Cost of Living: Bryce unpacks his food budget

Bryce: [00:00:28] Welcome to a Get Started Investing podcast where we attempt to answer the most common money and investing questions from the community. After joining us for the very first time, a huge welcome. We do strongly recommend that you scroll up and start at episode one. Now, while we're licensed, we are not aware of your own personal circumstances. All information on this show is for education and entertainment purposes. Any advice is general? But with that said, my name is Bryce. And as always, I'm joined by my equity buddy, Wren. How are you? 

Alec: [00:00:54] I'm very good, Bryce. Good to be back. Excited for this episode. We're into the third episode we're doing as part of this five episode series on the cost of living. We've taken some of the big buckets of spending that measure Australia's inflation index. We're unpacking them. We're asking what can we do to save money? You have told me that you are the best saver that Australia has ever produced. 

Bryce: [00:01:20] Not true. 

Alec: [00:01:22] The best saver since Mr. Dollar, who worked at Commonwealth Bank. No. And we're going to unpick your brains and unpick your budget and understand what we can do. 

Bryce: [00:01:33] Well, it's becoming obvious Ren, there are plenty over the last two episodes, plenty of areas in which I can improve haircuts cost. I'm looking forward to this one. Food. Maybe I'm just not eat. Anyway, we've got a question here from a member from the community. Let's take a listen. 

EM Community: [00:01:55] Hey, equity mates great work for the Cost of Living series. I myself am currently using ChatGPT to consolidate my separate ingredient lists for my weekly grocery shop, so that's proven really handy. So on a related note, I was just interested to see if you had other ideas of how to reduce the cost of my groceries further.

Alec: [00:02:14] So Bryce, food and non-alcoholic beverages. This is a big category. I would hazard a guess. It's people's second biggest category after housing and rents. You've got your spreadsheet in front of you. Is it your second biggest?

Bryce: [00:02:29] It is, yes, it is definitely my second biggest. 

Alec: [00:02:33] Closely followed by alcoholic beverages and tobacco. Which is your third biggest? 

Bryce: [00:02:37] No, that's actually so small it doesn't even appear on my spreadsheet. 

Alec: [00:02:40] You don't put booze as a light on.

Bryce: [00:02:44] Booze falls into just my weekly spending, I guess. Is this is all just, you know, like, what I call as like, just like my, you know, once everything is paid for and automated and blah blah, that's my, like, dollars a week to go. Whatever it is.

Alec: [00:02:59] Hunting, drinking, smoking, cockfighting, whatever. Well, all right. We're learning so much about you. Anyway, before we get into the episode, we've got one piece of housekeeping that we're particularly excited about, which is that we are in the presale of our second book. It's called Don't Stress, Just Invest. And it's our attempt to outline the absolute simplest way to invest and why that is enough. We know that investing is stressful and that it can be it can be really difficult to know how to get started. And when you've done enough that you can stop and get on with your life. And hopefully this book helps you think about that and answer some of those questions. It's available for pre-sale now. Wherever you buy your books. We'll include a few links in the show notes, please. If you enjoy this podcast, if you want to take the next steps on your investing journey, get around the book. And it's actually out on the 22nd of August. Yes, but Bryce, with that said, let's jump into food and non-alcoholic beverages. 

Bryce: [00:04:06] Love it. So today, this is one of the bigger categories. There is plenty in this category. We've got bread and cereals. Here. Yeah. I mean, if you think about yeah, if you think about your aisles in a supermarket, we're going to go from one through 11 bread and cereals. Meat and poultry, fish and seafood, milk, cheese and eggs, fruits and vegetables, non-alcoholic beverages. Surprisingly, they've also got sugar, jam, honey, chocolate and confectionery as one sweets, oils, fats and sauces, snacks and prepared meals.

Alec: [00:04:42] Nice, now, as most people have felt in their hip pocket the last 12 months, this has been a fast rising category. Food and non-alcoholic beverages as a whole has risen 8%. It has been the second fastest growing category. Do you want to guess what the number one was?

Bryce: [00:04:59] Second fastest growing housing. Housing, accommodation. 

Alec: [00:05:02] Housing was number one at 9.8% growth. Food and non-alcoholic beverages number two at 8%. Now, if we look at some of those subcategories that you just outlined, there have been some big rises. The biggest dairy and related products, 14.9% growth over the past 12 months. Second biggest bread and cereal products. Weight has been getting more expensive and driven the price up there, 11.8%. Food products and a C stands for not elsewhere classified. So just like catchall for anything else, 11.3%. Non-alcoholic beverages up 7.8%, meals out and takeaway food up 7.3%. Fruit and veg up 4.9%, mate, and seafood up 4.1%. So that's a long way of saying food has got a lot more expensive over the past 12 months. So price, I guess the question is, what do we and more specifically, what do you do about it? 

Bryce: [00:06:02] So I budget 275 bucks a fortnight for food. Yeah we so we do all of our shopping on a Sunday and we try and do cooking for Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, five nights plus lunches.

