Grocery Bills

This has been brought up on several of my boards over the years and it continues to boggle me. I keep hearing of families of 3 spending $600 a mth, families of 6 spending more than $1000, ect...

I am feeding a family of 4. Currently I'm still buying school snacks/juice boxes, ect... for a school child. I'm also feeding a labourer. He eats roughly twice what a average "desk-job-man" would eat. He has to. His job relies on the amount of calories he consumes. I, personally, am a lover of food (could be the reason part of this blog is about the diet I struggle with lol). Then there's the baby, who on some days, eats close to what Brianna eats!

When you add in the amount of food Lee alone consumes, I am essentially feeding a family of 5. But even going by an actual count, I'm feeding a family of 4. We spend roughly $200 a month.

Now, I am not one of these super crunchy house-wives who lives and breathes for natural/homemade everything. I mean, yes, we have a garden, but seriously? It's like 6x8 feet. It gives us slightly more than we can eat in a summer. With the exception of this year's green peppers, we usually never have anything left from the garden past October. I don't make most of my own grain products. I mean I like baking and will occasionally make muffins or quick breads, but for the most part I buy store bought. I buy store bought everything with the exception of what the garden provides during the summer. And even then! While I buy a lot less, I DO still buy fruits and veggies from the store during the summer!


I don't keep livestock, so I buy all my meat and dairy from the store (some of the biggest expenses at a grocery store too!). I also buy a lot of convenience foods. I don't soak beans, I buy canned. I buy boxed foods once and a while. I buy things like Mr. Noodles and Kraft Dinner (Mr. Noodles especially lol). 

 I buy a lot of brand name products. I DO buy some no name, but honestly, most of my foods are brand name. I don't deprive us of certain foods (eg. meat and dairy) to save money (ok, I will go once and a while without cheese because of the expense). We DO eat vegetarian sometimes, but it's because we LIKE it, not cause we're skipping meat to save money. Heck, I bought pizza pockets this week lol

I truly DO NOT understand how a lot of people are doubling (or more) our grocery bill. And especially my American friends! I remember (before the big passport broohaha) I LOVED shopping in the US for groceries because of how CHEAP it was! For example. A HUGE block of velveeta cheese is $6 or so. Here, a block 1/4 of that size is $6. A savings for 75%! I WISH we had American prices here!


I truly DO NOT mean this as an insult to my friends whose grocery bills are higher than mine. This is honestly a bit of pure confusion. Maybe cause we are used to living off of so much less money per year than some of my friends, we are able to make our grocery budget stretch further. Maybe my friends eat fancier foods than we do. I just don't get it.