This Month's 2026 Grocery Spending – January

 

This year I am prioritizing the bulk of my spending toward food purchases while I keep all other spending relatively low.  One of the choices made was to take advantage of a Black Friday deal and get myself a subscription to Butcher Box because, as it turns out, I am better able to get good quality grass fed beef for less money than I can at my regular grocery store.  Buying a half or quarter cow has crossed my mind, but realistically I don’t have the freezer space to store that much beef at one time and after researching my options locally I discovered it wouldn’t really save me that much money.  Right now, simply put, beef is expensive!

 

My first Butcher Box subscription order arrived at the end of December so I put it all away in the deep freezer out in the garage to wait for the new year to arrive.  Along with my grass fed beef choices I included a package of wild caught salmon.  My “freebies” are the package of uncured bacon and two rib eye steaks that I will be receiving in each box throughout the year.  I have since updated my cart for next time by replacing the salmon with more steaks as I am well stocked with salmon now along with four extra packages of ground beef on special offer.

 

This month I really didn’t need much so I began my in store grocery shopping by cherry picking the best priced items in the sales ad to purchase only what I need and use on a regular basis.  I went to two grocery stores, Albertson’s and Fred Meyer, and then back to Albertson’s for a three day digital offer on cream cheese and whipped cream at 99¢ per package.  At that price it was worth the extra trip.

 

I didn’t shop again for two more weeks as there was nothing worthy in the store ads and instead made my way to Winco, the best priced grocery store in my area, to pick up a short list of some dairy and fresh produce essentials as well as six bags of frozen vegetables – broccoli, cauliflower and green beans.  The frozen vegetables went into the chest freezer and I am now fully stock with veggies.

 

Next up was to go to Costco.  I hadn’t been there in months so I was excited to get back in there and see what all I could get.  Surprisingly, I did not go in there with a list although I did have a mental list of items I wanted to check out and pick up.  My primary reason to go there was to check out and hopefully get a few pieces of clothing, which I did, and a package of their boneless, skinless chicken breasts and some low carb yogurt cups.

 

My plans for nonfood purchases this year is to only buy what I need and use keeping up my current supply without adding to it – pull and replace.  I picked up a bottle of laundry detergent on sale ($3.25) to replace the one I pulled out of the linen closet and am currently using.  I had imagined I would likely need to buy some toilet paper at year end, but a really good sale on TP (12 double rolls for $3.99) at a price I haven’t seen in a good long while made me go ahead and pick that up too.  It is the first time I’ve bought TP since 2020 and if my calculations are correct I shouldn’t need to buy anymore this year.  My total nonfood expenses this month came in at $7.24, so not too shabby.

 

My total spent on food this month came in higher than what I typically do spend at $201.88, which is still a rather low spend and significantly under the Thrifty Food Plan budget.  That being said I still got quite a bit, I think.  The Butcher Box subscription I will be getting every two months is being paid through my Fun & Leisure budget so I am not including that in my regular grocery tally until the end of the year.  I am trying a no budget-budget this year to only buy the items I feel I need, so it will be interesting to see how things go.  Will my super thrifty shopping habits change much throughout the year?  To be honest, I kind of hope they do, but we shall see.