Hit $1.25 per meal this month and I'm still shocked

I started tracking every penny I spend on groceries back in January cause my food budget was getting out of hand. This month I added up everything I bought and divided it by the number of meals I ate at home. It came out to $1.25 per meal which honestly blew my mind because I thought I was spending way more. The big trick was buying dry beans in bulk from the Mexican grocery store down the street for like 80 cents a pound. I also quit buying name brand pasta and switched to the store brand which saved me about 50 cents a box. My wife laughed when I showed her the spreadsheet but she admitted the lentil soup I made last Tuesday tasted just as good as the canned stuff. Has anyone else tried doing the math on what they actually spend per meal?

3 comments

3 Comments

rubyschmidt1mo ago

Pretty sure 80 cents a pound is more than bulk beans usually cost, even at a regular store.

the_anthony1mo ago

Wait so you're telling me you got beans for 80 cents a pound and that's somehow a deal? Around here the bulk bins at the regular grocery store have pinto beans for like 89 cents a pound and I just buy them in the big bag. But here's what I'm really wondering though, did you actually count every single snack and cup of coffee as a meal or just the three main ones? Because if you're only counting breakfast lunch and dinner that $1.25 number makes more sense but if you're throwing in random snacks and drinks that math gets way harder to defend.

miamitchell1mo ago

Man that's a solid point about the snacks and coffee, it really changes the whole math when you factor in all the little extras throughout the day. 80 cents for beans is pretty wild though, even my regular store has them cheaper in the bulk bins most weeks. Honestly sounds like someone was just trying to prove a point with that $1.25 figure rather than actually tracking everything they ate.