Cutting Your Grocery Bill Like Crazy #034

are referred to that. I was listening to that and when we're kind of proofing that, and I was like, it sounds like a freaking idiot, Like what what was I thinking? That's pretty funny. Sometimes it just happens. So, you know, today it was a random day. I almost never skipp breakfast. Usually I have two eggs for breakfast, but I skip breakfast today. Weird, just kind of busy. That's weird because I look up this morning not feeling hungry either, and I normally have a couple of eggs,

couple of fried eggs. Before getting the girls up, actually ran into the kitchen. I told Kate. I was like, hey, could you only cook me one egg? Because I'm just not hungry this morning. Weird, that is weird, dude. And then for lunch, I had very little too. I pretty much just had some pistachios for lunch, and then I had a full fledged dinner this evening. Um, we grilled salmon, zucchinia zu kinian squash and the potatoes. So that was like that salmon swimming up stream right Heck yeah, man,

always dude, that sounds delicious. Yeah. I actually had a full dinner with the family at home. But uh, for lunch, I had pie toth Uh. Yeah. So I'm a wedding photographer and sometimes I get good ease on the weekends after the reception is all said and done. And I knew the planner at this one, and they were just going to be getting rid of all of this pie. And so I got multiple pies, dude, like caramel, chocolate, pecan, buttermilk, and then tons of peach and apple slices as well. Yeah,

a ridiculous amount of pie. Share the wealth, buddy, dude, you want to check? Yeah, I do. What are you into that? Don't? Buttermilk sounds interesting? Is a good? Actually gave that to our smiths. Thanks, Sorry, I just remembered. We'll get that to the smiths. I'll pick your slice out later. But it's not like he said, yeah, I said. The reception was at a local brewery Three Taverns, which is a great brewery, and the groom is nice enough. At the end of the night, dude, he picked me

up a growler and he got me a hat. There we go. Yeah, how sweet is that? Dude? Look at that? Yeah, I got me a snap back hat. I think this might be the first cap I owned that might fit my huge head. Yeah, you don't wear hats because they're too small. Ka. It always makes fun of me because I put them on and she's just like, you can't. You can't rock the dad cap, you know, like the flimsy dad cap or whatever. But yeah, it's one of the perks of being a wedding photographers, you know. I

guess getting a growler of beer every now and then. Yeah, for real, dude, Speaking of job parks, So my perks on the job, My boss uh like one of the greatest perks of all time takes the entire staff on a trip every year. So your perk is better the No. I mean, your hat's really nice, buddy, wait till you see it. So we just booked our staff trip for next year. We usually, you know, when you go wherever's on sale, and we kind of have a predetermined week.

And so, like we talked about on our episode Matt traveling with Purpose on the Cheap, Yeah, that was a good episode. It was a fun one, at least it was in my mind. And so the same thing applies, right, Like, that's what we do when we're booking travel as a staff. And so we booked a four hundred and six dollar round trip flight to Ireland at the end of April next year. So uh man, yeah, it's gonna be really fun. You and I actually at the only time we've ever

traveled internationally. Yeah, we took our wives to Ireland like six years ago and we had a blast. Yeah, that was a fantastic trip. That was actually right after Kate and I came back from France for work, and I think we kind of had the travel bug. This is pre kids, and I specifically remember sitting on the front

porch with you guys. We're either drinking wine because I think Kate was wanting to be fancy or more and likely beer though, and yeah, we got to talk and we're like, you know, what we need to do we need to travel together internationally. And then a few weeks later a deal popped up. I forgot. Do you remember how much we paid then for that one. I think we paid just over, which is awesome. It's amazing considering inflation and stuff, that it's a hundred dollars cheaper. That's

so now. So yeah, flights to Europe have never been cheaper. And so if you didn't get to listen to that episode about traveling with purpose on the cheap, you should check that out. But also quick tip, uh, sign up for the emails from Scott's Cheap Flights. That's how we find out on the crew about so many of the good airfare sales going on, and that's how I personally, you know, look for air fair deals to pretty much.

That gets me started, you know, to at least know what's on sale and when, and then I can kind of start digging from there. Nice tip man, that's right. Yeah, So let's get into the beer for today's episode, Matt uh it is again. We teased last week this awesome listener Mike from Minnesota sent us a few different beers, and so we wanted to drink two of them on

the show and to day's beer is Surly Brewing Company Darkness. Yeah, and this is a beer, uh that we both have had before, and I'm so looking forward to having this whole, this old Russian Imperial stout. It's a huge beer, lots of flavor. Yes, we have this beer a long time ago, but I'm excited to try it again because it's been like, for real, many many years since since we get to try that together. What do you think about wax on these bigger bottles like this. It looks really cool, but

it's kind of annoying. Yeah, it's kind of it's it's a pain. So lately you've been doing all the all the pouring. Do you enjoy point the beer? It's meaningful to me. Have you ever been a waiter? No? Never, but I've always wanted to be. That's interesting that you say that, because I I've totally said the same thing. Back when Kate and I first got married, I told her I was like that, I wish that at some point in college I would have had a weight service job,

or you know, just being a waiter. I think there's a lot of lessons you learn and certain qualities that you pick up, mostly probably on how to treat waiters. Yeah, I think I've always thought that like perfect job for me, that, uh, if income didn't matter at all, was probably a bartender because I love beer. I love talking to people about beer, and I love talking to people in general, and the bartender is kind of that person that you're able to

just have a conversation with, especially about beer. Right, So for me, it always just seems like that would be the perfect gig. But also, you know, the late nights, being away from family, just that kind of whole in the industry vibe and stuff. Maybe I don't know how much I would enjoy that, but yeah, I guess I get to talk about beer on the podcast right and right now, so that kind of actually gives me a lot of what I was what I think would be

awesome about being a bartender. Certainly, all right, so quickly, Yeah, this is surly darkness Russian Imperial stout. It contains notes of chocolate, coffee, dry tart, cherries and raisins, and it finishes suite with a piny, resinous hop character is what it says, which you don't always find in a stout.

