So You Have To Redo Your Grocery Budget? An Interview With A Couple Who Did Exactly That.

My little brother Mark and my sister-in-law Jackie 

A few years ago, my sister-in-law Jackie learned she was lactose intolerant. That discovery required her to rethink how she approached eating, cooking, and shopping for groceries. Then last fall, her husband (my brother) Mark lost his job. He is now self-employed, but has a significantly reduced income. That required them to again rethink how they approached eating, cooking, and shopping for groceries. We have had lots of conversations and emails about saving money eating, saving money cooking, and saving money while shopping for groceries.

A week ago I received this text from Jackie:

Mark wanted me to tell you that we bought a week's worth of groceries      including toiletries and paper products for $70...Saved $20 between specials and coupons! We are proud of ourselves - getting better...

That was such a great text that after I celebrated with them via text, I asked if they'd be willing to be interviewed for my blog. They agreed. So Sunday after we had them and my parents over for a joint birthday meal (Dad just turned 85, Mom will be 83 later this month), the three of us sat in the living room and talked about their grocery turnaround. (The folks had left and Warren went back to work in his shop.) Mark and Jackie's children are adults and do not live at home; it's a two-person household. They shop primarily at Aldi and at a market near them, Mosier's in Raymond, which has some excellent meat prices. They often answered jointly; I note who is giving an answer when it was person-specific.

So you recently texted me about your shopping trip. Tell me what prompted that text?

We were proud of it. [We know] how little you spend...we never come close. So just sharing the news—it is going in the right direction.

Did you always shop weekly or is that new with the frugal changes?

We always shopped weekly.

How much do you think you spent—ballpark it—on groceries before making these changes?

Over $100 a week easily. Probably more like $125 to $150.  Mark, later in the interview: Probably more like $800 a month.

What are some of the special dietary challenges in your household How does that impact your grocery spending?

Jackie: My stuff is much more expensive. Dairy-free cheese is $5.00 versus a dollar something, for example. And milk: I spend $3.49 for a half-gallon of almond milk. [Note: milk is going for about $1.59 a gallon locally at present.] You just pay substantially more. Dairy-free ice cream? A lot for a little amount! As a result, I find us cooking and eating simpler meals. Heavily processed foods often have dairy in the ingredients, so we don't buy those anymore.

Were there any lifestyle challenges that you had to work around? For example: "there's no time to cook." 

Jackie: The dietary changes [because of the lactose issue] eliminated a lot of challenges in that sense. Mark: We had to change the rules on fruits and veggies. The new rule on fruit is "buy one." Because Jackie would buy a fruit she liked and then buy a bag of apples for me. She doesn't eat them. But I can't eat a whole bag before they go bad. Now we're throwing away less fruit.

Where do your food dollars go? Deconstruct a typical grocery shopping.

Fruit, bread, milk, eggs, chips, coffee [I asked here: Coffee every week? No, monthly], meat. We are trying to cut down so we are only buying meat every other week. And not eating as much of it. Mark: And we bought the marked down ones! [Jackie's mother was an RN and Jackie has very definite opinions about food safety. So she winced on this reply, but gamely said "and we haven't died of anything yet!"] We only have the refrigerator freezer, so there are limits. On paper products: big pack of paper towels, napkins, and large pack of toilet paper. We shop a lot at Aldi, so that keeps the cost down.

This answer led to a tangent on toilet paper. Mark asked me where we bought ours. I said we bought the Aldi 18-pack and told him the price (substantially less than the Charmin they buy). Jackie said "but I like soft paper." I ran upstairs, got a roll of ours, and said "here, take it home and do a test run." The things you can do with family!

What if anything have you eliminated from your diet that would thought you would miss but you don't really?

Excess fruit sometimes. We have a similar rule on veggies: we limit how much we buy if we are buying fresh. 

What about leftovers?

We are not anti-leftover. Mark: I don't like eating the same thing night after night. So we eat it one or  two nights and freeze the rest. That really helps on nights when we are tired and can just heat up something that's already cooked.

What's been the biggest hurdle for you in making these changes? Example: "I really miss gourmet cheese," or, "it's too time-consuming to plan a shopping trip so tight, with coupons and looking for specials." Anything like that? 

Jackie: No, we were used to doing that—coupons—before the budget change. Mark: I miss ice cream. But that's not a budget issue. I won't buy it and keep it because Jackie can't eat it and I don't want to eat it in front of her. Jackie: And it doesn't bother me if you do. Mark: I know, but I'm not going to do it. 

I understand that. Since I got diagnosed with the diabetes, Warren often will pass on having cookies or something after dinner, saying he wants to support me. And I'm just like Jackie: I tell him it won't bother me. And Warren says, "I know. But I want you to know that I care." But what I am hearing is the bigger change to your eating and shopping was the lactose intolerance. Am I hearing that right?

Oh, definitely. The lactose issue was the biggest change. Losing the income just made us hone in even more on what we were buying and eating. We don't do a lot of processed foods at all. Mark: And we stopped buying frozen meals pretty much all together.

What's been the biggest surprise for you?

Putting fridge in the food for a lower price. And looking at it and saying "it's enough." That was a big change in our thinking.  

I know some of these changes were driven because of the income shift. Truth: if your income went back to prior levels, do you think you would continue to shop like this? Why or why not?

Mark: I would hope we would continue to shop the same way as now. The money we'd save [with more income] could go elsewhere. Jackie: We are eating simpler meals. I'm aware that we're getting older and we need to be more aware of what we eat and be more health-conscious. That plays into it, too. 

Sometimes people read blogs about cutting grocery bills and comment "I could never do that." I belong to a Facebook group, No Spending for the Year 2018, and newbies on the site will often be overwhelmed at the thought of making such substantial changes. What words of advice would you have for someone who is looking at a radical grocery makeover, either by choice or because they had a big life event that requires them to make deep budget cuts?

Mark: Look and see what you really need to have and get it. Set the other stuff aside—stuff you really don't need. Put it out of your mind. Learn to say "that's enough." And you'll be surprised: it really is enough. Jackie: Keep meals simple. I look at recipes and and not do one because it calls for expensive items and I think "I'm not going to get that much more pleasure out of that!" 

We talked several more minutes about how I buy remaindered apples, peel them, cut them up, and freeze them for future apple pies. Jackie asked whether I had to prep them in any other way, such as putting lemon juice on them. Usually not. If I am doing a lot of apple prep (several pounds at once), I will throw the slices into a bowl of water with lemon juice in it to cut down on how brown they turn, but typically not. And the truth is with apple pie, it doesn't make a difference if the apples turn a little brown in the preparation. By the time I add cinnamon, there's a lot of color change in the final product!

At the end of the interview, we talked about money issues in general (not using credit cards, pay cash or put it off, for example) and just enjoyed being together. Jackie and I walked out to the garden and we picked several tomatoes for her (Mark doesn't eat them). They left our home, after hugs all around, carrying the "test roll" of toilet paper. (Mark to Jackie: "You just used their bathroom and you know that's what they had in there!")

Sometimes it's as simple as a roll of toilet paper.