This week, I’d like to talk about an article that talks about grocery smarts that was posted on another PF (Personal Finance) blog that I am a big fan of – Making Sense of Cents.
Jordann – a staff writer – talks about how she would buy up an excess of produce at the grocery store every week and be a veggie and fruit hoarder. Invariably, things would go bad and a lot would end up in the compost bin or garbage.
For some reason, I love doing this every week. I will buy piles of produce without a plan and then try to eat them all. Three heads of lettuce in a week? Challenge Accepted.
Then, I’m shocked that my produce has moved on to the big compost bin in the sky when I can’t force myself to binge on that much greenery.
Jordann includes some other great tips for organizing this area of your life, read more wisdom here:
How to eliminate food waste from your fridge
Did you know that I used to spend $800 per month on groceries? It’s true. Back when I was in school and living in the city, my fiance and I bought most of our food from the farmer’s market, and together we easily dropped $200 a week on groceries.
I wasn’t really tracking my expenses at that time. I only paid enough attention to my finances to make sure I didn’t run out of money at the end of the month. Other than that, I spent everything I had, and most of that went to food.
Since then, I’ve cleaned up my grocery budget significantly. I now spend about $400 per month for two people. We implemented a lot of changes in our grocery shopping habit to save this kind of money, but one of the biggest things we did was go to war on food waste. The biggest battleground was easily our refrigerator….read more here.
macleans did a great story on food waste. Check it out here http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/01/21/the-food-waste-debate-could-use-a-pinch-of-common-sense/
Thanks for including a link to this article, Mandy. That was really informative – I, for example, didn’t realize the “best before” date was any different than an expiry date It almost sounds like a marketing ploy (to a certain degree) when explained from this perspective.
I also didn’t realize that E. Coli could be cooked out of the meat – I thought it survived the cooking process and that’s what made it so dangerous. It could be considered risky to buy, anyway, but the article raises some provocative points. Thanks for posting!
You said something that I think many people do and that’s they make sure they track their money just so they didn’t run out of money at the end of the month. So many people do this but if they only took more time to understand their personal finances they would see the areas they could improve on and where they are spending too much. That’s why I started The Grocery Game Challenge on Canadian Budget Binder to control what we thought we were saving the most money on but later found out, we were spending far too much. Meal planning and sticking to the grocery list and budget have helped eliminate food waste in our home 🙂
Hi Mr. CBB! I liked your article (grocery game challenge) this week about the amount of sodium that can be found in processed foods, I know for me, when I look at labels, I tend to focus in on fat content and sugar amounts. Salt tends to be forgotten in our household. For more info on this, fair readers, go to http://canadianbudgetbinder.com/