So it's gonna be interesting. Yeah, man, it's thurarly as you know, this isn't a read that distributes in Georgia, and so this is us a really rare treat for us, and and this one in particular, Yeah, darkness stuff to get ahold of the labels pretty gnarly. It's got like a three headed dog on it. It's like Fluffy from Harry Potter. Let's have a taste, bottoms up a great beer. And I would completely recommend this if you like flavor. Yeah, all the fans of flavor out there, it really does.

Like the flavor is so good. The flavor profile I read off the label, it's got all that yeah, yeah, And it's as dark as night, as thick as motor oil and um, but just has like for a Russian Imperial stout. Sometimes they can be just pure bitter dark chocolate, and this has like a lot more notes going on. It's really interesting. And you do get that kind of hot finish at the end, which is kind of rare

for a stout, which is that resume resume finished. I completely agree, man, you should take as motor oil, though I don't think this is I don't think the body is too heavy. Sometimes you get some of those milkstouts and some of those other styles where it really does feel like it's just too thick. I feel like this is right right there where I want it. Still drinkable

enough for sure, but but it's a beast. So yeah, if you can pick up a bottle of Surly Brewing Companies of Darkness where you live, man, grab you some. This is going to be especially great in the winter, but it's definitely not bad here in the middle of the summer to switch it up. Agreed, Thanks again the listener Mike for sending these beers are away man these

Minnesota Beer Week for us. It's an amazing If you're interested in the beers that we're drinking and you don't want to send us a message, necessarily look us up on untapped. Uh not Poor Joel and not Poor Matt. You can see what we're drinking, what we're rating them, and uh keep in touch there. And it's just a kind of fun app to be on so you can log your own beers. That's kind of why I started. And then it's just kind of fun to see what

your friends are drinking too. So alright, Matt, onto the topic of hand cutting your grocery bills like crazy and let's talk about what the problem is first, right, The problem is that the average American family spends way too much every week on groceries. Every week, the average American family, and this stat is from five years ago. I couldn't find like the most current that, but five years ago, the average American family spent between a hundred and forty

six and two nine dollars a week. That's a family of four with two grade school kids. So you're talking if you extrapolate that out at the higher end, I mean, you're talking about a thousand dollars a month on groceries for a family of four. Yeah, that's a lot, which

is overkill, right, Um, So that's the problem. And you teased a couple of weeks ago about how your family of five has gotten it down to one dollar per meal per person, and so, uh, you and Kate kind of worked through the outline for this episode, and I'm really interested to hear some of the takeaways that you have for us, um, because you know, I have some thoughts on this too, and I'm going to chime in,

but really, this is kind of your pet project. Your family has really taken to this and has acts your grocery bills because your family has taken some actionable steps that I think everyone out there listening can follow. That's right, man.

And before we even start, I want to give all credit to Kate because even though I help set the budget and do the shopping with Kate as well, she does virtually the cooking in her house, and so much of it kind of comes down to that, like she you know, she kind of runs the ship when it comes to our food, uh, and definitely our grocery budget.

So we recorded your dining room table and we were in your kitchen for a minute before the show began, and there's this kind of interesting looking loaf of bread. Just smell it, like right when you walked in the house. Is that the first thing that I didn't even smell really smell the bread. No, it didn't hit me. Sorry,

maybe you got signus issues maybe maybe so. But so she had just made this, um we're talking about how you know, she had just made this loaf of bread, this whole wheat loafer bread with all this like you know, fancy flax seed and stuff like that in it. And she said that that loafer bread costs roughly a dollar. And my wife had just gone to the farmer's market and bought a loaf of bread that was, you know,

similar in fashion, but was saw the seeds and stuff. Yeah, but was a little bit smaller even, and cost five dollars. So I mean, you, you know, the rubber really does meet the road when it comes to saving money on groceries for your family. So yeah, let's get into it and start talking about how you guys actually do it. Yeah, man, that's right. So the whole reason this discussion came up a couple of weeks ago is because I was just

updating our budget. And if you don't keep up with your spending, and if you don't know what you're actually spending on your groceries, like you, you don't know how much you spend per day, right, And so so much of this comes down to tracking what you're actually spending, to be aware, to have your eyes opened in a in a sense, to to see what you are spending, whether it be weekly or monthly, however it is that

you want to budget for groceries. First step first s up right there, And it's interesting is actually, in preparation for this episode, I looked up what we were spending when we first got married, which was over ten years ago, which is insane. We were still spending one dollar a person a day, Isn't that crazy? Like it hasn't changed because we just kept doing what we did back then, Like we've always sort of been in the mindset of, you know, living frugally. You used to add more mouth

to feed. Yeah, right now, our monthly budget is for fifty and that's for five of us, and you divide it out and that's one dollar per meal per person. Yeah, our grocery budget back in two thousand seven, two eight, so ten years ago, one eight, Like on the nose man, I was shocked to see that it accurately reflected the same dollar per meal. And so this is something that we've kind of always done, and for us, it's it's not a stretch. I think for a lot of people

it might be a challenge. But don't be discouraged. You know, this is something that at least for us, that we've been doing for ten years now, and so honestly it's a lot of what we do just kind of comes naturally. But yeah, this might come as a shock for a lot of people, and but it's definitely something worth considering doing, Uh,

especially considering how much money you can save. Yes, so it may seem unattainable, right, but we're going to kind of go through some of the strategies that Matt and his family like go through in order to get those grocery bills down to a dollar day and that budget. Right, that's that is a key aspect, and we talked about

that back in our Budgets episode. But knowing what you're actually spending is kind of the first key, right, looking at dead in the eye and seeing what you're actually spending gives you that ability then to attack that bill. And so that is, you know, the first rule here of saving money under grocery bill is to actually know what you're spending every month. And so once you start tracking that, then you have the ability to work and go about actually slashing that bill and cutting your grocery

bill by by a large margin. That's right. It's it's that wake up call, you know. All right. So first, we buy very few processed foods, and so what we're talking about are like snack foods, fancy juices, dessert. That being said, we've we've got pine in the fridge and I got that for free. Um. But like we don't buy those things. That's just not something at all that registers in our mind when we when we go to

the store. Um. And so the more machines and labor that are involved and making a food before we buy it at the store, the more expensive it's going to be. Um. And honestly those things are going to be less nutritious as well. There's more preservatives than just more sodium to just to help it to last longer on the shelf. And not to mention that that they're they're just way

