In this episode of Good Cents by Payactiv, host Eric Rosenberg discusses the rising cost of groceries and how mindful budgeting can help. He’s joined by Justin from The Price of Avocado Toast, who shares how he and his wife paid off $132,000 in debt and learned to be intentional with their grocery spending.

Key takeaways:

• Having a plan for the week helps reduce waste and prevents last-minute, costly food decisions.
• Simple meals with versatile ingredients can save money without sacrificing variety.
• Use food banks if needed. These resources exist to help people stretch their budgets.
• Get creative with ingredients. Repurpose staple items in multiple ways to maximize value.
• Shop smart to prevent waste. Buy only what you need for the week to avoid food spoilage.

Eric Rosenberg:

This is a friendly reminder that today’s episode is intended for education and entertainment purposes only and should not be considered legal or financial advice.

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to The Good Cents by Payactiv podcast. As always, I’m your host, Eric Rosenberg. And today we are going to talk about a topic that is very relevant to many of us and that is the cost of groceries. Of course, we’ve all seen the costs at the grocery store rise, particularly since COVID started, and those prices have not come back down. Maybe a couple products here and there but overall our grocery bills have just seemed to have gone up and up and up.

And while we know certain products like eggs are affected by bird flu, we’re seeing this effect far beyond the dairy aisle. We’re seeing it all around the store. So planning ahead and mindfully budgeting for groceries and handling our grocery shopping is probably more important than ever for many of us. And I’m excited to welcome today’s guest, Justin from The Price of Avocado Toast, to talk all about how he learned how to get out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt while also zeroed in on his grocery bill and every other dollar he spends. So we’re going to dive into this really fun and engaging conversation with Justin to learn all sorts of tips and tricks about how we can save money at the grocery store. Here we go.

All right, everyone, I am so excited to be here with Justin. Welcome to the show.

Justin:

Thanks for having me. I’m stoked to be here to help today.

Eric Rosenberg:

Yeah. So, how did you get into this world of personal finance and money and all that good stuff that we do?

Justin:

Well, my story’s kind of wild. My wife and I had a pretty bananas debt journey where we were in over $220,000 of debt and realized that we were on a fast track to not managing our money particularly great. And so we started to budget and track our expenses and ended up paying off $132,000 of debt in 18 months.

Eric Rosenberg:

Wow.

Justin:

Yeah. It was in that process, though, that we realized the way that we did it probably wasn’t the most sustainable. And so we started our podcast to share our journey as well as our financial coaching branch. And now we help people across the US and even in Canada learn how to budget, pay off some debt, and hopefully spend on things that bring them joy.

Eric Rosenberg:

Yeah, I love that. It’s important to, I always say don’t buy things what your friends or family or neighbors are buying. If you try to keep up with the Joneses, they probably have at least $10,000 in credit card debt. So focus more on what brings you value and what you really need. And speaking of needs, that’s what we’re here to talk about today.

One of the most critical needs for all of us, whether we like it or not, we’re animals, we have to eat, we have to feed ourselves. So the grocery store, I know it’s particularly challenging right now. We saw prices go sky high during COVID when there were all those issues with supply chains and things, and they haven’t really come back down. So for a lot of us, we’ve had to adjust to a new reality at the grocery store. Restaurants that used to be kind of reasonable I just don’t even go anymore. I’m not going to buy a $20 sandwich for lunch. That’s a total waste of money to me. So I learned how to make better sandwiches at home because I can do way better at the grocery store. But even then, if you’re listening right as this comes out, we’re dealing with this bird flu issue. I saw a thing of eggs at the grocery store the other day for $15.

Justin:

Oh my gosh.

Eric Rosenberg:

That’s a lot. A dollar an egg means we might be having fewer eggs. There’s a lot we have to decide when we’re getting ready for the grocery store and when we’re doing our  shopping.

