Quality of life (sales, coupons, home)

[maui08]

Aloha

We have been struggling lately with this issue.....So, I thought I would throw it out to the forum. What do other people/families do on Maui or Hawaii in general in regards to groceries? We spend close to $500 per week between Safeway and Costco shopping the deals to feed a family of 4! This is just the basics: toilet paper, paper towels, juices, sodas, coffee, breakfast, lunch and dinner items, fruits and vegies....etc. Does every other family have similar grocery bills or do you guys simply cut way back in order to survive here?

We have been barely breaking even year after year living here and we finally are to the point of wanting to leave for the main land to allow us a chance to get ahead.

[hotzcatz]

Folks don't move to Hawaii to get ahead financially, they move here to sit in the sun - at least if they can afford enough time off from work to sit in the sun.

Well, we haven't bought paper towels, juice or soda for years so I guess we are on the "cut way back" list. We also plant gardens, hunt pigs, fish, have a few hens in the backyard and fruit trees too. We buy very little retail, and that includes food.

[isaackko]

You must be doing something wrong. We are a family of five, all more or less adults, shop every 10 days or so for $100 - $150 per trip, and we live quite well.

[bresdo]

What are you buying T-bone steaks for every night of the week? I spend about $150 every 10 days or so on groceries and the basics for me an my 2 young daughters.

[Sweetbeet]

We have a family of three (2 adults one very voracious 12-yr-old boy), but regularly feed dinner to 3, and sometimes 4, additional adults (6 or 7 total). By regularly I mean about 4-5 nights/week.

We mainly shop at Safeway, but do get some things in bulk at Costco and/or Cost-U-Less (cat food, cat litter, paper towels, TP, coffee, butter, stuff that we can freeze). I try to buy what's on sale, especially meat and produce. We don't buy much soda, but we do buy orange juice. We also buy at least a gallon of milk per week, and yogurt, cream cheese, and cheddar cheese. We eat meat almost every night for dinner, and none of us (the three of us) eats lunch or breakfast out very often (I might get lunch out once/week, my son will buy a school lunch once/week max).

We do get to take advantage of some more-or-less regular 'specials', like eggs (buy 18 get 18 free) - because we can share them with extended family. I'd say we spend about $200/week average on groceries, between all the stores, maybe $230 some weeks.

My son often takes 'cup o noodles' for lunch, that's cheap, or PB&J (we make our own starfruit or mango jam from trees in the yard). I take leftovers from dinner or a granola bar, yogurt and fruit. We buy the cheapest (whole bean) coffee in bulk and splurge on bagels for breakfast. We buy granola bars on sale (again, usually in bulk) for snacks, and fresh fruit - lots of pineapple (when it's 69 cents/lb. or less), apples have been on sale lately, whatever is cheapest. My hubby loves brie cheese, he gets this huge wheel of it (a couple of pounds, I think) at Costco for $6. We eat a lot of chicken, beef one or two nights/week, pork (it's often on sale) and sometimes lamb (usually leg), and only get seafood when it's on sale (Safeway often has a few packages of "use now or freeze" stuff that is several dollars less per pound), or from a guy down the street who is a fisherman and sells very fresh fish, very cheap. Then we buy a lot from him and smoke it, and then we can have smoked fish for our breakfast bagels - yum! I try not to do more than 3 or 4 real 'splurge' items each week (like a box of triscuits that is not on sale, or the more expensive bread that's baked here on Kauai 'cause it keeps longer).

I think if I went to farmers markets I could do even better, but I have yet to make it there (I think this is going to be a running joke on this forum... when will Sweetbeet get to the darn Sunshine Market already??).

I can't imagine spending over $300/week on food! ????? What costs so much???

[kani-lehua]

$500 per week!!!! time to cut back, maui08.

family of 3 plus 3 dogs (had 5) and 3 cats (had 4). our shopping trip to sam's club about every 3 weeks or so is less than $300 bucks. we don't buy toiletries (sp) in bulk but at walmart instead. veggies and fruits we buy on as needed basis because we can never finish them before the expiration date. and, yeah, we buy steaks, fish, chicken, lamb, beef and pork in bulk. i then separate it all and freeze. no sodas (not good for you anyway) but we buy both apple and cranberry juice in bulk. we could spend even less if we made it to the farmers' market and we did start a garden and have fruit trees.