more expensive. Yeah, I mean, I think that's definitely true anything that's like prepackaged, and especially you know a lot of the health snacks even that are out there now, and there's kind of this crazy about those health snacks. They're really really expensive, um, and they're really good you know. Yeah, they're tasty and they and they've got nutrition that like you that you're talking about the health snacks specifically, they've

got like protein and special seeds and stuff in them. Yeah, but even that they've got a lot of often negative Well they're they're tasty because there's sugar in there and yeah, yeah,

they're all yeah exactly. And so even like there are some sports drinks that I kind of like from time to time or whatever, but even those are filled with crazy amounts of sugar, and so yeah, maybe they've got you know, they tout themselves to be healthy, but ultimately in the end they're they're they're not because they're filled with so much sugar. Yeah. Man, So essentially, anything that saves you time, just know that you're paying for it. You know, if it's something that you can make, I

consider not buying it. That's honestly, that's kind of Kate's sort of rule of thumb. And granted she's a homemaker. You know, she's at home. She isn't employed outside of the home. She takes care of the girls, she takes care of the house, she takes care of all of the food, and so she has that flexibility and that's something that we just are able to do. It's it's sort of like one of the advantages of having a stay, stay at home parent. But she's willing to put in

that time and she enjoys it. Right, It's not like something that she doesn't look forward to or something that she's just like, I've got to make bread, dude. She's making bread like crazy right now. She's kind of going through a phase where she's trying to make like the most healthy, affordable bread and kind of like cone it down to it not just an art but like a science.

Like she wants to know that she can make measure it to the tea and make like a perfect loaf of bread and it's something that the girls will like and something that is affordable and at the same time is super healthy. Having that time, it's a luxury. But just like all things where we have to make decisions and there's trade offs, right, Like she doesn't work outside

of the home. You know, we maybe make a little bit less than were she employed, but because of that, she has a little more time and is able to do something she enjoys but also saves us some money. So what would you say where to a couple, let's say where they both work and maybe you know, there's not enough time to uh hone in that bread recipe right over over over a few days or weeks even. Um, so people that don't have for a lifetime or lifetime, yeah,

maybe it doesn't happen that quickly. I'm sorry, um, but so yeah, what would you say to people if they don't quite have as much time to play with when it comes to, you know, making their own foods from scratch. Yeah, well that to that, I would say, there's a lot of things that you can do um specifically, and this is something that we do is we don't eat a lot of meat. Um. Most of our protein comes from like eggs and like nuts and beans and stuff like that.

We only buy meat when it's on sale, and then Kate takes it and she kind of chops it up and portions it because she knows how much she'll use for a specific meal that she's gotten mine like later that month, and then she freezes it so there's no chance of it going bad. And we're also using it just very sparingly, you know, like she uses almost more like a garnish instead of it sort of being like the centerpiece of a meal. It's sort of like this

sort of added bonus. Obviously, meat as flavor. You know, there's there's flavor there, there's fat. That's a good thing when it comes to flavor here. But yeah, I mean that's that's something that I think a lot of people can consider, is just toning down how much meat they're

eating on a day to day basis. There's weeks that will go where we don't even have meat all week, which I know you might have, you might have a beef with sounds like a frightening week in my book right there, because I'm, yeah, we do eat a lot more meat. And for me, I grew up kind of eating meat around as kind of the centerpiece of every meal. And and so I'm taking taters, right, So I'm just

kind of used to it. Uh, And and so yeah, that is something though that for breakfast and lunch, you know, I pretty much try to avoid meat, but for dinner it is still kind of the centerpiece of what we have for dinner most evenings. But I like what you're doing, and I think it makes sense for us to probably try to, you know, to cut back. And then there's also to write eat cheaper cuts of meat that are

less used. So, for instance, if you're eating chicken, boneless, skinless chicken breasts are kind of the thing that people gravitate towards, right, So you essentially get the most expensive cut of chicken you can. You pay steak prices for freaking chicken, and it doesn't have any flavor, yeah, exactly, Yeah, the bones are out of it. And so uh instead of getting opting for that cut of chicken. Yeah, maybe go for a boat bone in dark meat, bone in

fine leg combo. Oh my gosh. And you eat that stuff for like sixty nine cents a pound, so much cheaper, and it's so much tastier. I think buying those cheaper cuts of meat if you're into meat, is like a really worthwhile way to go. But at the same time, don't be afraid to consider alternate sources of protein. Like, certainly, pro you need protein in your life, but in just the omega threes and just the different fatty acids that you need for nutrition for brain development and things like

that to keep you sharp. But consider other things, you know, walnuts tofu joel, have you ever had tofu in that? Like? Soy right? I like, mmy, does that count? Yeah? Okay, I love ed ammy. I think I think the reason I love it amy because the texture. Well I like the texture. I think I put a lot of salt and pepper on it. So get my salt and pepper and take Yeah. So I mean that's the source of

of protein that you can get outside of expensive meat. Yes, So Matt on that note, the other great thing about eating nuts, And I've gone to eating nuts for pretty much every lunch because they're fairly inexpensive. Right, Even though a bag of almonds or pistachios can seem expensive, it takes so few of them to kind of make me feel full and lunch time that I feel like it actually ends up costing me almost nothing for lunch to

to eat some mommons or pistachio. So that's usually what I gravitate towards for lunch, some moments, and pistachios and some carrots or maybe an apple that makes sense, some veggies and make it kind of feel better about yourself. You're not just only eating peanuts, right right, right. I love the taste of peanuts, but they're not nearly as good for you, right, and not as filling either, So yeah,

I feel like almonds and pistachios where I go. But that's the great thing about those about nuts is that they're really cheap, really in expensive. They're great like snack or lunch, and they're providing some of that protein that you, you know, maybe or are giving up if you eat if you decide to eat less meat, But they're really making you that that lunch at work or wherever you are, like grabbing a quick snack. It's really feeling for very little money. Yeah, man, I'm with you. I I do

the exact same thing. I'm either eating leftovers or just grabbing a handful of walnuts or almonds or peanuts or something like that, and yeah, tossing in an apple or an orange. And for me, it comes kind of comes down to how much time it takes, because for us, we sit down, like we sit down every morning and have breakfast together, and then we always, for the most part,

we we always have dinner together. But lunch it's kind of like whatever you want to do on your own, which means that as a little time as possible that I can spend on lunch means I can work. And yeah, you grab that handful of nuts and it doesn't really slow you down. Uh, pop an apple in your mouth as fast as humanly possible. Oh, and I drink I always.