So Justin, I want to tap into your expertise and experience. I know with your budgeting story you probably made some big adjustments on how you guys eat. So what are your big tips for someone, especially someone paycheck to paycheck, who they’re feeling that crunch to get ready to go to the grocery store, make sure they’re going to find the best deals for what their family or if they’re single have whatever what they need at home?

Justin:

Yeah. Well, when we started our debt-free journey we realized we were dining out to the tune of $700 a month for just my wife and I. So food really was one of the first places we started to trim back on things. And I want to open by saying that I’m pretty neurotypical. So a lot of things for me in the food realm are maybe a little bit easier than other folks so I do want to give that caveat.

But when we are talking to our clients about particular things around groceries, it’s actually a lot like a mini budget in that having something like a meal plan and knowing exactly what you’re going to do maybe each day, whether that’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner, or just dinners, really does save you from a lot of discomfort or a lot of quick thoughts or quick thinking moments in the evening when you’re just trying to get something on the plate. So the first thing we tell almost everybody is you’ve got to have some kind of a meal plan or some kind of a guide to work with. That’s step one.

And then one of the second things that we like to share with people is that there’s a really big difference between cooking at home and eating at home. And the way that we like to differentiate that is a lot of people see maybe social media reels or videos that show somebody cooking some super elaborate meal, and that’s great. But the realistic life for a lot of people right now is that we don’t have excess money to be buying ingredients for one singular meal. We need to have things that are going to last us for multiple meals, whether that’s pastas or beans, a big bag of rice, any type of condiments that just hang out in the cabinet. We need those things to stretch multiple meals. And so cooking at home looks different than eating at home.

You can doctor up a pasta plenty of different ways by just adding one additional ingredient. Maybe tonight it’s olive oil and tomatoes and the next night it’s something like some cream-based sauce that’s just milk and flour and some cheese. Really thinking, “”Do I have to make this a full meal? Or can I just simply get something on the plate?” Is one of the biggest things that we like to stress.

And then I would say probably one of the last tips that I really like to remind people is if you have local food banks in your area you should be using those services because those are services that are intended to help folks. And if you’re feeling stressed with your grocery budget I want to empower people and take it off their heart to have some idea of what the food bank is and go get support. Go get those additional groceries, go get some of those pantry staples that can really help stretch your dollar until the next paycheck.

Eric Rosenberg:

Yeah, totally. There’s a couple of different food pantries around here. One of them, because I live in a place we have a lot of fruit trees, we do gleaning programs where we donate … I have an orange tree and it gives us way more than our family could ever eat. So we have a bunch of retired volunteers from the food pantry come and pick our orange tree, and people who go down there get fresh oranges. That’s something they don’t have to buy at the store. I also live right near a community college, they have their own little college food bank. And we’ve said the same thing: it’s not something to feel bad about if you’re having an extra tough moment where you’re really struggling to pay the bills, that’s a fair resource to use. That is why it’s there. So you shouldn’t feel bad.

I also really like how you talked about being creative using one ingredient different ways, like use pasta as an example. I know in our house we do a lot of different stir-fry type things. We’ll do Asian style, chop up a bunch of veggies, usually onions and bell peppers. There’s so many different things you can do with that. You could put them on top of rice, you could put them on top of noodles, you can make it into a Mexican spicy sauce, you can make it into an Asian sauce by putting little soy sauce on. So things that we mostly already have in the pantry or the fridge anyway, condiments we just keep around, you can turn one ingredient into so many different flavors and meals.

And like you said, it can be fun to try to be elaborate, but you can even be elaborate more easily by just being creative. When I started learning how to make my own sauces I figured out, “Wow, I don’t have to buy a $7 thing of whatever sauce at the store to have that flavor. I can take things at home that if I put them together it costs 30 cents and make a sauce for our family for the meal.” And it’s a way to stretch our dollars a little further but still get that gourmet feel and flair. And when you make it yourself I feel like Gordon Ramsay. It’s like, “Yeah, I just made this really cool thing.”

