[quasi]

Originally Posted by UFO

It's not that bad really, you just have to put an effort into trying/planning vs buying whatever you feel like cooking/eating any given day. On $300 for the 2 of us, we shop a lot at asian grocery stores. When certain meats are on sale, stock up and into the freezer. We rarely buy meat or produce at full price. Rice is cheap, $30 for a huge sack that would last us 4-6 months; pasta doesn't cost much more. When we make dinner we always make enough for both our lunches the following day

Nowadays with a toddler and a baby, time is at a premium so we aren't and to deal hunt the same way nor spend as much time cooking and planning meals. But we also don't go out as often either just due to practicality with the kids, and we also have space for a big upright freezer which allows us to hoard cheap meat and ice cream even more effectively. We're around $450-500/mth now for our total food budget, that's for family of 4. I'm sure that will rise some once the baby eats real food too

We've actually become looser while eating out now since we don't go out nearly as often, and also settled into our house and not penny pinching for our next move so disposable income is actually better for us now vs when we were saving aggressively.

That's really reasonable if you can do it. We're a family of 3, I also try and make enough for leftovers for lunches and we spend anywhere from $1,000 to $1,200 a month on just groceries. That doesn't include any eating out which we don't spend much on. My son is growing and eats as much if not more then I do. I don't do frozen meats so that probably hurts the budget, meat is bought as we eat it.