At the Half: 2023 Grocery Purchases

We just finished the month of June, end of the Second Quarter of 2023 and the halfway point through the year. I spent some time with a calculator and the file in which I keep notes on our grocery expenditures, and I am ready to report the results.

Second Quarter highlighted a trend I had not really paid attention to before. We had a month of stocking up (April), then a lean month (May), then another stocking up month (June). The results are so dramatically different that after totaling up our June expenses, I wrote this note on my findings:

(Interesting that I posed it as a question instead of a statement.) And yes, July can and will be lean because that was the point of the stocking-up grocery trip in June.

Second quarter numbers: $716.39 total, of which $28.65 was spent on non-food items such as bleach or toilet paper. That averages out to $238.80 a month, up quite a bit from the First Quarter average of $177.35. Year to date: $1248.96, or an average of $208.16 a month. My goal when I noted the First Quarter expenditures was to come in at an average of $200.00/month, and I still think that figure is attainable. 

I made some further observations beyond the pattern of a heavy month followed by a lean month. There were some freebies in the Second Quarter, typically because of store perks or rewards. (On that note, ALL of the laundry detergent we have (several bottles at present) are either free or almost free (less than a dollar) because I get "Bonus Bucks" from CVS, where I fill prescriptions.) And there are a couple of indulgences (mild by many standards): we bought large packs of chicken thighs rather than drumsticks, at a cost of 20¢ more a pound, because we prefer thighs over drumsticks. And there is a pasta that Aldi carries, its Priano label, that we buy for linguine rather than the cheaper Reggano label, because we like the Priano better. (We use Reggano when buying penne pasta, finding it just as good and cheaper than we can find at Kroger, unless there is a sale going on.) I can live with those "splurges."

We try to be frugal with our expenditures for lots of reasons, starting with the reality that neither of us are shoppers just for the sake of shopping. (That is especially true of me; I have never enjoyed shopping, be it for clothing, food, or what have you. I love books, my one shopping weakness in decades past, but even that itch has died down to embers.) So it it is pretty easy for us when we do enter a grocery store to stick to the list. Some ask me whether we feel our limited food purchases makes it boring to eat or hard to come up with meals. I do 99.999% of the cooking, so I will answer that succinctly: No. I enjoy coming up with tasty concoctions made from what we have on hand, and if I can have leftovers for the next day, then bonus points for me! We always have staples, and that too makes planning and cooking easier. And to paraphrase Hope Ware of Under the Median, recipes are a suggestion list, not a mandatory you-must-do-exactly-this-for-this-dish mandate, so that makes cooking easier, less stressful, and far less taxing. 

2023 is halfway done! On to Third Quarter!