on sale for .40 a can I buy a bunch of them. In general, items go on sale every 6 weeks, so when you sale shop try to stock up on 6 weeks worth of the item. It takes practice to get really good at rotating and estimating usage but just jump in!
Make your own vegan meat and cheese. This saved us a ton of money. Plain tofu and tempeh I would buy from the store, but nearly every vegan meat and cheese is really expensive per serving. I have recipes for some vegan meats if you’re interested and I used to have a vegan cheese cookbook that I can hunt down the name of if you’d like it. Making Seitan is a great entry point IMO.
Seasonal produce. If you’re not already doing it buying only or mostly seasonal produce is a great way to get the best ingredients available at the best price. Not overbuying produce is also a good money saver since wasting food also wastes money. Usually (not always obv) when people have huge variation in grocery spending it’s because some weeks a lot of things aren’t getting eaten and other weeks they’re running out of food. Looking at amounts, when you buy produce especially, is important.
Bulk shopping. If there are things that are somewhat “specialty” that you use a lot of (like liquid aminos, tvp, nutritional yeast, etc.) it’s worth shopping around online for bulk options. Bulk spices and grains are also usually a much better deal. There are some items that I literally never buy except in bulk amounts. We’re a two person household and it still saves us a lot of money!
Sauces, condiments, dressings. A hugely spendy part of a lot of people’s grocery budgets comes down to add-ons like sauces. BBQ sauce easily goes for a few dollars a jar even though it is literally the easiest thing to make (ketchup, molasses, garlic powder, onion powder, apple cider vinegar). If there are any condiments, sauces, or dressings that you regularly buy, look into learning to make them. There are very few things that are more expensive to make at home (non-vegan mayo is one of them, but I do it anyway because it’s tastier).
Other than that stuff, planning and improving cooking/baking skills are the biggest tips I have. I know not everyone likes or wants to meal plan and cook, and that’s fine! But if you’re asking the best way to save money on groceries I really think that’s it. Having emergency meals is also a good strategy if you’re prone to ordering in when dinner isn’t easy. I recommend emergency dinners that are shelf stable either in your pantry or that can be kept in the freezer for months at a time.
I shop at one store and always have. I find the cheapest overall that has quality food. Locally here it’s Winco. It has really varied depending on what state I have lived in.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head - we’re probably buying some particular favorite snacks that are expensive and not really paying attention to the price differential. Loving all the advice in this thread, going to try tracking the cost of specific items more precisely going forward.
We are a whopping $6000 into savings for our August.
What the fuck, you ask?
$4000 medical, $2000 moving expenses.
But hey guess what we planned for that, just abouts! 
So at least we stuck to the plan, even if the plan was to use savings!
I thought this video on learning new things and accomplishing goals was really great because it’s so doable and instructive. I like how she shows what people call “discipline” but broken down into its underlying workings. One thing she says is you almost always overestimate how hard learning something new is going to be, and I think that’s so true.
Anyone have thoughts?
Ooh looks interesting! I’ll watch it in the morning.
I checked prices of chicken at the butchers and supermarket. At the supermarket (Woolworths) it’s $9.50 for chicken breast, $19 for free range chicken breast. My local butcher has it about $19/kg, so I will ask if they’re free range chickens. I also cooked thigh fillets instead of breast this week. It seems to cost $12.0/kg standard chook, $17.50 free range chicken. Pretty tasty but harder to do nice easy slices for lunch meat. Definitely worth adding to our rotation. A thigh cutlet (bone + skin on) is $6/kg, but I didn’t see any free range and I would have to consider what our butcher has. I only buy “free range” chicken meat but it’s a good exercise to see what else is available.
ETA: $8/kg for a whole free range chook at the supermarket. Harder for me to cook or chop up, but not an impossible skill to learn and entirely reasonable to add to our rotation of meats.
Bone-in and skin-on thighs are my favorite cut of chicken!
Does anyone else have trouble fighting the “WELP, I’m over budget and I didn’t even spend on anything non-need, so may as well throw caution to the wind and spend?”
In related news, Halloween merch is starting to appear in stores. 
Every year I say I’m going to set a budget for fun Halloween spending. Every year I fail!
I’m so bad at this part! 
I don’t know if this is true in Australia as well but I did read that cage-free and free-range are not as meaningful for chicken that you eat as opposed to for eggs, because chickens-to-eat are not usually raised in battery cages anyway.
Finding the real motivation is the hardest for me! Sometimes I think I want to do things but then realize, no, I like the idea of doing them but I don’t actually want to put the work in. See: sewing, drawing, knitting, lol. It’s relaxing to just accept I don’t want to do that stuff.
This is THE biggest step for me. I think from the outside in I appear to be a pretty disciplined person. But a huge part of that has been accepting that, if I’m not truly intrinsically motivated to do something… I simply won’t. I cannot make myself do something I don’t have buy in for. Like. 99% failure rate. This is why my college transcripts are so weird. I’d get like, As in 2 of 3 terms of a class, and a C- in the other, simply because I wasn’t adequately interested/invested in that one class 
I think this is a big part of why I research things to the end of the earth, I need to understand why and make myself buy into an idea to execute. I’m pretty good with the execution once I’m actually invested in something. But that step 1 man. It’s been a process.
OMG me too! Haha, my grades were exactly the same. Either an “A” or a “barely comes to class” with little in between. If I don’t actually buy into something…it’s just not going to happen.
Yup, this is me all the time. I go over-budget and my brain says, “well, we are over budget already so let’s buy all the things we can possibly need in this category this month, and then next month we start over and and we will stick to the budget.”
No, because I don’t try to fight it. I just go with it. It’s usually because I’ve been doing the equivalent of deferred maintenance on myself (which is a different kind of budgetary issue), but that’s what the sinking fund is for.
I should add–this is only an occasional occurrence, like once every six months/year. Usually I stay closer to my numbers.
I’ve been thinking about you guys, even though I haven’t been posting much! A few small things we’ve done lately:
$115 on restaurant foods in August, only $10 of that was an iffy decision, so I’m happy with the ratio and my decisions to spend time with people I want to spend time with.
$499.44 for groceries.
Welp! That was me! Definitely watching this video later, thanks!
The kitchen is very very stocked!!
This week’s plan
Breakfasts: fruit, oatmeal, yogurt, Cheerios
Lunches: leftovers, hummus, eggs, baked beans, Kraft dinner, canned chili, quesadillas - hard boil some eggs
Dinners
Monday - out or oyster mushrooms and rice
Tuesday - eggplant Parm (freeze half)
Wednesday - grandparents
Thursday - tandoori or curry fish and rice
Friday camping, not firm(canned chili or baked beans) chips? Tortillas?
Saturday camping not firm(probably Kraft dinner or pasta plus jarred sauce plus hotdogs for the meaty). Lunch = cheese and tuna crackers and fruit
Sunday - if home, pasta (jarred sauce) or eggs and rice lunch = bean salsa and tortilla chips
Planning helped a lot a lot a lot last week, so I’m going to try and stick to it. We had a lot less waste too which really helped. This could end up being a whole week without a curry, which is weird for us. Unless I curry some chickpeas or beans. I’m also near collapse though, so the fact that these are easy meals is really encouraging