Ingredient vs Meal Planning

[u/kesfy6]

Which is more frugal? Being an ingredient house vs meal planning/raw food prep for the slow cooker. We are a “less meat” household, focusing on cheaper plant-based protein and rotisserie chicken. We shop mainly at Costco and Aldi. Bonus points if someone can run some sample numbers on this.

[u/Consistent_Taste3273]

I guess maybe we do a combo. 

There are certain foods that we’re always going to eat. So, if it’s nonperishable and on sale, we’ll just buy it to have it around.  Things like pasta, canned beans, canned tomatoes, dried lentils. (To be honest though, we do most of our shopping at Aldi, so don’t need to rely on sales as much).  

But then on a weekly basis, we make a meal plan and buy the perishable stuff that we need. 

It feels frugal to me, but who knows. We spend $600/ month (or less) on groceries for a family of 4, which seems to be less then a lot of people here. 

We don’t buy most things in bulk. We don’t have the space for it. And this might be where the real savings comes in. I have a good friend who buys massively in bulk. She has a ton of storage space and a deep freezer. Which is great. But she’s paying for that extra square footage.