A few weeks ago, I was wandering down a grocery store aisle when I encountered the most expensive eggs I’d ever seen. The price for a dozen eggs was very nearly in the double-digits.
Sure, I was in New York City, one of the most expensive cities in the country. But still! Did that mean I would never be able to afford an omelet ever again?
I’m not the only one experiencing sticker shock. Across the country, food prices have skyrocketed. The US Department of Agriculture reports that between 2019 and 2023, food prices increased a whopping 25 percent — and rose faster than all other major expenses including transportation, medical costs, and even housing. Even as overall inflation has cooled, grocery prices have remained stubbornly high, rising another 1.8 percent year over year as of December 2024, with President Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs threatening to spike them even further. Some staple food items, like a carton of eggs, have fluctuated wildly due to the ongoing avian flu outbreak. Meanwhile, thanks to the corporate practice referred to as “shrinkflation,” many consumers have noticed that their packaged foods are getting tinier, even if the price tag stays the same.
There were a few key factors that contributed to more expensive groceries in recent years, ranging from supply chain issues brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic to higher labor and production costs to the war in Ukraine. Climate change, too, is pushing food prices up along with the temperature. Taken together, these challenges can be a recipe for disaster, forcing some Americans to go into debt for their groceries.
But unlike cutting out your morning coffee runs (which, for the record, is bad financial advice anyway), most people can’t stop going to the grocery store. And ideally, the experience shouldn’t revolve around deprivation. Finding the right balance for both your wallet and your plate takes organization, patience, and a little math — but it can be done.
How to come up with a grocery budget
The average person does not savor budgeting — and this is mostly because accounting for one’s expenses isn’t just a cool, factual look at the money coming in and out of our bank accounts. Money lives at the intersection of the exhaustingly practical and the deeply personal. Food is doubly so: It’s not only how we nourish ourselves, but how we take care of our loved ones, share culture, and create memories. How can you put a price tag on that?
Before you even begin tackling a grocery budget, it’s important to acknowledge that both food and money are emotional, and at times, you may feel sensitive, uncomfortable, or even ashamed about what you spend. That’s okay.
From there, consider reframing what a grocery budget means to you. Rather than seeing it in terms of restriction, what might you be able to do with your grocery savings? Contribute to your child’s college fund? Pay your car insurance? Take care of credit card debt?
A budget “is a snapshot of just one point in your life for how much is coming in and what you intend to come out,” says Kristen Brillantes, restaurant owner and co-founder of New Dimes, a financial literacy network for first-generation breadwinners. “If you’re not budgeting, it’s like buying a house with never doing an inspection. You just want to know what’s happening.”
One strategy to calculate your baseline grocery costs is to look at your bank and credit card statements over the last three months to get your monthly average. But if you’re like me, you are not realistically going to sift through your accounts with a calculator.
Instead, Brillantes recommends doing a simple journaling exercise. Shop normally for two weeks, without judgment, and write down your food expenses, including eating out, food delivery, and grocery costs. From there, you can start playing with the numbers to figure out a reasonable budget. Your spending goals will vary depending on your geographic location, income, and family size — if you’re having trouble getting started, the USDA has food planning resources available on its website that break down reasonable costs at a few different spending levels.
Shop your kitchen, then the grocery store
Before you even pack your tote bags to make a trip to the grocery store, consider shopping your kitchen first. This tweak in mindset can help you plan your meals much more effectively, according to cook and author Jessica Fisher, who started her budget-focused website Good Cheap Eats during the 2008 recession.
Most people already have something neglected in the freezer or stashed in a cupboard. By looking there at the outset, you can “build your meals based on what you’ve already invested your money in,” Fisher says. “If it turns out to be something you don’t like, it teaches you how to shop better and reforms your shopping habits going forward.”
I tried this exercise in my own kitchen and unearthed a 3-pound container of steel-cut oatmeal I bought on impulse months ago and had barely touched. After consulting with my wife (the cook in our relationship), she suggested I make a quick savory oatmeal dish two or three times for lunch this week. Then for our weekend breakfasts, she’d make sweet oatmeal pancakes and finish up the container. That’s seven meals and zero money spent.