I feel like I drink a glass of milk too when I with an app because normally it leads to an apple and then I'm then I think, you know, I just need a little bit of peanut butter, And then I think, you know what I need a little bit of milk to kind of wash this all down, and then by then I'm stuffed. So there we go. That's how Manto's lunch. Let's go ahead and take a

quick break. So let's talk about where you should shop. Right, So we talked about kind of a few little strategies and we'll go into more strategies in a little bit, but where you shop is really really important to your saving strategy for slashing that grocery bill, like crazy too, right, And so for me, I know, all the has been really important in our family ever since we got one in our part of town. And I know you guys utilize all We love all the Yeah, like Gangbusters so close, uh,

and it's so cheap. I'm gonna say around of our groceries come from Aldi. It's incredibly affordable. They've got great organic options. And for us, it's crazy close and I can bike there or drive there either way, I'm there with him about five or ten minutes. And that is definitely a way that we're able to keep our grocery

budget down. Yes, you know what's interesting mat when it already comes into a neighborhood, all the other grocery stores around it their prices start to sink too, because Aldi just has this price effect that even if you don't shop at Aldi, but Aldi comes into your neighborhood, you are de facto going to save money just because that Aldi is. They're putting price pressure on the other grocery stores. Yes, competition, right, yeah,

But I love all the two. I think the one complaint I I have about all the I think they're really good for a lot of reasons. Sometimes the produce doesn't seem to last very long. Oh yeah, yeah, So we've had that issue occasionally at Aldi, and that can be kind of annoying. But but other than that, we love Aldi and that's one of our primary places to shop. We're pretty much like an Aldi, Costco and Kroger on occasion. Family,

that's kind of how we right hear you? Well, hey, you know, all The's got this cash back double guaranteed deal and so if something goes bad, take it back. They will give your money back and replace it. That's true. That is one of them that is like the best warrantee in the grocery store industry too. Yeah. I mean, and we haven't taken an advantage of that often, but sometimes when we feel that, oh wow, this definitely shouldn't have gone bad that fast. I mean, they honor it,

and we're we're totally set. I mean said, I thought you were going to complain about the variety at ALDI, because anytime we talk to somebody about Aldi, they tend to say, oh, they don't carry the brands that we like, or they don't they just don't have a lot of the things that we like. And to that, I say, check out your local farmers market, and for us, that is our international farmers market. It's not local at all,

it's like the opposite. But we go there a good bit to get grains and different things that are you know, would be considered more exotic, and to get those in bulk, and so things like keenwa are in certain kinds of brown rice and things like that that we eat a good amount of are pretty expensive at ALDI, in fact,

more expensive there than at our international farmers market. And Kate can walk out of there with huge sacks of you know, exotic rice and different things like that for crazy cheap when you break it down to how much she's paying per cup. You guys ever hit up the International farmers Market, Yeah, we do sometimes and there's also a State farmers market just south of us at sometimes you can snag produce for for a heck of a lot less than you can get at your local grocery store.

So yeah, I think thinking outside the box sometimes farmers markets can be one of two things in my book. Sometimes are these super small, hyperlocal, really expensive things where you were hipster like soaps exactly, yeah, hips are soaps and three dollars for a tomato, uh or exactly? I know, yeah and uh and I think it's cute, but I'm also cheap, and so I'm not going to do that.

But so the State farmers market, in our international farmers market that we have access to here and hopefully you know you have access to a farmer's market where you live that isn't one of the super hip store or you know, eight dollar organic soap farmers markets. They are really cool and you have access to items that you that you couldn't purchase at a grocery store and some fresh products that you definitely don't have access to anywhere

except for a farmer's market. So yeah, but for me, like I'm not doing as much of the grocery shopping, especially at that farmer's market because it is kind of, you know, a decent drive away from where we live. Yeah. Yeah, that's the only downside. It's it's kind of more of like a once a month thing, and we're not getting much fresh stuff there because it's it's more about sort of the bulk exotic grains, which just sounds weird to say, but I don't think I've ever said those three words together.

So to a note to everyone, where you shop actually really matters when you're trying to cut your grocery bill. And if you can shop at one of the lower cost grocery stores like an Aldi or a Legal which is coming into the United States, now, yeah, they're pretty great. Those guys are actually undercutting Walmart by a huge amount.

And so if you're used to shopping at Walmart, you know, look at one of these other options, and those low cost grocery stores are going to immediately save you money without having to spend you know, three hours on a Saturday clip clipping coupons. So kind of on the transplant for discount grocery store. Have you ever been to a discount grocery store. They've got like the dented cans or like the slightly past expired, uh stuff. Oh heck, yeah,

I used to go to one in college all the time. Really, yeah, like up in up in Greenville and yep, yep, I don't remember what it's called, but yeah, we used to go there in college just to a fifty two cent boxes cerreal or actually dented dented cans that were, you know, twenty cents a piece, stuff like that. Yeah, the dented cans always kind of weirded me out because I remember like reading even as a kid, where it's just like if you see a dented can, I get like, it's

just like guaranteed. And so I just grew up thinking you see a dented can, You're gonna die. When I was living in North Carolina, there is a discount grocery store. And this is post undergrad, pre real job, and those are those times where you don't have any money. This is back when I was living in that in that cabin basically with no central heat, and we chopped around wood to burn in our woodburning stove. So you better believe that we're going to the discount grocery store man

to survive. Donating plasma on the side. Never got that far, but I did it did you really will do an episode on that one. Oh my gosh, that's like both arms you hooked up right one arm, just one arm? Really yeah. Ill thought they injected or they drew it on one side and then they put it back in you on the other day. They put it right back like they circulated out and take the plasma out and then put your blood back in the same arm. It's amazing. It's been a while. It sounds like there's a period

where you don't have any of your blood, does it not? Yeah, you die for a minute, but all right, um, yeah, this kind of but you really don't make that much money, so I wouldn't recommend it to people. I think I made like forty bucks a week maybe doing that, so uh, probably not worth the health risks. Uh yeah. Back to the diskind of grocery stores, that's something worth considering, you know, if you've got one of those near you, and it's worth swinging in every now and then check it out.