Justin:

Yeah, there’s a really great website, I think it’s called Super Cook, and you can just enter in the ingredients that you have on hand at home and it will generate tons of recipes for you with the ingredients that you’ve listed. And so, I love to use that when we’re getting towards the end of the month, maybe our grocery budget is looking a little thin and I’ve got things I want to go through before they expire or I know that, “Hey, I can make some more meals out of this, I just need some help finding that creativity or finding something to do.” I’ll just go on there and enter the things that we have. And that’s been a really good tool for our family as well.

Eric Rosenberg:

Yeah. So you mentioned expiring. I know that’s one of the biggest problems a lot of households have. And you’d also mentioned meal planning. So how do you guys suggest someone look at a meal plan and shop in a way that they won’t have things end up getting pushed to the back of the fridge and going bad? We want to really make sure everything we buy we use and get the most value from. So how do you approach that?

Justin:

We’ve tried so many different ways to meal plan all the way from a full-month meal plan down to a week. And truly the best for our family is a week because we’re able to see exactly what we have and what we need to go through. And I recognize that does take a little bit of additional time on the weekends or maybe after work during the weekdays to go and shop and get those items. But for us, we look at a full-week meal plan and I even put on the meal plan leftovers. I’ll say, “This is a night of leftovers,” and I’ll just make double whatever it was from the night before because we’ve got things like casseroles or maybe a bigger stir-fry where if you use the entire package of pasta and you don’t have a big family, or if you’re a single person, you certainly couldn’t eat it all in one night. But if you put it on your meal plan as leftovers takes a little bit of that stress about dinner away and it takes the stress that you’re not going to eat it or you’re going to waste it.

And so that’s what we do in our family. We’ll just mark down exactly when we’re going to do leftovers and I’ll make sure the night before is something that’s maybe a little bit bigger. Again, some type of casserole, something so we have plenty for the next night.

Eric Rosenberg:

I definitely do that when I use a casserole dish. I’ll make cheese enchiladas. My wife and I love that. Kids don’t really like the spiciness. So I know if I make a big thing of enchiladas I’ve got lunch tomorrow covered or dinner tomorrow covered. A few months ago I made a big lasagna and that lasted three days of meals probably. So yeah, you have to really like it because you’re going to eat it multiple times.

And I also sometimes planning a certain meal, we’re not that creative. Every Tuesday we generally do Taco Tuesday, but we always seem to have rice, beans, tortillas, a couple of veggies we can chop up. We mix it up a little. Sometimes we’ll put corn on, sometimes we’ll get … My wife’s vegetarian so we’ll do the veggie ground beef. Sometimes we’ll do one kind of bean or another kind of bean, but we know that’s a predictable thing so we generally already have all that on hand. We don’t have to go make an extra trip to the store because tacos are easy. So having that predictability has definitely been helpful for us too.

Justin:

Yeah, those theme nights, for sure. For our family a pasta night is really just so easy to be like, “Okay, Mondays are always the start of our week.” That’s how it feels for us maybe rather than Sundays, I don’t know. So Mondays we’re maybe a little bit more burned out at the end of the day trying to come back from the weekend, so pasta is so easy. It’s really easy to just boil some noodles, figure out what works. And if you’ve got kids in your family and you’re stressed about, “Well, what do I feed the kids?” Pasta is such a safe bet because you can doctor up their noodles however you need. You can do a tomato sauce for y’all, and maybe it’s just butter noodles for the kids or whatever you know that they’re going to eat and so everybody’s fed before bed.

Eric Rosenberg:

The pickier one in my house she wants butter and olive oil.

Justin:

Oh, all right.

Eric Rosenberg:

[inaudible 00:12:09] that. And sometimes little salt.

Justin:

Nice.

Eric Rosenberg:

Yeah. And a thing of noodles at the store, yeah, it’s not that exciting all as, it doesn’t feel as gourmet. But even with inflation and whatnot it’s a $1, $1.25 for a pound of noodles. The store brand and the fancy brands are basically the same thing. There’s no real difference there so we get the one that’s a dollar for a pound of noodles and that’s plenty to feed our family for a night plus leftovers.