Alec: [00:06:16] What do you do all that cooking on a Sunday. You just try and cook those meals.

Bryce: [00:06:21] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Harriet will generally do probably two or three on a Sunday, mainly two that we then have during the week that when we're under pressure, there's not enough time to cook. But we find that is better. When we do fall out of that routine, like we go away for the weekend or what to hang over or whatever and we don't get the opportunity we do finds that, you know, you get in that, okay, we need to get some take out or you probably spend more at the shops than you would if you've kind of planned it out. And so we generally will spend more on sort of the take out options. Sometimes it is hard to look at like what it costs for a pad. See you from a Thai restaurant, it's 12 bucks. And then if you're going to go and make it, you.

Alec: [00:07:00] Go get the ingredients. 

Bryce: [00:07:01] And you spend like 60 bucks on ingredients. 

Alec: [00:07:03] A shout out to my former housemate, Flynn, who tried to do the right thing and would cook, especially like on a weekend if we were hung. And there was just like he would get all the nachos ingredients and spend like triple what it would cost to just buy it. Yeah. 

Bryce: [00:07:19] Yeah. But when you do the numbers, I think if you get lunches in, so if you get two meals for dinner, two meals, four lunches, that's when it really becomes quite economical to do something like that. So we try and cook Sunday through Thursday and then Friday. Saturday is probably just a bit of ad lib, but it is definitely the biggest contributor and we have definitely noticed our shopping bill go up. We try and do Aldi as much as we can where you can't then get the little bits and pieces you need to. We need to duck up to Coles. That's how we, that's how we treat it. Mhm. Yeah. And that to 75 is inclusive of Uber eats and those sorts of things. That's true. 75. We kind of pick and choose as best we can. Like if avocados are through the roof, we just don't get avocados or like if things that we want to buy, just ridiculously expensive herbs sometimes can be just ridiculous. So we, we do kind of be conscious while we're shopping, if that makes sense. Yeah, so that's how I do it. But Ren, really interested to hear how you do it. We're going to take a quick break. And on the other side, you're going to take us through how you treat food and non-alcoholic beverages. All right, we're back. We're talking about food and non-alcoholic beverages. I've just spoken about my budget. Ren, talk to us through yours. 

Alec: [00:08:36] I don't have a budget for as as I've said a few times on this podcast, my the way I manage my money is on payday. The money hits my account and then I have automatic transfers set up to a savings account, to my investment account, little bit into an emergency fund to just keep growing that slowly and then into a spending account. And then that money that goes into the spending account is my spending for the fortnight and food falls into that, but alongside everything else. And so the game for me is just to keep that spending in line in terms of what I've done to reduce food budget. The biggest thing that I didn't specifically do for a cost reason, but it has been great at controlling costs is intermittent fasting and intermittent fasting. For most people it's just a fancy way of saying skipping breakfast. Because I don't know what sicko out there is doing intermittent fasting where they start by eating breakfast and a long night and then don't eat for the rest of the day. Full credit. If you're if you're doing that, what would. 

Bryce: [00:09:41] You spend on breakfast otherwise? 

Alec: [00:09:43] Well, something. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of the time I was going into the office early and I would buy breakfast. Gotcha. And that was. That was a killer. And then because you would also then buy a coffee with breakfast rather than just having a coffee from the machine we have here. Yeah. So you add the cost there. You know, if I was having it at home, it might be what, like a few cents for a bit of weight picks and a bit of milk, But that could range like 20 bucks. 

Bryce: [00:10:10] I think that buying breakfast is the biggest way. 

Alec: [00:10:13] So I know, I know we've had this conversation a lot of time, but you spend all of your money at Italian restaurants, which is definitely something that you can replicate at home.

Bryce: [00:10:22] That's true. Not to the. 

Alec: [00:10:23] Not to the yeah. 

Bryce: [00:10:24] I can do it. I can replicate the bacon egg roll better than I can replicate. Regularly. 

Alec: [00:10:31] Well, yeah. You're not a great cook. No, that's fair. The majority of people that go out for breakfast or brunch, not so much. If you just having something on the way to work. That was more convenience. But people go out for brunch for the social. 

Bryce: [00:10:44] It's definitely No, no, nothing against that. I totally understand. 

Alec: [00:10:47] That. So for me, the first thing is intermittent fasting. And then I guess the second thing, which again isn't reinventing the wheel, I think a lot of the suggestions that we've gone through so far are not reinventing the wheel, but it's just buying and cooking in bulk. And recently we've really got into just like roasting a heap of vegetables with, you know, like some chicken or something and then like that, lasting a dinner and then a couple of lunches or something like that. So first of all, intermittent fasting, second of all, buying cooking in bulk. And then the third one is just limiting Uber eats to the weekends. 