There might be something in there that you're already purchasing that you can get for a lot cheaper. What you want to avoid is going in there though, and feeling like, oh, this is such a great deal. Ended up buying a bunch of processed food or a bunch of things that either don't provide much nutrition or aren't things you would

normally buy, they're just kind of snack foods. And then what's gonna end up happening is you're just gonna end up with way more food than you actually need at home, just because you kind of got sucked into the it's on sale mentality. Yeah. Completely, I was gonna say, I think, you know, the first thing you talked about, matt uh

was that you guys do very few processed foods. And I think for let's say, you know, cereal in the morning, it seems like it's cheap, right, but it's also not very filling, And so you have the milk in the cereal and a cup of coffee, and it seems like that's a pretty inexpensive breakfast, and like one hour later you're starving exactly. Yeah, And so it's not like very filling.

And if you can do a couple of eggs, you're probably doing it even cheaper, but you're also actually filling yourself up more for the day, so you're you're eating more nutritious food that's actually gonna leave you with that feeling that you actually ate breakfast as opposed to the cereal which will dissipate in a matter of a Now, sugar puffs, dude, we can We can hardly even do granola anymore, like like real nice hearty granola with like the all the good flax seeds and stuff like that,

with oates plus like some Greek yogurt even that. For us, Kit and I both look at each other like around to thirty and we're just like, I'm hungry. Yeah, you know, like if we if we go into a breakfast like that, we know that we have to have some nuts or something mid morning to kind of fill us up because I don't know why it is, but eggs, you know, Like for us, it's eggs in the morning. It just kind of sticks to the bones and gets us to lunch. Yeah to me too, they're they're the best. They taste

the best. Uh So Okay. Another way to save money on your grocery bill, to cut that grocery bill like crazy, is to stay organized. You have to stick to your list, right, and I think it's really important. That's where people get let a stray oftentimes in the grocery storemat is that maybe they have a list, but you know, they don't stick to it very well, or they don't have a list, and that's even worse, and they kind of walk in a little bit aimlessly, end up stalking a bunch of

stuff in their cart. And the worst thing to do, right is to shop while you're hungry, even if you're not starving, right when you go to the grocery store, there's something about not having a list or not sticking to the list that you're gonna put probably you know, some some really expensive or things that will bust your grocery bills, some items that will bust that grocery bill in your cart, and it's it's gonna sink you come

budget time. Yeah, that's me. Like if Kate doesn't give me explicit directions on exactly what to get and what not to get, if she's just like, yeah, go to the grocery store and grab a few things and you know, look for something like this or something to kind of fill this category. I am a huge budget buster because I'll see something and I think, oom, candy ginger at the farmer's market. That sounds delicious. I love that stuff,

and then I'd buy it and then Kate's mad at me. Um. But for me, because it's less of a discipline that I've refined and honed, I'm not as good at doing that as Kate. Kate, on the other hand, specifically, what she does is she keeps the kitchen inventory list on the front of the refrigerator. And I've seen this, right this you actually write in marker on your actual refrigerator, not on paper. Now, well, that's actually a recent thing. She used to keep it on a dryer race board.

But then she's like, wait a minute, why am I not writing directly on my stainless steel refrigerator? And she googled it and people are like, yeah, you can write with a dryer race marker on the fridge. Now she does that, Yeah, I've noticed that recently. Cool. Yeah, this

is super cool. But she kind of keeps what we have in our house, like in her pantry divided up into four different categories, so like meats, veged bowls, grain slash, beans, um, and then miscellaneous stuff like nuts, are pestoh salso things like that. And then when it's time to figure out what she wants to make for dinner, she can easily scan those lists and then pull together a quick meal with what's on hand, you know, and so she doesn't

feel like that she has much in the house. But then she looks at that and realizes, wait a minute, I've got tons of food in the house. You know, like that feeling where you're just like there's just nothing to there's nothing to eat completely, but there are a hundred things exactly, and so but she's able to do that, and they kind of mash them up and then put

together pretty damn good meal. If you do that a few times and you realize maybe you don't have a full meal left, she can look at that and realize, cool, if I just go to the store and buy these three things, all of a sudden, I've got three more full, complete meals. And you're not going back into the store completely, just restocking your your pantry or restocking your fridge, which keep those three items to create three more meals in order to use the rest of the stuff that you

have already on hand. Exactly, Yeah, exactly, Well that gets to another tip to right, So yeah, stay organized, stick to your list, but also clean out your pantry regularly. And I think a lot of people, yeah, they don't do that. Right, so they don't use up what they have, and then they kind of add to it and things get stuck in the back of the freezer or the back of the fridge and then you find it later and you're like, it's freezer burnt or man, it's gone bad.

It's gone bad, and so you you end up wasting more food because of that. So cleaning out your pantry and finding ways creative ways to kind of make meals with what you have on hand before you go back to the grocery store, or like what Kate does, right, that's a good way of doing it too, where you see what you have left and you say, okay, if I buy these two or three things, I can end up making you know, a few more meals for my

family without making a full grocery run. And I think that's like a really good option that we often in, you know, a wealthy country that's used to kind of easy access to food. Um, we kind of skip that and we go for the let's just go for a full grocery run, and then we end up, you know, usually wasting a lot of more food and not using

what we have and busting our grocery bill in the process. Yeah, typically in America, that also means just jumping in your are and like driving to the store and like waiting in traffic, and while you're out, you're also doing these other things. I mean, there's something about that. I don't even know what to call it, but it kind of feels like the equivalent of the rat race, where you feel like you need something and so you just jump in the car and drive to the store for one thing,

