This month’s shopping at Costco, Aldi, and Trader Joe’s. We stocked up on lots of items but still spent less

Let’s not kid ourselves: food is downright expensive these days and prices are continuing to rise.

Last year’s monthly food budget for the two of us worked pretty well; in fact, we usually spent less than we allowed ourselves. Spreading out the Christmas needs over the last four months of 2025 also helped keep our food spending under control. Still, by the end of this year we knew if we didn’t somehow find a way to tighten up our grocery spending things could start spiraling out of control. We needed to come up with a way for the two of us to somehow continue to eat well while spending about the same or less each month for groceries than last year.

I have always prided myself on creating affordable, healthy menu plans each month with lots of variety. However, that has meant we were always spending on the various ingredients needed to do that. I also wanted to keep a backup pantry stocked. Most evenings for me were spent in front of the stove and I found myself very, very tired of doing that. I just don’t enjoy cooking much any more. So, the goal for this year became twofold: 1) cut back as much as possible on how much we spend on food each month, and 2) come up with a monthly menu plan that focused on easy-to-prepare meals we could enjoy more than once.

Menu planning this year is focusing on repetition and includes the meals we currently enjoy the most and don’t mind repeating while allowing enough variety to stave off boredom. Our weekly meals are ones that besides being easy don’t have me having to follow a recipe, doing a ton of prep work, or getting a lot of dishes dirty.

At the beginning of this month we started rotating through seven different meals that we’ll eat this month. They’re not followed in any sort of order each week but we decide each morning or the day ahead which of them we want to have. All the meals are very easy to fix, we have many of the ingredients already on hand, and they’re tasty, fairly low cost, and often provide leftovers for lunch the next day.

Here are the evening meals in rotation this month:

• Spaghetti with meat sauce and garlic toast: I made a big batch of sauce at Christmas and portioned some for the freezer.
• CookDo pork stir fry & rice: I use a different variety from my CookDo stash each week; the pork is already in the freezer
• Naan bread pizzas: we have a different one every week, from pepperoni to Thai chicken
• Breakfast for dinner: eggs with bacon or sausage, pancakes with bacon, or biscuits with sausage gravy
• Fried rice or Madras lentils with rice
• Macaroni & cheese
• Tuna or chicken salad sandwiches with soup: we change up the soup every week, which we purchased from Costco and Trader Joe’s.

We included in our budget one takeout meal in the month, and this month we got a big pizza from Costco to share with the grandkids. I also plan one “substitute” dish to slip during the month – this month that meal was Hawaiian chicken along leftover fried rice. Neither of us is very interested in dessert these days.

Ideas for February include some repeats: macaroni & cheese, naan bread pizzas, and breakfast for dinner will continue. We’re also going to have either beef stew or beef curry (made with sauce mixes I brought from Japan), barbecue pork sandwiches with coleslaw, pasta with red pesto and meatballs, and potstickers or spring rolls with rice and vegetables. (Many of the ingredients are already in the freezer and pantry, and we did our Big Shop yesterday because of an expected BIG snowstorm this weekend.)

Will this new approach work? I don’t know yet but our grocery lists have been shorter than they were last year and we spent nearly $200 less on our first big shop of the year. I’m hoping this new way will remain sustainable: having less variety than before but still enjoying tasty meals at a lower cost, along with less cooking and clean-up for me.