Grocery budget motivation

Here’s another round of grocery motivation for you $100/month grocery haters.  ;)

As a reminder, Brian and I budget $100 per month per person.  This is our second shop of the month, so I took out $100 to spend.  Here’s what we got for almost exactly $50:

First we hit up Shoppers Drug Mart (a retail chain which sells groceries, pharmaceuticals and health products) for a total of $10.03:

• butter – $3.49
• eggs – $2.29
• organic maple syrup – $4.99
• McCain frozen juice – $0.79
• (various personal items)
• Optimum points (minus $10)

The Optimum points basically paid for the personal items and I used grocery money for the remainder.

 

From T&T (a large supermarket chain specializing in Asian foods), a total of $31.47:

• chicken marinade – $3.29
• instant noodles x6 – $4
• BBQ pork bun (part of CF’s personal allocation) – $1.50
• 1.7kg pork side ribs (cut into ribs and sides by the butcher!) – $7
• 4 chicken drumsticks – $1.80
• leafy Asian greens (for soup, stir fry, etc) – $1.70
• mushrooms – $1.50
• 4 bananas – $0.67
• bean sprouts – $0.18
• 2lbs carrots – $1.49
• 1L milk – $2.59
• frozen shrimp dumplings – $2.79
• 2L soy milk – $3.79
• parking ticket (minus $1)

As you can see, we got a good mix of fresh veggies and fruit, general goods and snacks.  Having a grocery budget doesn’t meant that you can’t splurge on the occasional pork bun.  :)  I was especially pleased with the side ribs.  The butcher cut them for us, essentially giving us proper BBQ style ribs and sides (great for soup!) at a price that was less than half the cost of regular ribs.  Score!

 

Next, we visited Chinatown, for a total of $7:

• 1/2lb BBQ pork – $3
• assorted butcher items $3
• BBQ pork bun – $0.80 (Brian got jealous of mine and insisted on getting one as well…)

 

Finally, we stopped at Kin’s Farm Market (a local produce chain) for a total of $3:

• 2 cucumbers – $1
• bag of potatoes – $1
• onion – $0.23

The take home message I like to emphasize is that $100/month per person is doable, healthy and enjoyable.  This whole shopping trip took us less than 2 hours.  We got a variety of meats, veggies, fruit and even a few snacks.  And we still have $50 left over for buying more fruits and veggies, milk, eggs and yogurt as needed for the remainder of the month.

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