and then the next day you do the same thing. Dude, I hate that sort of approach and that mentality of like, oh, let's just run to the store, because not only are you screwing up your budget, but you're screwing like your time. Yeah, why not just take inventory of what you have, state organized know what you have. I mean, the bottom line of it is that it keeps you from wasting food

and you're just more efficient with with everything. Yeah, and so if you have a stainless steel fridge like Matt, you guys feel free to take out a dry race marker and draw all over your fridge. Give it a shot, maybe, just like a little mark first, and just to make sure that your fridge is cool. Matt's not gonna pay for your new fridge if it ruins it, but Joel

will yeah. So on that note of wasting food, that's just another way that you can keep from blowing through your your grocery budget and to keep your expenses low. We are not strict recipe followers. You can burn through a lot of money buying a specific or special cut of meat that a recipe calls for. So if you're following, you know something that you're like, Okay, I saw this in a magazine or I saw this on Instagram, let's

try it out. I need exactly four boneless, skin less chicken breast in order to make yeah, exactly yeah, or even something crazier like, oh, I've never purchased skirt steak before this calls or skirt steak gotta go to the store and buy that one ingredient. And oh, by the way, well maybe skirts takes a bad example because it's normally pretty cheap, but still it's meat, and something like that can completely blow your budget and you're just not allocating

your grocery budget well. And so for something like that, Kate will generally double like the amount of veggies and a recipe if she is, you know, following a recipe or see something that she's sort of inspired by and will either have the amount of meat in it or even cut it completely and instead we'll just kind of

add some beans to to beef it up. And so, you know, the extra veggies and the beans are way more affordable and also filling as well, and not to mention like healthy are and especially if you're comparing it to the red meat. Yeah, another way to get better at not wasting food, which you know does crush your grocery budget, is to eat your leftovers. And eating leftovers is great for lunch the next day. Like I love leftovers. See I usually like leftovers, but it kind of depends

on the meal too. I feel like some things are better as leftovers others, right, And so we Emily and I kind of had to decide, Okay, well, hey, if we make this one meal, neither of us really eat the leftovers on that, and so it just kind of goes to waste. Let's stop making that meal we have

enough leftovers, or let's make less of it. And so there are certain things that we know will gobble up when it comes to the leftovers, um, and then there's other things we know, you know, we're just probably not gonna eat it, and so we've either you know, made less for dinner or just stopped eating it all together, or just send it my way to because I will

dispose of that food in my mouth. Done. Buddy will start making that happen seriously, Like we joke about it, but we call it Daddy Garbage Disposal Service or something like that, like like whatever the girls aren't gonna eat, it's like, I'm not gonna I take pride in not like allowing food to go to waste because I'm like, that's calories like that, Yeah, that's energy. Like when you think about it from like an energy scientific standpoint, if I put that in the trash, I'm throwing away energy.

I'm literally wasting money and energy, potential energy. And then instead I put in my mouth and show it up. So I bet you have like kind of like some weird food combos on Saturdays when you're eating like leftover lunch or something like. Well, no, I'm specifically talking about like at the end of the meal, like instead of scraping it because if there's just a little bit, you know, you don't want to put it in like a tupperware. You just most of time people scrape into the trash. Can, well,

I just eat it. I disticularly remember my dad seriously growing up the same thing. He would do something similar. So, like every Saturday it was kind of leftovers for lunch, right it was leftovers or make a sandwich, and so usually you know I wanted something hot for lunch, it's leftovers. But my dad would essentially come behind all the rest of us who got leftovers, good man, and it was

like the bottom of all the leftovers. And so he would have the smorge board of a play toss it in the micro and need to have like eight different things for lunch. Yeah, I don't know if I actually love it, because I like the flavors, which certainly can't be true if you've had a week worth of leftovers. But I just love the like the philosophy behind that and just not allowing it to go to waste and taking pride in the fact that you're just being efficient.

I've talked about this before. I'm half Asian and half Germans, so I think I really prize efficiency, um, and to know that like not a crumb from our table is going to waste. Yeah, I think you can do it too out there listener, like you can you also can have you know, one dollar a meal per person grocery budget. Obviously, as you're hearing from Matt, it takes a lot of efficiency, a lot of dedication, a lot of planning, but you

two can get there, and that's really cool. So to know, maybe, you know what, maybe at this point you're at three dollars a person per meal, uh, and to know that you can aim for two at least, right, get halfway there and then kind of see where you can cut from there. Maybe you're not gonna make the leap all in one fell swoop and some of these things. Right, I'm not as good as as Matt is, of course, like I not quite as good at eating leftovers as mad is. I'm not quite as good at staying organized

and sticking to the list. But but we're we're doing better, and we you know, Emily and I have made a lot of these improvements. But I think for a family four, we're still at about six a month, and where you're a family of five and you're a four eighty. So you know, we're we're trying to do better. And and you know what, doing this show with you kind of makes me want to redouble our efforts and and see

if we can slash even a little bit more nice man. Yeah, I mean I hope that's the case, you know, Like I hope it's encouraging and not like oh I could never do that or to where it's just sort of discouraging, you know. Um, like hopefully it comes across to something that's inspiring. And that's the other thing too, is that like Kate makes amazing food, Like she makes really delicious food, but she and she enjoys it. For her, it's not something that she kind of has to do. It's something

that she is able to look forward to. Uh, it's something that she finds creativity and you know, like putting together those meals like you've got the four categories on the fridge, Like that's that takes creativity and for her, she finds a lot of enjoyment in that. And in the same way, like when she goes into a grocery store, she doesn't have the list because she's been doing this long enough. She's kind of you know, she's at like the four thousand level class, like she's not doing the

one on one stuff anymore. But for her, she doesn't need a list when she goes in the grocery store. She knows like what we eat as a family, the things that work, the different items that she knows can be used for multiple meals, so that if there is some say leftover pasta or something like that, after it gets gets them boiling, she can pop that in a tupperware and can put that towards another meal that she's

planning to make later on in the week. Kate is geared towards UH slashing the grocery budget, you know, like it's it's sort of a natural disposition that she has and and for others that may not come as naturally, um, but hopefully Yeah, like you said that folks are encouraged by this and it's not something that is UH is a daunting, huge task. Yeah, I think for people that aren't naturally attuned to it, right, And so like Emily and I, I will readily admit we're not natural. We

don't naturally gravitate towards crushing a grocery bill. Um. We've gotten better at it through the years as we work and we see kind of how our family functions, and we've trimmed our grocery bill also, but we're not naturally attuned to it, like like Kate is, and and like you said, Kate makes some really really amazing food. So you're eating a dollar a meal per person, but the food is almost gourmet. Really, oh, it's totally gourmet cooking.