And as you said, we split it out. So usually when I cook, when the noodles are ready, I’ll take half of them out for the kids and the other half I’ll make flavorful. And that’s where maybe I’ll do a tomato sauce and I’ll put in some red peppers and make it arrabbiace a little spicy. Or I’ll do garlic and olive oil. There’s lots of different ways we can do it to make it a little more fun and to our tastes. Chop up some veggies and make them in a pan and mix them together and you’ve got a pomodoro, right? So it could feel like you’re at the Italian restaurant at home.

Justin:

Yeah, exactly. And that scratches the itch of dining out or having something novel, right? Obviously, I think a lot of us love having somebody make a meal for us. I think for a lot of people that’s this pseudo love language. So pasta is a really safe way to do that and do it on a budget.

Eric Rosenberg:

So you get to the grocery store, I know they rearrange the grocery store every six months or so just so we get lost in there and pick up more random things walking by the shelf. We’re like, “Oh, that looks good.” So what do you do when you get to the store or shop online, however you shop, what’s your big tip there to make sure you stick with your plan and stay within that plan budget and don’t break the bank on some special whatever tastes good?

Justin:

I think I lean towards two tips, and the first one is maybe somewhat of a no-brainer for many if they’ve looked at any type of grocery tips or anything. But don’t grocery shop when you’re hungry, of course. Even if it’s just a little snack or even if you’re just like going to go get some water and take a walk around the block to get your mind off food before you step back into it. Don’t do it when you’re hungry.

But the second one is one that we really stress to a lot of our clients and we say ditch the protein powerhouses. But realistically, when you’re thinking of your meal plan, if you’re beyond two proteins in the week your budget’s going to get busted pretty quick. So for our family, we usually stick to chicken breasts and ground Turkey for most weeks. Otherwise we might switch it up and do something random. Maybe I’ll do a jambalaya and get some sausage, or maybe we’ll switch it up and do some kind of small steak. But realistically, when you start to get into some of those heavier proteins, that’s where the cost really gets you.

And so when you’re walking through the store dive quick through that section for sure, because you’re going to see things and start to think, “Oh, well, what if we did this steak that night? Or what if we did this?” And realistically it’s just going to break your budget a lot faster than the $2 bag of tortilla chips that you’re wanting to munch on or something like that. Of course, you don’t want to overload with snacks either because those are expensive as well, and they start to add up.

Eric Rosenberg:

And they’re not that good for our guts.

Justin:

Yeah, right, exactly. Probably a little bit better to hang out in the veggies and fruits a little bit longer than the snack aisle, for sure.

Eric Rosenberg:

Yeah, sometimes I wander around in the vegetable section because I’m like, “Well, if I make an impulse purchase, at least it’s something that we’re really going to eat and it’s going to be good for us.”

Justin:

Yeah, exactly.

Eric Rosenberg:

I try not to hang out on the cookie aisle. That’s just a bad rabbit hole to go down.

Justin:

Totally, totally. Just bypass that aisle altogether.

Eric Rosenberg:

Yeah. So we’re nearing our time. Do you have any other big tips or pieces of advice you’d want to give someone to feel empowered like they can get out there and get healthy food for their family, enjoy what they eat, have fun with their groceries, but not feel like they’re going to go broke doing it?

Justin:

Yeah. One of the things I would say is you should certainly shop around to different stores. A lot of stores now offer their own generic brand of things versus maybe some type of larger known brands and many of those items are tremendous and they’re at a significantly discounted rate compared to maybe what the novelty brand is. So highly recommend that. Whether that’s in the store specific or from store to store. As long as you’re not in a food desert, please look at supermarkets near you, try and find the best options.

