By Oh boy, I guess I didn’t think about the timing on when I was going to write this series. With Thanksgiving festivities now behind us, hopefully we didn’t spend too much on food. That’s what life does though, right? Life throws you curveballs and sometimes it just about the timing.
While most of the time, environment plays a huge factor in behaviors. So from my first post in this series. From my numbers , that doesn’t seem to be the case. There was a huge spike in food costs back in March, when we all switched to working from home. Also, stock piling on non-perishables and other food attributed to the total amount as well. With SF and HNL being high cost of living areas, the difference of average food spend between the two cities is $69.91 which could actually be a week’s worth of groceries for a single person in other areas of the country.
Ok, let’s take a deeper dive and start bringing in some more numbers into this. One company that a lot of techies (or any SF Bay Area resident) is familiar with is Instacart. I’ve used instacart a ton this year mainly for social distancing and also, it saves me a lot of time. So, let’s take a closer look at my spending on instacart (by way of safeway, costco).
These are my most common grocery items: costco: – $18.65 – salmon patties- $9.94 – dave’s bread- $9.32 – eggs- $9.44 – almond milk- $17.03 – coconut water- $16.16 – kerrygold buttersafeway:
- $5.44 ($1.32/lb) – chicken thighs
- $12.69 – ground bison
- $8.99 – ground beef
- $6.89 – spinach
- $1.51/item – baby bok choy
- $4.59/bag – gold potatoes
Now taking the average of my spending the last couple months: Safeway – tax and delivery fees rounded up: $79 Costco – tax and delivery fees rounded up: $120$199/week x 4 weeks = $796 month which is still under the monthly average of $915.41 in Hawaii, and $845.50 in San Francisco. So reality check, it’s entirely possible to stay under the average food cost for a single person in Hawaii and probably in SF too. If I keep my dining out budget to $100/month it will still be under the monthly average in Hawaii.
Will I be able to do keep under next year? I’ll have to make some serious habit changes around food. Now is a good time as any to reflect and set goals before the new yar. Stay tuned and comment below. I’d love to hear from you.