Bryce: [00:11:18] Yeah. And I think to even go one step further, we try now and avoid ordering if we can genuinely walk there within like, oh, 20 minutes or so. The phase of those apps now. 

Alec: [00:11:29] I know it's kind of ridiculous. 

Bryce: [00:11:30] But I and not only the fees but just the general price difference. Yeah, you know, there's a mark-up just in the price alone. So. 

Alec: [00:11:37] But the thing for me is like if you can be bothered to walk to pick up takeaway, just walk to the shops. 

Bryce: [00:11:43] Yeah, definitely. One thing I also want to throw in is if you want to go out and enjoy a meal, there's a great app called Eight Club and what it does is a lot of these restaurants sign up. It's generally table times that aren't obviously the peak, but if you're on a Thursday or an early Friday or a Sunday lunch or whatever it might be, a lot of these restaurants are on there and they give pretty decent discounts on the bill. And so it's not like a, you know, save $10 or whatever. It's generally a percentage of your total bill. And you can save sometimes upwards of 50%. And it's not just your, you know, restaurants that you would never want to frequent. There are really good restaurants on there as well. So it's one to have in the back pocket if you're ever sort of out and about or thinking, you know, want to go out and struggling for ideas. Eight Club is a great one to really reduce the cost of your bill. 

Alec: [00:12:35] Yeah we should give a shout out to our mate who eats dinner at 5:00 every night. Yes good way to save money. A few people have suggested going to the markets. I think you have to be super careful about markets because sometimes that will be a lot more expensive. My parents live in Newtown and they would go to the Carriageworks market and it used to blow my mind how much more expensive some of those things are. Yeah, quality is undeniable. But just markets can be a double edged sword. There are a number of services that have started trying to, you know, mate directly from afar to you. Again, they're often not cheaper, but the quality is better, but one that you will find is cheaper is there are a few ugly vegetables. Ugly is a pejorative term not up to the. Large supermarkets, cosmetic standard vegetable retailers. Our producer, Sascha has suggested one that she has used before. It's called Good and Fugly, and I am sure there are others. If you jump on Google, if you have any suggestions for others that we should check out. Jump in the equity mates discussion group and share them with the community. I'll be honest, I haven't like I know that there would be money to be saved there, and especially with the fact that I said earlier, we're just buying veggies in bulk and roasting them like we are a prime target for this. So you know what? I'm going to make a commitment right now. I'm going to sign up to one of these services.

Bryce: [00:14:04] Nice. My parents do it and it's great. You also do just genuinely get the good seasonal stuff. Yeah, yeah. A couple of fun ones to close out deals to get you thinking that have come through from the equity mates team dine in burger or salad on Mondays if your AFL or NRL team wins at Grill'd. 

Alec: [00:14:21] Well it was. 

Bryce: [00:14:22] There you go.

Alec: [00:14:23] Wait, how can I just. Why don't I just make what it's called? 

Bryce: [00:14:27] Taste the wind. Maybe you can make it up. It looks like you have to sign up for a free relish membership and you probably have to tick which team you follow at the time of sign up. But that's a good one to keep in mind. If you are looking for a burger on a monday night, if your AFL or NRL team wins. 

Alec: [00:14:46] Well, hold on, hold on. No, no, no. I've just jumped on the grilled website. It's a buy one get one free offer. 

Bryce: [00:14:53] Nice. Okay. Okay. Not bad for you. 

Alec: [00:14:57] If you convince a mate to go to grill. 

Bryce: [00:14:59] Yeah, they go with that. Save some money. 

Alec: [00:15:01] Maybe you and I could get to grill together. 

Bryce: [00:15:03] Not bad. And unfortunately, neither of our teams. Yeah. 

Alec: [00:15:06] Should we. Should we strategically pick teams? We'll say we go for the Panthers.

Bryce: [00:15:15] There's another one for Western Australia and South Australian listeners. You get a free whopper in store if an Eagles or Crows player kicks a goal from outside 50 in an AFL home game at Hungry Jacks. 

Alec: [00:15:27] Okay, Hungry Jacks once the Eagles. 

Bryce: [00:15:30] They do, yeah. 

Alec: [00:15:31] Eagles are kicking too many goals. Full stop. 

Bryce: [00:15:33] They're not, they're not they they go and finally one from crust, your favourite Ren free pizza on your birthday. But you must. 

Alec: [00:15:41] Not know this. 

Bryce: [00:15:42] You must have purchased one pizza in the year prior and you must be part of their loyalty rewards program. But not bad. All you need to do is show your previous purchase and you get a free pizza on your birthday. They go with loving these coming in from the community and the team here at Equity Mates, but we'll leave it there next week. We've got insurance and then closing out with Health. We'd love to hear from you and join the conversation in our community group on Facebook. Just search equity mates, discussion group and please, if there's ways that you're saving money or on food or have any great deals, we'd love to hear from you. But Ren, we'll leave it there and pick it up next week. 

Alec: [00:16:17] Sounds good.