And then the other one that I like to tell people is: it’s really great to identify your grocery spending and try to clean it up. But we also want to be realistic and we want to understand where we’re at in society as a whole. So I recommend everybody just go to Google and search for the USDA food plans. You can look up exactly how much the USDA is suggesting for your family size on a thrifty plan, a moderate plan, and what they call a liberal plan, which is maybe a little bit more expensive grocery shopping. And you can do the math and calculate maybe what groceries might cost for your family.

I have found that that gives our clients that we work with just a little bit more comfort knowing, “Hey, I’m cutting a lot right now from my grocery budget. I’m doing the best I can and cutting any more might not be realistic. So I’m just going to continue to be intentional with where I’m at and try and tidy my budget up in other places.” But that’s something I like to show people just because I think we all have an idea of, “Oh, I’m overspending on food.” And we certainly might be but there might be other times where you’re doing the best you can and we need to remember that and celebrate it.

Eric Rosenberg:

Yeah, that’s important. The mindset. There are some things that we can just cut out. There are those wants. We might want designer clothes or sunglasses, we might want a fancier car, but we need to eat. And there will be that point you just can’t reasonably cut anymore and we don’t have 40 hours a week to do extreme couponing like on that old show.

Justin:

Exactly.

Eric Rosenberg:

Yeah. My wife shops around, she does most of our grocery shopping, I’m lucky. But she does that work for us. But she’ll shop around and she uses the apps and she’ll compare Target and Vons and Ralph’s and Trader Joe’s and Walmart and figure out what combination makes the most sense. So we don’t just go to one store, like you said, we’ll shop around. And she’ll often do pre-orders to do pickups, so she’ll just drive up and they’ll drop the stuff at the car. And that also helps avoid the temptation of going off the list because when she goes for pick up it’s only exactly what she thought, “Oh, we need these things.” So she plans ahead and it also saves a little time. Maybe she’ll go by Walmart and do a pickup on the way to Ralph’s where she’ll walk inside. So mixing and matching has definitely saved us hundreds of dollars if not more over the years.

Justin:

Oh, yeah, same here. For sure.

Eric Rosenberg:

All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your words of wisdom and your thoughts on how we can make the most of our grocery budgets. I know you mentioned you have a podcast, you guys have an online presence. If someone wants to learn more where should they go?

Justin:

Yeah, you can just find us at our website priceofavocadotoast.com. We’re also active on all social medias @priceofavocadotoast. We like to help millennials learn how to budget and pay off their debt. So if that’s what somebody’s interested in they can find us there. And our podcast drops every Wednesday morning.

Eric Rosenberg:

Awesome. Definitely check that out and thank you so much. We’ll talk to you next time.

Justin:

Yeah. Thanks, Eric. Appreciate it.

Eric Rosenberg:

Well, that was a really fun conversation. I learned a lot from Justin. I hope you learned a lot too. Make sure to check out his site where he and his wife share all sorts of interesting stuff there on social media and beyond. But for now, I want to remind you, if you are not already using the Payactiv app, or if you are, we have built-in budgeting tools that can help you track and understand where every dollar you spend goes including at the grocery store. And we were talking, this is one of the most important parts of our budget. There’s no way we can avoid eating. So rather than try to cut it down as low as possible, we should try to understand where our grocery dollars go and how we can make the most of every dollar we spend there. So if you’re not already using the Payactiv app, it’s in the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. It’s available for whatever mobile phone you use so definitely check it out.

You can also have your direct deposit go right to your Payactiv Visa® Card*. I have a Payactiv card right here. They automatically link into those budgeting tools so you know where you’re spending without having to do a whole lot of extra work. You can just pull up the Payactiv app and see by category where you have been spending.

So with that, I want to wish you good luck in your next grocery budgeting journey, your next grocery budgeting experience. I hope you can stretch every dollar as far as possible. Definitely stop by our Payactiv account, that’s P-A-Y-A-C-T-I-V, on Instagram. And drop us a note letting us know if you’ve had any big wins in your grocery budget. And until next time, keep living the life you’ve earned.

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