There was a discussion in one of website forums talking about “How much people spend on grocery shopping per week” in the context of living in Australia. My husband and I were surprised to find that the answers to this question can be so varied.

A very smart family only spend about $180 per week for two adults, 4 teenager boy, 2 cats, 1 dog, mice, turtle, fishes and some other little pets. I really don’t know how they manage to do this, but I guess I was quite shocked to find out some other people are actually much more thrifty than we do.

However, this is not the single case. We saw quite a number of families , say two adults, at least two kids and one pet, doing the similar sort of things on grocery shopping. According to what we found, this kind of thrifty family averagely spend about $150-$180 on grocery including food, veggies, meat, deli, cleaning stuff, baby nappies and other household maintenance needs.

While on the other hand, there are people out there spending about $300 per week (only two adults) on grocery, but throw out about $150. I couldn’t help thinking our artist neighbour just living next door, who had never finished anything before throwing them into the bin. Also some of our young friends from China whose parents give them money for a living in here, I saw them throwing out at least 5 pieces of left-over bacon rashers from making a meat loaf. My God, maybe this sounds a bit bitchy, but they all should be sent to Africa for some eye-widen experiences.

I guess comparing to these people, we are really doing okay. Maybe we are not as smart as those people who can do $180 for whole family, but we never wasted any food. I would chew a peer or an apple until seeing their skeletons and make best use of the last crumb from bread crust. I don’t go grocery shopping more than once a week or just buy small things off this supermarket a bit and off that supermarket another bit unless it’s absolutely necessary. We always control the cash amount in our hand no more than $150 per week, but normally we can make it at about $100 for grocery shopping including all house hold needs unless we have friends coming in for dinner or some special occasions for eating out.

I guess there are 3 things, which help to significantly reduce the expense on grocery shopping, that had been mentioned by all the thrifty families in the discussion. The first one is certainly the old topic – “do not waste food”; The second is “eating out less”, and the third one, is “going to Aldi”, which I totally agree with and is exactly what I do.

I just can’t imagine how I am going to do without Aldi. I think I at least saved about 20-30 bucks per week just because shopping at Aldi. A lot of people thought Aldi sell cheap and bad stuff, but to be honest with you, according to my experience in the last 4-5 years, they absolute give the best. The quality is really good and stable. Lot of stuff are even better than what they have in Woolies and Coles. For example, Aldi’s meat is top quality and very fresh as they are running quickly. No meat get to picked up more than one day. They always have organic varieties for their products with cheaper price, and you should check out their cheese spread, hash brown, frozen peas, diet yogurt, pancake mixture, tuna cans, coconut cream and smoky BBQ sauce…..there are so many things that you would find truly worthwhile.

I guess I have tried at least 70% things in Aldi, and they never had failed me. If you go basic shopping, such as not in the event that you have to buy an unusual exotic sauce, have to get certain shape of pasta or toilet rolls with particular patterns printed on the paper, Aldi covers all you would need.That’s why sometimes I often think, if one day I have to leave Queanbeyan and move to somewhere far far away from Aldi shop, what I am going to do?

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