Doing a proper inventory before going to the store will also help you avoid redundancies — like buying another bottle of syrup when you already had enough at home.
Meal planning with savings in mind
Once you know what you have at home, the next step is deciding what you actually need.
It can be tempting to focus on specific ingredients that are cheap. But it can be more helpful to think of the big picture — or your full plate. Fisher recommends writing out a list of five to 10 meals that you really enjoy eating. “I think 35 years ago the idea was eat ramen, eat these beans and rice and cheap hot dogs, and I was like, no, because if you don’t love those things inherently, then you will burn out.” (If you’re having trouble getting started, Fisher does have a flexible grocery list here.)
From there, you can begin to make your grocery list and identify where some of the more obvious savings are.
“One thing that’s consistent is that eating less meat and trying Meatless Monday is going to stretch your dollar,” says Toni Okamoto, founder of Plant-Based on a Budget, a food blog she started while living below the poverty line. If you really love meat, you can also consider ways to stretch it further. “So say you really do want your beef tacos — you can make half beef and half lentils so that’s the best of both worlds. It’s more economical, has a variety of nutrients and you get the texture that you prefer.”
Frozen fruits and veggies can also be an easy swap. “As long as you’re getting the produce somewhere and the nutrients somewhere, [frozen] is a great option that doesn’t expire quickly,” Okamoto says. “People have the best intentions to eat the bag of salad that they got, but sometimes don’t get to it quickly.” There are also affordable fresh veggies like potatoes, carrots, and onions that can act as the base for a number of meals and whose prices haven’t risen as rapidly as other items, Okamoto adds.
Of course, even with meticulous meal planning, you can go over your allotted budget if your meals are laden with costly cheeses and out-of-season fruits. (Though no matter what your pantry looks like, eating at home will likely be much, much cheaper than eating out.) The trick is finding the balance between what you reliably love to eat and thinking carefully about how to make your taste align with your budget, Fisher says.
How to combat shrinkflation
In an analysis of nearly 100 commonly bought items, a third have shrunk in size since the pandemic, according to the financial firm LendingTree, with breakfast items, sweet and packaged snacks, and household paper products as the worst offenders. On Reddit, r/Shrinkflation is home to more than 160,000 people tracking overinflated bags of chips, ever-smaller chocolate bars, and withering containers of laundry detergent.
To get a sense of an item’s cost-effectiveness, take a look at the price per unit — or how much you pay by weight. It’s typically listed on the shelf label. You may find that your favorite brands are much pricier than the store brand, Okamoto says. And make sure to check shelves that aren’t just at eye level, which are typically home to more expensive, premium brands.
You may assume that opting for a big-box store membership is the obvious workaround to shrinkflation, but make sure to do your homework before committing to a subscription-based service. Okamoto said she’s found that when checking the price per unit, Costco can be more expensive than stores like Walmart or Winco. However, for some people, a membership may still be worth it, especially if you have a larger household or are splitting costs with roommates, for example.
Just like shopping your kitchen, it’s important to shop your store, too. “Many stores sell the same exact products, but for vastly different prices,” Fisher says.
Be sure to compare prices at stores across your community too. “For years I had shopped at Trader Joe’s thinking that was the best place, and then I did what I call a grocery store showdown,” Fisher says. For her area in California, Fisher found that other stores offered better deals for the staples her family regularly ate. “You don’t even have to leave your chair to do this now because they all have their prices online. Within an hour, you could have a really clear idea what store is going to get you the biggest bang for your buck,” Fisher adds.
Think about the foods that really matter to your household and build those into your budget. “I do include splurge items in my meal planning,” Okamoto says. “I also include a salty and a sweet treat that I love because I would rather have that in my intentional planning” than end up impulse-buying a treat that’s more expensive in the long run.
Of course, no one can budget their way entirely out of high prices or their particular economic circumstances. But by focusing on what you can control, and taking the time to plan accordingly, there’s no reason you can’t have your eggs and eat them too.
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