And Joel has a few more tips to share with you all right after this break, All right, Matt, And there are a couple of tips that I wanted to mention that that I've always been able to stick to. So I haven't been quite as good though, you know, I kind of just lambasted at Emily and I not being nearly as good as you and Kate. But there are a couple of things that I've found that we're kind of the easy button for us in order to have kind of instant savings when it came to um

our grocery budget. One was when they're deeply discounted items, we would stock up on those things. Yeah. Uh. And also store brands, right, always always store brands. Yeah. Never buying name brands that costs, you know, twice as much for no reason. So anytime you can, you can go for the generic or store brand. I think you should. Also, I think another really good uh think to enter into the ecosystem for grocery shopping is some of the stuff

like Kroger's clicklist. I think for people that have a terrible time sticking to their sticking to their list, it's actually probably worth the five bucks to sign up for Kroger clicklist and have someone bring the groceries out to your car, because you're gonna save way more than that in the impulse items that you left on the shelf

and you didn't put into your basket. Yeah. And since clicklist kind of puts like the blinders on you, and like you don't even present yourself with a temptation to buy the snicker Bars ice cream, right, which is what I do when I go to the grocery. Can let's see that? And I think, how does that caramel never freeze? I don't know, I want. Yeah, so you just take the temptation away altogether and consider something like the Kroger

click list. And and there's just things like that are being invented all day, every day by these major grocery store chains. One thing I would caution people against is sites like instat cart. I mean, I think they're really cool, they're really neat and sometimes you know, the sign up bonuses are great, but then they try to get you hooked. And those grocery delivery services can cost you on two fronts.

The delivery of the groceries costs you a fee, but then on top of that, for many of the retailers, that companies like instat cart are associated with, the price that you see on the site when you're buying the item is more expensive than the price of the item in the store. And so you know, those moonless skinless chicken breast you probably shouldn't be buying anyway, right there are three seventy nine a pound versus to seventy nine pound in store. You kind of get used to seeing

that price online and you pay it um. Whereas if you're actually going into the store and your price checking and you're comparing, you're gonna realize, man, that's really really expensive if I'm buying it online and giving it delivered. Um. So yeah, those sorts of fees that you're gonna pay when you're buying online and having it delivered your home. You know, while it might be really really convenient, ultimately it's really gonna hurt you when it comes to your

grocery budget. That's a quick question, to do you guys meal plan because I know for a lot of families that those are steps that they take to be organized about what they're eating for the rest of the week so that as not stressful, but also to to be you know, to be smart, to be more efficient, and to make best use of their time, whether it means sort of batch cooking a bunch of stuff on Sundays and kind of freezing it or sticking it in the fridge, or at least just sort of planning out that what

the meals are going to be and making sure you have the groceries on hand you get you guys do that, Yeah, we do. Yeah, we don't do the batch cooking necessarily. And I think I've seen people do that, and I think it's a brilliant strategy, especially if you're okay eating the same thing more often, which honestly, for me personally, I am. I could eat the same thing every week, like the same six things Monday through Saturday and then left over Sunday and then go on about the same

schedule the week the following week. Yeah you're a robot, Yeah, pretty much. Uh, But so Emily does a great job of planning our meals so we don't have to do that and we get a little more more variety culinary diversity in our lives. But yeah, so she does a great job kind of planning things out, which helps save money and helps us, you know, kind of plan what we need when it comes to grocery shopping time, and then kind of also just make sure that, yeah, we're

not eating the same thing every week like I would do. Yeah, I mean on the same way. I think if if the groceries were kind of left up to me, I would have a very rigid meal schedule. We can get this down to thirty cents a meal. I know it, all right, Matt. Back to the beer, Mike from Minnesota generously provided Surly Darkness, a Russian Imperial stout that is beastly. What's your take? Yeah, man, this is a delicious beer.

Is just as good as I remember it. Sometimes, when it's been a few years since you've had a beer, you kind of wonder how it's gonna hold up. There's so many new craft beers entering the scene, and it's kind of awesome to go back to a solid beer like this that you remember being great and you have

it again several years later and it's still fantastic. So I am superstoked that we got to have this again, especially since surly isn't something that we can just go to the store and buy from our local package store. So Mike from Minnesota, thank you so much. We really appreciate it. And no joke, next time you're in Atlanta, man drinks around us, no doubt. Yeah, it's really interesting. I feel like, Uh, I say this about a lot of beers. It's also the case for this beer. I

don't think I've ever had another beer that tasted like this. Yeah, little with that kind of hot finish and some of those other notes going on inside of the beer. I've had Russian Imperial stouts, but they taste completely different from this one. And I really enjoy this. I think totally put together something that Yeah, it hits a lot of kind of flavor notes on your tongue, and I enjoyed

it. It It was really good. You know, man, something else We didn't talk about this earlier too, but we haven't talked about going out to eat, and for us, it's worth noting that our grocery budget does not include going out to eat, uh, does it? For you guys. Know, Yeah, we keep that separate as well. So some people lump those together and they say this our food budget. Yeah, because it's eating at home or it's eating while we're out. Yeah, that makes sense to a certain degree. But yeah, we're

the same way. Man. We don't do it because, I mean, the way we look at it is that going out to eat is fun, it's entertainment, and so we kind of we own it at that and so are going out to eat money doesn't affect our grocery budget. And I think that's the reason that's important, is because you can go out to eat for one meal and that can completely blow your budget when it comes to groceries end.

