This has been a post I’ve had in drafts for a while but after a few requests to talk about groceries I am finally getting it finished and ready for my readers.
Groceries and meals are so tricky because they are a part of life you cannot avoid.
You have to eat!
Your kids have to eat!
Shopping and cooking can take up a lot of time, energy, and money. I’m not going to get into any of the details of how I meal plan today (let me know in the comments if you would like a post about meal planning), but I will share where we shop, what we buy, and what we spend.
Before we get started, some context.
We are a family of 5 and one of my children has multiple food allergies. He cannot have wheat, eggs, sesame, peanuts, or tree nuts. So for dinner we all eat with those restrictions in mind. I do not make one meal for breakfast or lunch so we all eat different things at those meals. My 3 kids have pretty healthy appetites and they aren’t picky eaters. I make one dinner each night.
A note on prices – prices vary DRASTICALLY across the country. When I change my Wal-Mart location from here to my parents in the Minneapolis area EACH item goes up by at least 50%. So a cucumber that is $0.50 here is $0.75 there.
Where do you shop?
We live in Texas and primarily shop at Costco and HEB. We have no other grocery stores besides HEB (We have Wal-Mart and Target and Trader Joe’s but not a true grocery competitor to HEB). I have found that produce is the same price between HEB and Wal-Mart and the quality is much better at HEB. We buy most of our meat and dairy at Costco. So I shop at Costco maybe 2 times a month and I do a big HEB pickup weekly. HEB is the best grocery store we have ever shopped at. I love it so much!!! I do pickup which is a 3% upcharge. My credit card gives me 3% back on all groceries so I figure it’s a wash and the time saving is totally worth it with 3 kids.
I went through my orders and wrote down the last recent “big” order from each place.
HEB
- hamburger buns
- case of mini poppi
- cold brew coffee
- 2 oikos yogurts
- 2 pounds unsalted butter
- ricotta
- Fage 5% yogurt
- heavy cream
- shaved parmesan
- shredded mozzarella
- caesar salad kit
- alfredo sauce
- pepperoni slices
- 1/2 pound boars head roast beef
- 1/2 pound HEB deli turkey
- gluten free Texas toast
- frozen hash brown patties
- fresh spinach
- asparagus
- red bell pepper
- lemon
- 2 cucumbers
- green bell pepper
- 2 packs of mini cucumber
- strawberries
- grape tomatoes
- yellow onion
- 4 honeycrisp apples – only apples my kids will eat!
- dill relish
- vaseline
- ant bait stations LOL
- 4 salmon portions
- 2 NY strip steak – we wanted a special fun steak dinner one night
- 2 cans diced tomatoes
- chickpea orzo pasta box
- dill relish
- dijon mustard
- 2 cans tomato paste
- Rao’s garlic pasta sauce
- 2 boxes Partake graham crackers
- 3 boxes gluten free rotini pasta
Grand total: $207.61
We do a big HEB order to get all the random items needed for lunches and dinners for an entire week. This week we had homemade pizza, chicken alfredo, salmon, and burgers. I think we just had sandwiches another night and then a night of leftovers. We didn’t eat all the items I purchased for this week – we didn’t have the steak as planned so I froze those. We also didn’t make the orzo dish as planned because our schedules changed a bit.
What do you spend a month on groceries?
With the help of Copilot – my favorite budgeting app – I can see that this year we are averaging $1200 a month on groceries.
Is that more or less than what you expected? I have talked numbers with a few friends but we all have different sized families and live in different places so it’s really hard to compare.
NOTE ! I do not remove things like diapers or toilet paper or paper towels from the total. I know some people only track actual food but I don’t remove those other consumables from the cost. We have to have diapers and toilet paper so it is just part of the cost of life. I also include any alcohol in this total so that is another thing to consider.
If you want to see national averages for food cost you should check out the USDA Food Plans. Looking at the Thrifty Plan from 2021 would put our monthly cost (which is based on ages of children) $1083. So I’m happy that we aren’t far off the thrifty plan from 5 years ago now that grocery prices are insane and we have a kid with foods that are double to triple the normal cost!
Also for more context, groceries are our third highest cost every month after our mortgage and school tuition.
Budgeting versus Tracking
Something my husband and I discuss is the need to budget versus just track groceries. Frankly, we are lucky that we are able to buy what we want and not worry about the cost. If my kids are eating a ton of fruits and vegetables I will just buy more. If we decide we want a fancy steak dinner, we will just do it. So the budget for me is more a tracking. I don’t have a number where we will stop shopping. I don’t track costs in Costco as I’m putting things in my cart and I don’t track as I’m working on my HEB order. I buy what we need and want and then the cost is the cost.
My husband and I agree that we want our kids to eat nutritious real food, and if that costs more, that’s fine. We are also really lucky to be in a low cost of living area! These same items would cost a lot more if we were living by our families, for example.
We are super lucky to not have to make changes to our eating as the costs go up. But it is really shocking to see how much the costs have changed over the years.
If I had to cut costs, I would remove:
- any drinks – Poppi, Fairlife, alcohol
- expensive cuts of meat like steak
- cut back on I would Skinnypop, Dots, etc
I do think that doing primarily grocery pickup is a great way to control cost and impulse purchases. It also makes it really easy to see coupons and deals within the app because they show up on the item – sometimes those things are hard to see with in store signage. I also buy the store brand when I can (allergy issues with some things) and only buy name brands if they are items I won’t compromise on like blue Dawn or Tide.
Cost of Living in 2026
Truthfully, groceries are expensive. I don’t know how people on an extremely limited budget with a big family do it. We are blessed to have a good household income and we can spend what we want on food. So I don’t have the best tips if you are really sticking to a specific budget each month.
Places like Aldi and Wal-Mart are cheaper for shelf stable items but in my experience their produce is not good so I don’t want to make multiple trips. With the cost of gas it isn’t worth it to shop at Aldi for one list, HEB for another, and then Costco for more. (We don’t even have Aldi this is just an example) I did shop Aldi almost exclusively when we lived in St Louis because I never found a store I liked but we were just two adults then and it was fine.
Now I am happy to support a local store that has great selection and their prices compare to Wal-Mart!
Also, my husband loves some strict fridge organization so here is what our fridge looks like:
Our freezer here has stuff we use everyday – freezer waffles, nuggets, etc.
Our outdoor freezer keeps all our frozen meat, vegetables, and bread.
Please let me know if you have any questions! I hope this was helpful and please let me know if you want me to share anything else around my house and life.
