Project: Food Budget–Final Thoughts

Somehow I totally forgot that last week was the final “official” Project: Food Budget week. I honestly cannot believe how fast six months passed! But, I learned a few things I wanted to share as the final post in this series.

Before we get to that, though, I wanted to say a big thanks to Emily for thinking up this little project and inviting other bloggers to join in. It was fun! We saved money! What else could we ask for?

Here are the big takeaways I wanted to share with you:

1. Being on a budget does not need to mean skimping on quality, good-for-you foods. I still bought mostly organic throughout this entire project, and I will continue to do so afterwards. I also very rarely went over budget ($75/week). We had everything we wanted and needed – and never felt we were missing out on anything. Because we eat very little  in the way of packaged goods (comparatively to most, I think), we got a lot of bang for our 75 bucks!
2. Sometimes convenience is worth the cost.  I have sung the praises of Amazon Fresh, a grocery service spin off of Amazon.com that is only available in Seattle. It’s awesome. I hope they expand so that other cities get to experience its awesomeness! The costs are slightly higher on some things (and less on others), but in general, I find that the convenience of ordering groceries online is worth it when we are busy. There are times when my time is more valuable than the slightly higher cost because we save an hour that we would have spent grocery shopping (driving to/from, waiting in line, etc.). They also make it easy to find more unconventional foods because it’s just a quick web search when I want, say maca powder, instead of driving all around town and trying to figure out where it is on a store shelf.
3. Sometimes convenience is not worth the cost. I also sung the praises of my CSA, which I really loved…until the quantity and quality of items went down and the cost went up. It was nice to have a variety of organic fruits and veggies delivered to our doorstep every other week, but, there came a point where I couldn’t justify their costs and I cancelled – hence the Whole Foods Experiment.
4. Whole Foods offers coupons. Seriously, who knew? I am not a huge couponer, because coupons in general are not for things we buy. But, WFM coupons are for things we buy. Love that!
5. Less food went to waste. Because I was conscious about what I was buying – I didn’t buy “impulse” items. I also got creative with using everything we had. Hint: just about any combination of veggies works well in an egg or tofu scramble. I also started using veggie scraps to make our own veggie stock. Why pay for it when you can have it for free!

I hope you can take away a few things from our learnings! I will be continuing to budget moving forward, but you won’t hear much about it around these parts, unless there is something ground-breaking or earth-shattering to report.

Have a great weekend, and I’ll catch back up with you on Monday!