Before you know it, you're just kind of tossing your hands up saying we'll forget it, Like, what's it matter because I've already blown through a week's worth of food going out to this nice dinner. That's a huge reason why we keep it separate, and we call it entertainment,

we call it what it is. Yeah, that's a good thought, and uh yeah, people are gonna structure their budgets differently, but it's good to know that that's how we structure are so that saying how do they do that with eating out of the hand, how do they go out

to eat and how do they afford their beers? Yes, that's just good for people to know that we're not including going out to eat in this these kind of budget parameters for you and I and so you know, maybe some people combine those things and they're like, how do they get it down to a dollar meal and still afford to, you know, go go out to eat, even going to Chick fil a, Like that's gonna blow

your budget, right, But so, yeah, that's something that's separate. Yeah, we both have an entertainment budget for our own families that that encompasses eating out. But Matt, so, what would you say to someone who does enjoy eating out and they don't enjoy cooking, right, they don't enjoy you know,

making meals at home. How in the world can they decrease that entertainment budget right and go out to eat less and actually start to enjoy maybe or or at least get better at sticking to a grocery budget and cooking more meals at home it, dude. So what I would say then is to focus on this sort of easier things to to reduce and cut your your grocery budget. The first thing being by very few processed foods, if

at all possible. This is basically any chips, any crackers, any snacks, anything like in the middle of the grocery store that's in a cardboard box or a plastic bag. You know that's prepackaged and it has a pretty label. Does that mean I gotta stop buying cheese it? Yes, Jesus are dude. Cheeses are of snack food that provide almost no nutritional value that just make you feel like crap. I agree to disagree? Yeah, please, you know that you

know the truth. But yeah, focus on whole foods, like real foods like fruits and vegetables and nuts, things that actually provide your body with nutrition that will fill you up and keep you healthy at the same time. And you know the next tip I'm going to mention too, which is something I know you have a tough time with. But you know that you can save money by not

eating much meat. Yeah, it's true and you know it. Yeah, Joel's the cornravore type of guy that wants to I mean, if money was not an option and your health was not an option, which would you really eat like grill meat every single night. Probably Joel is sort of like the nick Offerman type when it comes to turf and turf baby it comes to his diet. Um, I'm not saying that you're nearly as steadily as nick Offerman. Well yeah, no,

no one, no one could be. But uh, I could see you in a nice hearty beard though you want to grow a beard out in this winter if my genetics would allow it. But yeah, no, for real, eat less meat. There's there's lots of other ways that you can get protein, whether it be through eggs or nuts or or beans, just lots of other things that are more affordable, better for the environment, better for your own health,

look to other sources of protein. And then the next thing I would mention too is something that I know that you and Emily do. And by the way, you guys do an awesome job too. Mentioned y'all's grocery budget, which is still well below the national average. So I know you're kind of beating up on on you guys, but you guys do an awesome job. Yeah, shopping at Aldi has helped a bunch, right, So when all the

kind of came into our neighborhood. It did lower the prices I noticed distinctly at other grocery stores, but shopping at ALDI still saved us money over shopping at Kroger or Public or some of the other you know, traditional bigger grocery stores we had around. And I gotta tell you, the biggest thing I love about shopping at Aldi two is how small it is and that the choices are fewer. I'm in and out of all the in less than

half the time, I swear. Every time in Mt. Kroger, I have to ask someone where an item is, and and at all the I know where everything is, and

that's beautiful. But yeah, so shopping at Aldi and UH inexpensive farmers markets in your area, just shopping those low cost options as opposed to the higher cost grocery stores like Whole Foods, Fresh Market, Sprout stuff like that, that's just instantly gonna cut your you know, grocery bill by a lot without you having the clip coupons or even kind of start implementing some of these more advanced tactics that MAT's been talking about. That's true, man. But then finally,

don't waste food, UH specifically eat leftovers. There's nothing wrong with leftovers. Yeah, have a day of the week, you know, a Saturday or Sunday, where you clean out your fridge right so that that stuff doesn't go to waste, and say, you know what, we're not going out to eat Saturday night, like, this is what we do. We clean out the fridge and clean out your pantry from time to time too, because you'll find things back in there that can help you finish or start a meal that you forgot you

even had. And so yeah, making sure that you have those times that you are specifically dedicating to cleaning out your fridge or your pantry. Man, those are really good for you know, keeping your grocery costs low and helping make sure you actually use the things that you bought. Hey, man, I love that left overnight. Doesn't have to be this left overnight. There could be pride, like, man, we're gonna freaking to eat everything in this cabinet and it's gonna

be awesome. I will say for us, man, it felt so good right that we said, you know what, we know that we don't do well with those leftovers. So we're either going to make just enough, you know, for us to cover dinner or we're gonna not make that

mean at all. And uh, then we actually started eat all of our leftovers and it just it feels really good because you're scraping a whole lot less in the trash, and you know that that's a crappy feeling, right, you know, you feel terrible when you're doing that just as a human being, you know, wasting food, knowing kind of the plight of so many people around around the world that don't have enough food to eat. Um. And so yeah,

it's good for that reason. And it's good for actually making sure that you cut your grocery bill like crazy so that you're able to spend your money on things that actually matter, dude. And I'll leave us with this final statue in the New York Times that was talking about how much money that we waste in food, like food that goes to waste. Do you even want to guess as to how much it is? It's got to be depressing. Yeah, it's insane. It's one hundred and sixty

billion dollars in wasted food a year. Is that not the craziest thing ever? Talking about like inefficiencies and just waste. And they were talking about how about nine billion of that is in dairy products alone, So like, yeah, just milk, I'm sure, what's the vast bulk of that. And that just makes me sad to think that there's just that

much food that's getting wasted and just that much energy. Uh. And like you said, to know that there's countries around the world that just don't have you know, that don't have enough food for that reason alone, challenge yourself to to not waste food, to find ways to reduce the

amount that you're spending and ultimately throwing in the trash. Yeah, I think that's another good reason to consider as you're looking at cutting your grocery bills, because not only is it good for your bottom line as a family man, it's good for our bottom line as humans, you know, right, a continue the cycle of life and make sure that we're not wasting better for the whole planet, dude, Yeah, no doubt. So thanks for listening everyone. Our home on the web is how to money dot com, where we'll

have show notes up for this episode. And if you like what you hear and have found this podcast helpful, please let us know. You can give us a review on Apple podcast. It helps people out there that are interested in personal finance, find this podcast and we really appreciate that. So until next week, Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out, Man m.