What I'm Doing to Beat Inflation...Cutting My Grocery Budget?

 

There's a lot of talk of late about inflation and its effect upon the household.  People tout inflation figures and complain over the cost of foods but no kidding, food is not included in those figures.  Neither is the cost of housing or utilities, clothing, or most of the daily life expenses.  The prices that most affect our daily lives might be rising but it's not included in the government figures that calculate inflation.  I don't understand why not.  It seems to me that would be the very place you'd track inflation, where it hits the average citizen but there you are.  It's government for you.

I've been watching prices in the stores and yes, some are higher, some are the same as they were a year ago and some remained stable over two years.  Higher prices overall, but most have increased only by the smallest average.  At least that's what is true for my area.  Meat rose a good deal two years ago.  Since then, it's stabilized for the most part and remains about what it was in 2019 and early 2020.  My budget adjusted to that increase two years ago and that's truth.  We eat a lot less of chuck roast these days and rely heavily upon ground beef and chicken.  I'd like a bit more variety in beef cuts, but we may have a roast or steak or cubed steaks once every two months now.  

It's not inflation so much as not knowing what shortage/outage I'll come across in the stores, or for how long those items may be out of stock. And those outages are not consistent in one store.  I may find an item here at a higher price but not at all in the other stores I visit.  

Occasionally the shortage/outage is in all stores.  Remember my search for Turkey Spam last year to substitute as breakfast meat occasionally?  Currently I'm only finding turkey breakfast sausage in the freezer case.  Compare one pound of fresh meat case turkey breakfast sausage for $1.99 to 6 ounces of frozen for $3.29-$4.99 and you'll have a good idea of why we just don't eat turkey breakfast sausage much anymore.  I bought the frozen varieties last month merely as an experiment in taste.  It's not as good as the least liked brand of fresh turkey sausage so I won't be subbing in frozen at any time for what we're missing. Turkey Bacon is scarce as well.  Beef smoked sausages are difficult to find, especially a certain brand that I consider to be the best and most reasonably priced.   At one point there was NO sausage of any kind in the stores, pork, beef or otherwise.

Last year, anticipating vast pricing increases on all grocery items, I raised my budget by $100 a month which I felt would allow me to keep my freezer and pantry stocked as well as providing our daily meals.   But I think I'm going to dial it back to what I'd set as my limit two years ago and here's why:

1. An increased budget without an exponentially higher increase in food overall means I'm just spending more money and because those items I'd typically buy are relatively the same price (or within a few cents difference) I'm spending that extra on items I'd not typically even consider buying, most of which are higher priced than my previous budget allowed.

2.  My pantry is not fully stocked at present.  If that sounds like an odd reason to lower my food budget, here's where I better explain #1: those higher priced items are mostly 'nice to have' items and not basic grocery items that we'd eat daily or canned vegetables and fruits, or canned meats that will help keep our pantry stable in crisis.   Instead, I'm purchasing fancy condiments, more expensive add-ins and that sort of thing.  Why have I stocked so heavily in that area?  Mostly because when shelves were empty of basics, these were almost always in stock and in goodly supply in all stores.  

These items are nice to have but do I really want to fully stock my pantry with only those?  Well, no.  Because I'd spent the money on the luxuries, I didn't have enough to pay extra if the basics needed to be purchased at a store where they might be a little higher.  Instead, I'd hold off buying green beans at the lowest price until they came back in stock.  Or whole kernel corn...I waited MONTHS for that item to come back into stock at Aldi, but I was well stocked with canned green chilies on the pantry shelf at more than the cost of canned corn at the pricier store.

 I'd much rather focus on getting the basics up to the proper levels and let those 'nice to have' items be the add-ins only when I have it fully stocked once again.  Does that mean I'll cut out all the nice to have items?  No.  But instead of doing a heavy and intensive stock up on them I'll limit my purchase to adding to what I have as I find them on sale one or two at a time.  

3.  I'm not having any food waste at all.  That's a sure sign my most expensive area of purchasing which is fresh produce is at a good level.  I can maintain that level on a lower budget if I cut out most of those 'nice to have' extras and limit myself to a set dollar amount for that spending even while decreasing my budget.

4.  The additional money I allotted myself didn't just go towards the nice to have add-ins.  I stocked up on some things that we use far more slowly like shelf stable milk, powdered milk, electrolyte powders in bulk, powdered shelf stable Vitamin C sources, supplements, etc.  Higher priced items that I couldn't afford to stock in bulk in the past.  However, now that I have a good supply of those things for our household, I can cut way back on those.  We use them seldom or only occasionally and they are there mostly for the long term needs rather than short term usage.

5.  My freezer is full.  I've always managed to keep a full freezer.  The most frequently made statement in my home is that I can't get another thing in my freezer.  I've whittled and culled and no longer stock a huge amount of frozen fruit (we prefer fresh seasonal for the most part) and vegetables (again we eat fresh seasonal and canned), milk (subbed in shelf stable and powdered for our needs as the month moved on), and bread (we now make bread here at home once or twice a week), so I eliminated the bulk of those and use that extra space to store more meats, the one item that we seldom use fresh from the package.  

I am thinking of my future kitchen.  A chest freezer is nice but for practical purposes, an upright might be the better thing for us both in how it would free up floor space for hoped for future renovations and in practicality.  Lifting 30- or 40-pound baskets of frozen goods from the chest freezer is hard!  I find that often I will just forgo digging deeper and use whatever is handily near the top.

6.  I could use that extra money in other areas.  I want a chest freezer.   We need to purchase at least two new chairs for our living room.  Right now, we don't have much extra to save towards those items along with all the other necessary sub accounts we have (mostly for annual fees).  As well, the increase in gasoline costs have us paying as much per month for gasoline as we did all last summer when John was mowing two very large yards.  That's one area where inflation has hit us hard.  We make fewer trips to do things like shopping and visits and such, are combining more and more errands into each trip when we do go, are foregoing travel of most kinds and we're still spending roughly what we paid for gasoline in summer months.  That tells me that come this summer, we're going to have to increase our gasoline budget by a good bit more.  

So that's what I'm doing to beat inflation.  I'm going to cut my grocery budget by 1/4.  If I find I simply can't manage on that then I'll adjust it slightly, but I really think that for my budget, this is the right answer.

What are you doing to beat inflation in your home?