I Was Curious How Much My Grocery Plan From 2008 Would Cost Today So I Shopped It Again
My first year living on my own, a fellow cheapster friend of mine offered me a challenge: to spend only $30 a week on groceries. She had pretty much gone full-out vegan and was on her own frugal grocery plan, spending around that amount each week.
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I wondered if I, too, could pull off the same. At the time, it was 2008, and I was raking in about $1,800 in take-home pay a month while living alone in a studio apartment in West Los Angeles. As you might imagine, I tried to live on the cheap.
A few weeks into the challenge, I got into a rhythm and managed to get my weekly grocery spending down to $30. Fast-forward to the present, I recently visited Trader Joe's to see how much my former frugal grocery list would cost me today. It turns out I would be spending about $45 a week (hello, inflation!) buying pretty much the same things.
When I first made this grocery plan, I set a rough budget for each of the three meals of the day, plus set a bit of money aside for snacks and splurges. Then, I did some comparison shopping to see what kinds of meals I could come up with for that amount of money.
Back then, it roughly cost this much:
•Breakfast: $5
•Lunch: $10–$12
•Dinner: $8–$12
•Snacks: $3
Weekly spend: $25–$32
And here's what about the same plan wound up looking like today:
•Breakfast: $7
•Lunch: $15
•Dinner: $18
•Snacks: $5
Weekly spend: $44–$45
I pretty much bought generic items when I was shopping at the supermarket. But at Trader Joe's, most everything gets slapped with the TJ's label, and the cost doesn't change. So when I shopped there, I didn't have to take out my calculator and do the math to know that I was staying on track.
For the most part, I ate a lot of the same things. For breakfast, my mainstay was oatmeal with a bit of fruit. Here's a breakdown of how much it cost:
Breakfast: Oatmeal
•Oatmeal (18 ounces): $2.69*
•Bananas (3–4; I used half per meal): 19 cents each; $.80
•Unsweetened almond milk (32 ounces): $1.99
Seven meals
2021 Total: $5.40
2008 Total: $4.90
The oatmeal was good for 18 servings, so a canister of the stuff got me through 2 weeks and then some.
Back in 2008, when I initially did this challenge, the oatmeal pretty much cost the same, and surprisingly, so did the bananas. The almond milk, however, was a smidge less expensive, at about $1.50.
I changed up what I ate for lunch from time to time, but stuck to items that were low cost and were enough for about four to six meals.
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Here are my top favorites:
Lunch #1: Chicken pita sandwiches•Chicken breasts (1 pound): $5.99•Pita bread (package of 6): $1.99 •Romaine (3-pack): $2.29•Persian cucumbers: $2.29•Green goddess dressing (one bottle would last for a month): $2.29
Six meals
2021 Total: $14.85
2008 Total: $10 ($12 on weeks Green Goddess dressing was added)
Lunch #2: Indian FareIndian Fare (those packets of ready-made Indian dishes): $1.99 x 4 = $7.96Frozen garlic naan (4 pack): $1.99
Six meals
2021 Total: $11.93
2008 Total: $11.93
Surprisingly, back in 2008, the Indian Fare and garlic naan actually cost about the same as it did today.
Dinner was the same kind of deal. I bought low-cost fare and cooked meals that lasted for several days, and the ingredients were pretty much the same price. When I switched things up, I just made sure I was staying within my dinner budget.
I tended to stick to meatball spaghetti with some spinach thrown in:
Meatball spaghetti•Ground beef or sausage (1 pound): $4.69
•Organic frozen chopped spinach (1 pound): $1.99
•Traditional marinara sauce (18-ounce jar): $1.39
•Organic brown rice and quinoa pasta (1 pound): $2.99 Four meals
2021 Total: $11.06
2008 Total: $6.86
The ground beef, sausage, and spinach were less expensive, while the marinara sauce was about the same. And I went for the low-cost pasta, which was a few bucks cheaper.
Alternately, I would enjoy a simple dinner of fish nuggets ($4.49 for a box of 16 nuggets) drizzled with a bit of tzatziki sauce ($3.49). In 2021, this adds up to a little over $8.
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Back in 2008, the fish nuggets ($3.99) and tzatziki ($2.99) were slightly less expensive and cost around $7.
Chili Mac
Other meals in my steady rotation included chili mac, which requires a box of mac and cheese ($1.39), a can of turkey chili ($1.99), and some milk ($1.19).
Four meals
2021 Total: $4.57
2008 Total: $4.57
Chicken Burritos
Another personal favorite are the frozen chicken chili verde burritos ($10.50 for six) toppled with salsa verde ($1.99).
Six meals
2021 Total: $12.49
2008 Total (bean and cheese burritos): $7.19
Back in the day, TJ's had these pinto bean and cheese burritos, which were 2 for $2, so I could enjoy some burritos a bit cheaper.
As for snacks, I pretty much subsisted on brown rice cakes (13 for $2.99) smeared with peanut butter ($1.99), or some rice crackers (2.99 for a bag). I also would nosh on some pears ($2.49 for a bag of six).
Although my favorite time of day is snack, I tried to keep it simple. Looking back, my diet was pretty carb-heavy. I probably could have been loading up on slighter healthier fare, such as popcorn, nuts, and dried fruit.
Looking back, I wish I had eaten more greens and fewer carbs. The majority of frozen veggies cost anywhere from $2 to $3 a bag. Frozen veggies can be picked during the peak season when they're at their freshest. Plus, they tend to retain their nutrients and have the same nutritional value.
Besides my regular grocery shopping, I would load up on non-perishables that were high in nutrients — cans of beans, bags of frozen veggies, tinned fish, and occasionally grains. Adding them to a meal or eating them à la carte packed nutrients and satiated my hunger.
I also looked up recipes and ideas from free resources.
A good OG reference I came across is the Environmental Working Group's (EWG) Good Food on a Tight Budget. There are also healthy food lists and recipe suggestions. (Pretty neat stuff.)
You can also check out the Tasty app's (iOS and Android) feature "What's in your kitchen?" You can pop in up to three ingredients that you already have, and it'll provide you with a handful of recipe suggestions.
I found it interesting that a little over a decade later, my then-weekly grocery haul went from about $30 to $45, or a 33% bump. It turns out that since 2008, inflation has increased about 27.06%. But you gotta give it to TJ's that the price tag on some of the items didn't change much or at all.
Sadly but really no surprise to anyone, economists predict that higher inflation is here to stay for the next few years.
If I had to go down to about $30 a week again, or even down to $25, I would eat less meat, as those items were the most expensive. I'd also probably eat a whole lot more greens and mix it up between the fresh stuff, frozen produce, and whatever came in a can or jar. That way I wouldn't buy too much fresh fruit and veggies and run the risk of it going bad.
I would also probably see if I could pull off a no-spend week where I don't go to the grocery store. That way, I could spend about $33 a week, skip the last week of the month, and use up whatever I already had.
Where have you seen your grocery bills going up? Share the items that you've noticed getting spendy in the comments.
And for more stories about life and money, check out the rest of our personal finance posts.
