And That's Too Expensive
This month's income feels tight, and I've been staring at our budget trying to figure out where cuts can happen. We budget about 300€ monthly for groceries. Often, we overstep that by a few tens of euros or so, but a goal of 300€ has for years seemed acceptable.
But where is that money going? I had a rough idea of what I was eating and how much it cost, and it just didn't seem to me that we should be spending so much. But when I started doing the math, it became clear that small choices do add up to large-ish monthly sums.
Let's say I wanted to reduce our groceries to 250€ per month. In a 30-day month, that's 8.33€ total for both of us daily. My wife eats much less than I do, so let's say that I'm 2/3s of that cost, which gives me 5.5€ daily to work with.
Here's my current average breakfast:
- A can of sardines in oil
- Two whole wheat crackers to put the sardines on.
- A slice of gouda cheese
- An apple
- A handful of peanuts
- Two cups of coffee
I picked up the sardines habit after listening to Dom D'Agostino on the Tim Ferriss podcast for anyone wondering why someone would begin their day with sardines.
My insight while investigating my personal food costs is to ignore the 100g or price per kilogram and focus instead on the cost of my personal consumption habits. It's useless information to know that sardines cost x price per 100g when I always eat 125g without fail. With cheese, I want to know what it costs per slice of cheese stuffed into my mouth. Per cup of coffee. Per handful of raisins or nuts. Etc.
With that in mind, the costs break down as follows:
- 1 handful of nuts 0.10€
- 1 apple 0.25€
- 1 can of sardines 0.75€
- 1 slice of cheese 0.20€
- 3 cups of coffee 0.16€
- 2 crackers 0.05€
- TOTAL 1.51€
- 30-day Month Cost 45.19€
- Calories 633
You can see the challenge. It's perfectly reasonable to think that a breakfast that's as calorie dense as mine costs 1.51€. Compared to a meal in a restaurant, it's laudably cheap (especially the coffee). When it's added up over the month though, it adds up.
A common lunch of mine breaks down like this:
2 Eggs 0.24€
1 slice of cheese 0.20€
1 Apple 0.25€
2 Crackers 0.05€
1 Banana 0.20€
10 ml Olive Oil 0.05€
100g Frozen Mixed Vegetables 0.16€
TOTAL 0.98€
30-day Month Cost 29.28€
Calories: 562
This is definitely cheaper. I've considered replacing the morning sardines with eggs for this reason, but eggs come with potential risks that I probably don't want to tempt by eating four or five of them daily in perpetuity.
According to my MyFitnessPal estimate, I have another 1345 calories to eat before the day is done due to my activity level, and I have 3€ left to consume. So let's look at dinner.
Last night I had:
- Homemade Kombu Dashi .43€ (1 leaf of kombu)
- Quality Ramen Noodles .25€ (100 g of dry noodles)
- Half a block of tofu .46€
- A teaspoon of miso .08€
- A head of bok choy .44€
That's 1.68€, which brings our total up to 4.17€. So to round things out, let's look at snacks throughout the day.
- A protein shake made up of .70€ powder plus .19€ of soy milk
- A handful of peanuts .10€
- A coconut milk popsicle .80€
- A handful of raisins .09€
- An apple .25€
That equals 2.12€ for a total of 6.29€ during the day, above my goal cost of 5.5€. Total calories equal 2629 (I also ate some seaweed salad, which won't become a regular thing), which is also slightly higher than I was aiming for, but I did reach 153g of protein.
Lowering Food Costs: Penny Pinching vs. Transformational
What could be done to lower this cost? First, there's the penny pinching way, which looks for small savings rather than big changes. If I eat the exact same dinner, but dilute the kombu dashi broth to make it work over two days instead of one, that gets the total down to 6.07€. If I eat one popsicle every other day, that gets me down to 5.67€ and a 30-day monthly total of 170€.
And if I want to change the very nature of my food costs, I could be like Jacob at Early Retirement Extreme and sub that entire dinner and even lunch for a red lentils and rice dish, which drastically changes the cost. My local Indian and Sri Lankan-style Asian market sells a 2 kg bag of red lentils for 2.29€! My local discount grocery store sells rice at 1.18€ per kilo. Combine the two for a complete protein, and eat much more cheaply.
If I had oatmeal for breakfast sans sardines, I'd drastically lower my breakfast costs. A bag of raw oatmeal is around .70€. If I get ten meals from it (.07€) plus a banana (.20€) and 50 ml of soy milk (.05€) plus my requisite 3 cups of coffee (.16€), I'd have a breakfast that costs .48€ daily and 14.4€ over the month.
As I said, transformational.
