10 Tips to Spend $100 or Less on Groceries Every Month
Blowing your paycheck on groceries? These tips have stood the test of time to help me save money on groceries every month.
Originally published 9/12/23.
One thing that has baffled me for years is how much people who aren’t me spend on their groceries. I just don’t understand why I am so ahead of other people in this budgeting category. It doesn’t make sense to me because for the most part, I never use coupons and only shop in two different stores. I’m not doing anything extraordinarily frugal, yet my spending definitely is.
I’ll preface this by confirming that this budget essentially covers one human adult. I also have a slender body type and as a result might eat less food than the average American. But that isn’t saying much since the average American is overweight. Lots of people could spend less on groceries if they ate less and chose to lose weight. But based on what I’m seeing they spend online, they still wouldn’t quite be at my frugal level.
This article was prompted by a post on Reddit recently where someone lamented about spending $400 in monthly food stamps in one week and eating everything they’d bought. That’s a hell of a lot of groceries, so I’ll assume the poster has a weight issue in addition to a spending issue. My tips could help with both.
No beverages
As I tried to imagine what $400 of groceries looked like for me, I realized that if I didn’t mind eating a lot of carbs, I could probably survive on that much for an entire year, assuming food tax was relatively low. We also don’t know that about the Redditor. Since $400 is a year’s worth of survivalist food for me, I wondered what other people bought that took up so much of their budget, and I realized drinks are a huge aisle that I don’t even visit.
I don’t buy booze unless I’m throwing a party. I don’t buy beverages of any sort at the grocery store. I drink water I filter at home and nothing else. Years ago, I made Kool-Aid at home and would spend a few cents on those powder pouches, but no more thanks to prediabetes. I also don’t buy liquid milk of any sort. I buy dry milk and make it liquid as I need it for a recipe. I do that because the milk lasts way longer. The only thing I drink is water, and water comes from my utility budget, not my grocery budget.
Forgoing beverages you buy at the store will likely add up quickly for you. That’s basically a whole category of things I digest for free.
Very little meat
In addition to having prediabetes, I also have high cholesterol. I am forty and weigh about 90 lbs., and my cholesterol is higher than my nearly seventy-year-old mother-in-law’s, and she is overweight and forces no dietary restrictions on herself. I weighed a few pounds more than this originally, but eating low sugar and low cholesterol makes you lose weight even if you don’t want to.
Because of the cholesterol issue, I decided to eat less meat and dairy. I was already eating low cholesterol in general and only ate red meat on occasion when I’d have a hot dog. I went from eating ground turkey, chicken, and sausage with most meals to eating chicken or sausage maybe for one week a month when I cooked something Cajun.
I don’t substitute vegan meats for the real thing because they’re quite expensive. I rarely eat tofu as well. I just opt for meals that don’t have meat and aren’t trying to have meat. This means I eat a lot more mushrooms and beans. I do buy chicken on sale, but it has to be .99 or less for dark meat and under $2 per pound for white meat. I have noticed I buy a lot less of this than I used to because I often forget I have meat in the freezer. Most of what I make with the meat is gumbo or jambalaya, and I would guess I eat this maybe six times a year total.
No breakfast
I realize a lot of these might be controversial. I am not telling you to become a vegan or eat wildly less meat, but if you are serious about lowering your grocery costs, these definitely help. Another taboo option is to skip breakfast.
I had been doing this since the pandemic started (before I found out about my cholesterol and glucose issues) because I noticed I was gaining weight sitting around at home with only food for entertainment. I decided to skip breakfast since the sort of things I ate were pastries. Not having to worry about an entire meal in the day will definitely save you money.
I admit I do get hungry a lot around 10:00, especially if I woke up early that day. When that happens, I try to eat a handful of trail mix along with eight to sixteen ounces of water. I know this makes me sound like an almond mom, but nuts are really good at making you feel full without having to eat a lot of them. They do what carbs do to your hunger pains but they’re healthy. Drinking a lot of water will also keep you feeling full.
Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night and had trouble going back to sleep for a couple of hours? I do all the time. Sometimes I will get hungry because I’ve been awake in bed so long. I’ve never been one to eat after brushing my teeth, so when this happens, I go to the bathroom and drink two glasses of water. I’m then instantly full enough to potentially fall back asleep. It’s definitely not happening while my stomach is growling.
If you need to skip breakfast for health or financial reasons, these tips will keep you from feeling hungry for a while, but you do have to eat the next time your stomach growls or you’ll probably get a headache.
Egg and butter substitutes
When eggs were crazy expensive in early 2023, there were a lot of Youtube videos on the best substitutes for eggs. The one I liked the most was mixing one tablespoon of cornstarch with three tablespoons of water to make one egg. Obviously, this doesn’t work if you’re trying to eat the eggs as eggs in their natural form such as for breakfast. But this does work very well for baked goods.
Even though eggs have come down in price, I still practice this from time to time, if only to make a cake recipe vegan. The cornstarch adds nothing to the flavor of your batter, and it acts as a binder to hold the dough together.
I also stopped buying regular butter and now buy that Imperial brand margarine. I have not yet figured out why there’s no generic margarine in any grocery store. It’s pretty cheap even though it’s the name brand. At my Walmart, it’s about $1.40 for two pounds.
It tastes like butter and acts like butter in almost any recipe you will encounter. However, I stopped freezing mine because it defrosted with this crackled appearance, and I was afraid it affected the texture.