[HawaiiboundNelli]

wow...when I read that first post I thought...omg if groceries are THAT expensive I'll never make it haha. I just can't imagine spending that much money! I mean...no justification in it when there are farmers markets and weekly sale items...check the ads, check the coupons, plan your weekly meals around what is on sale, not around what sounds good. There are so many avenues to go that can cut food costs in Hawaii...definitely explore them! For other necessary things...again, buy what is on sale. When you have a large family and a budget (or even a small family and a budget) sometimes you can't be picky about brands.
Nelli

[maui08]

From what I have read....it sounds like most of you are on the earthy side of life which is great. Our family however eats more prepackaged foods and ready to eat meals that simply need to be heated up. We do from time to time enjoy cooking from scratch but with our schedules hardly have the time to do that. We purchase our fruits and veggies from the grocery stores and occasionally buy from the farmers markets.

Even if we focused on these markets that would not save us that much money. Maybe it comes down to that we don't force our kids to eat PBJ sandwiches with water for lunch and those instant noodles. We probably spoil them and ourselves a little too much and this is where our problem comes. Aloha

[whynot?]

We cook a lot -- and buy a lot of food (mostly unprepared) at the grocery stores and farm markets. That said, we spend what seems like a ton of money for food and beverages. We are definitely spoiled, but we also buy things that we use lots of (soy-based burgers and sausages, sodas, artificial sweeteners, paper products, etc.) at Costco, which really does help cut costs. For instance, a box of 10 soy breakfast sausages costs $7.69 (not on sale) at Safeway. A box of 24 costs $10. 49 at Costco. Soy burgers are 4 for $7.69 at Safeway, 12 (I think) for $11 at Costco. Sodas at regular price are insanely expensive (and bad for me, I know), but we stock up when they're on sale or buy them by the case. They obviously sell multi-meal cartons of frozen and prepared foods, too.

I don't mean to tout Costco over other retailers; that just works for us. We also stock up on the buy-one/get-one-free items and similar sales at regular grocery stores. We hardly skimp, but we do try to plan a bit and "save" by not wasting. We don't use coupons and rarely shop based on the weekly sale sheets in the paper.

Convenience definitely costs, but you don't have to pay top dollar for it. Since you can keep staples and prepared foods much longer, you can save by buying as many as you can store, then pick up fresh foods (that will spoil more quickly) on your casual shopping trips.

[hotzcatz]

Ah, yes, food with a picture of itself on the cover is definitely much more expensive than food wandering across the yard that has to be caught and have the hair scraped off. Eating packaged prepared food isn't much cheaper than eating at restaurants so you may as well give up eating at home and just eat out all the time. (insert large grin here) I would be sorely tempted to do just that if we had the income to afford to do so, although we only have one small diner close enough to get to three times a day when we wanted food so perhaps that wouldn't work here.

Force them to eat PBJ? I have to bake an extra loaf of bread every other day because one is instantly sacrificed to the god of hot bread. They don't even let it cool down but cut one up while it is still steaming hot, slather it with honey and melt PB on it then eat three slices of it. They seem to prefer melted peanut butter for some reason. Mostly the water is made into tea or iced tea but just plain old tap water is pretty tasty if you are from certain areas of the island.

Generally the noodles around here are just mixed up from flour and eggs with herbs added. We do have a noodle maker with helps a lot with rolling out the dough.

Perhaps these cost saving measures - which do take up time - are what allows us to have the time to do them. By not spending money we don't have to work as long or hard so we have the time to fuss about making messes in the kitchen. Hmm, $500 per week plus the 25% taxes which would be taken out if the money was from a salary means actually $625 would have to be earned in order to spend that much on food per week. Deduct the $65 per week we actually do spend leaves $560 divide that by forty hours a week and you'd have to have a full time job at $14 an hour to pay for that amount of food. Wow! Even just the $500 divided by forty hours a week comes out to $12.50 per hour. So by spending that much on food each week that pretty much requires one person working to pay for it.