Lakewood area grocery budget for family of 7 ages 15-8

amother

Poinsettia

Sun, Aug 06 2023, 9:27 am

Is there an Aldi near you in Lakewood? That's how I survive!

We are family of 10 kah, live OOT, young teens and down. We shop primarily at Aldi, supplement a bit at Walmart and Publix, and get our meat and chicken twice a year from Chadei Lev (Rebbe family). I have two extra full freezers to store it in.
My weekly Aldi bill is about $250. My monthly Walmart and Publix, Dollar Tree and kosher store about $50 each. So that's like $1200 all inclusive. A relative shops at Costco for me about once a month and spends about another $150 on me so make that our monthly total $1350. It's significantly more Pesach time and Sukkos a bit more. We host a ton of sleepover guests for Yomim Tovim but don't host much for Shabbos (also never eat out). As I said my regular bills don't include Chadei Lev for chicken and meat, that's An additional $1200 a year.
I keep bills down by using almost no disposables (I have 2 dishwashers that I run almost daily but no cleaning help), no prechecked anything - once a month when we go to Publix my husband will pick up a couple bags iceberg lettuce with a hechsher. We don't serve our children CY (adults are makpid but because of that we just basically eat drink dairy so we have no high dairy bill. Kids eat yogurt, cottage cheese and milk that are all Aldi brand and pretty cheap, my husband uses almond milk in his coffee.
Ice cream we use two pints of DE ice cream they sell in Aldi as dessert on Shabbos. Snacks are bought entirely at Aldi and divided in baggies. Paper goods (toilet paper, ziplock bags, pads, diapers, dishwasher soap, also formula if needed) are included in the Aldi total- as I mentioned we use almost no paper plates, baking pans, etc.I don't drink milk and if I make a dairy supper (aside from cheese which get CY at costco) I don't eat I, serve only to my kids.
Baking supplies are almost primarily bought at Aldi - sugar flour, oil, condiments. Also buy salmon there, canned salmon (to use instead of tuna because Tuna we'd only buy a heimish brand but canned salmon not), canned fruits and vegetables (some canned vegetables don't have a hechsher so we supplement with Walmart) cereal, pasta, bottled water, eggs, and produce. We bake everything, don't buy almost any baked goods aside from bagels at Aldi and Aldi brand Oreos (pareve!) We spend the $50 a month at the dollar store on toiletries like shampoos, body soap, detergent, pony holders, etc. Our month kosher store trip is just for things like kani sticks that I use for sushi on shabbos (we don't do gefilta fish) and poultry hot dogs that I serve sparingly.
We never eat at restraunts. The only eating out experience my kids have is when grandparents come visit and take them for pizza.y hsu and and I go out to eat alone an average of once every 5 years...
So that's how we make it work BH. (I almost never post on these type of threads - or almost any threads - not sure why I posted here. Hope it helps someone!)

amother

IndianRed

Sun, Aug 06 2023, 9:55 am

OP,

The pain is real. I have same fam size as you. The older boys are away which helps my budget A LOT.

You can def save a ton by doing fruits, veggies, condiments, oil, sugar, cereal etc in Aldi.

Bingo for dairy items

Meat and chicken- if you are creative and know your meats you can do very well. I buy a lot of imported beef- if you know the right way to cook it can be amazing and even cheaper than chicken in some ways. Some cuts that work well are:

Oyster Steak
Minute Roast
Silver Tip roast

With the right cooking method these can taste fantastic.

I also like to figure out how much each dinner for my family costs me.

For example, I buy a fam pack of chicken ($35)
and I can get 3 dinners out of it. Cutlets use more chicken but stir fry, low mein etc use way less. Uncle mikes chicken (corn flake crumb recipe) makes a huge amount.

I think recipe planning, budgeting, lists and going to the right stores can help a lot with your budget.

amother

Whitewash

Sun, Aug 06 2023, 10:56 am

amother OP wrote:

Hi guys -op again. I am doing my budget for this past month. Yikes! The number is more like 3k!
All the kids were home for the weeks between school and camp and there was tons of extra shopping for that and the erev tisha beav/nachamu food etc. to make my life a bit easier.

I need to be more careful! Can anyone relate to the sticker shock?

I totally relate! I also have a lot of older boys and they need to EAT! I was shocked when I sat down with a calculator and added up all my grocery expenses for last month.

I do have some children who are on special diets, one is gluten free and one is dairy free, and they both eat a lot of proteins, so it really adds up.

It doesn't help that I work full time and I do spend more for convenience. I sometimes wonder if I'm better off cutting my hours and make more home made food....

I shop for produce and pantry items at Wal Mart, I only shop with a list, and I do buy dairy at GG but I only buy on sale. I totally don't know what I am doing wrong...