No pet food
I have owned ferrets for the last seventeen years, and ferret food isn’t available in grocery stores. There is a Walmart brand of ferret food, but it has the reputation of being the worst on the market. Because I’ve never bought pet care items at a grocery store, my grocery budget automatically excludes their food, which means that if you’re comparing receipts to me and you have just purchased cat food at the grocery store, you’re going to have $30 or more extra than what’s actually going in your mouth.
I encourage you to purchase pet food in a separate transaction. This should not be considered part of your grocery budget but be given a separate pet budget within the lifestyle category. As a reminder, lifestyle things are not supposed to exceed 25% of your income and include dining, entertainment, pets, hobbies, and that sort of thing.
No paper products
I know this one is out of reach for a lot of people, but I think it does contribute to my low grocery budget. My husband and I went almost paperless in 2019. We started using family cloth (washable rags for toilet business) and used more fabric towels and handkerchiefs instead of tissues. We also began using cloth napkins and cheap plastic plates for parties. We haven’t bought paper napkins, plates, Kleenex, paper towels or toilet paper on a regular basis since then. I haven’t personally purchased any of this at all. Mr. Green buys one roll of paper towels or toilet paper (for our guests) once a year or less.
I can’t even tell you how much the paper products save us, but if you find you need to buy them on almost every grocery shopping trip, consider ways you can use less of this to save money.

Make your snacks
Remember those health issues I mentioned earlier? Because of them, I have found it a lot healthier to make my snacks instead of buying them, and apparently snacks have gotten insanely expensive, so I’ve been able to keep my grocery budget low as a result.
Anything that’s sweet isn’t going to have the right level of sugar for me, so I just make it myself at home. Cookies, cakes, bars, even ice cream at times are all things I’ve made myself and not purchased in the store. It’s no secret that cooking from scratch saves a lot of money, but the same is true of almost anything you eat.
I do still buy tortilla chips and some crackers, but there have been crackers I’ve made low carb or vegan that have been very low cost, too.
Mr. Green and I recently perused the clearance section at our local Kroger and found a bag of Hershey’s and Reese’s candy marked down from $14 to $4. I had no idea candy had gotten that expensive! We bought it because the discount was great, but if you can make your own food to satisfy your sugar craving, you’re going to save even more.
For the love of God, buy generic
One reason I think so many people are complaining about the cost of groceries right now is because the cost of name brand foods is increasing at a higher rate than generic food, and they’re the ones buying it. I’ve never been one to buy a lot of name brand foods once I moved out on my own. My parents both bought all name brand food growing up. Should I call it Boomer privilege? I can’t imagine doing that myself. I’m sure a lot of millennials can’t.
I did often buy name brand potato chips if there was a particular flavor I wanted or name brand hot sauce from my hometown. For the most part, for the last 20 years, I have bought primarily generic groceries, and it saves me a literal ton.
In 2013 I got divorced and moved in with my sister. The first time we went grocery shopping together, we each spent about $40. I got enough ingredients to cover about two weeks of meals for myself. She bought exactly ten items, several I remember being Pop-Tarts. All of her food was name brand, and she ran out before I did. I also shared what I cooked with her, so she was sometimes eating my food as well.
Eat all your leftovers
A few years ago, I learned that Americans waste 40% of the food they buy. That’s outrageous to me. But it also points to why everyone else is spending so much more on groceries than I am.
Someone I don’t actually like who I am Facebook friends with (don’t ask) posted about there being two types of people: those who think the groceries last forever, and those who throw them out after a certain amount of time regardless of actual condition, and they marry each other. She went on to say that she and her parents always threw out food after four days, no matter what. This seems a bit odd to me because surely they realize that not all food has the exact same properties. Some foods do last very long in the refrigerator. Foods with preservatives are basically designed to still be edible past their “expiration” date, and there are obvious signs that food has gone bad. All you need to do is look, smell, or taste it.
I became immediately enraged that she had been throwing out so much food in her lifetime. Not only does food in a landfill not decompose because of the anaerobic conditions of a landfill, but that’s money wasted and perfectly good food she’s been throwing away for years because of arbitrary rules her parents imposed upon her.
With the exception of some yogurt I forgot about and some bread that kept getting moldy too soon until I began storing it in the freezer permanently, I haven’t thrown out food in maybe five or more years. My food is eaten before it goes bad, and it saves me a shit ton of money.
Food can’t be entertainment
One thing millennials have perfected is food being entertainment. Millennials spend more on dining out than any generation, and part of that is because we can’t afford other forms of entertainment. You might be the type of person who loves ordering from DoorDash and similar services or getting those ingredient delivery boxes where you cook a preplanned meal. I personally categorize my dining out separately from my groceries, but I eat out maybe four or five times a year. If you’re frequently eating food that professionals have cooked, you should include this with your grocery budget to see how much you’re really spending.
One of my favorite things to do is throw house parties. I only do it a few times a year because I spend so much money on food that it’s not cost-effective to plan parties more often. Food is absolutely entertainment when it comes to parties or having people over. It seems illegal to invite someone over and not have a snack and drinks planned. This can certainly add up, and if this is a big reason why your grocery budget is out of whack, you will need to make some changes to reduce these expenses.
I know I’m not the norm
But I should be. And I could be. Most of what I do isn’t wildly unusual or difficult. You may not be able to spend as little per person as I do, but you can certainly spend less than the average American by implementing some of these tips.