Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

Hi everyone, just wondering if I can get your thoughts on grocery store prices?

I have noticed on the UK forums, many Americans moving over find UK prices a lot higher then in the States and yet I have also seen Brits on here saying the same thing :)

We are a family of 6 (but our kids are not little anymore and so have the appetites of adults!).

We tend to do most of our UK shopping with Tesco but also a bit of Sainsburys/ASDA if needed.

Our monthly grocery bill is approx £840 or $1350 :ohmy:

How would this budget translate in the states? Particularly California?

We tend to cook most of our meals from scratch - particularly lunch and evening meals - does it tend to be cheaper to do it this way? Luckily for me - I enjoy cooking!

Can you do online grocery store shopping? This would be a good way to compare prices?

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

There are many items that are cheaper/more expensive in the US/UK, respectively. Cooking your meals from scratch is always cheaper than buying processed crap or eating out ;)

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

Check out Safeway.com or peapod.com. That will give you an idea of grocery prices in your local area. These are two large groceries in the USA and you can compare item by item to see.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

You can, but keep in mind that 2 years from now when you actually have a visa and are ready to move over, prices might be very different from what you find out today, in both countries.

Rene

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

Very true - safe to say that everything will be more expensive in both countries. Just trying to get a comparison on whether our current UK budget is likely to be enough in the US now.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

I would assume the same, some things will be cheaper, others more expensive.

Same with cars/petrol etc.

Big difference is Medical costs.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

Regional variation has a much bigger impact I find over here.

You can get 13 cobbs of corn for a buck up in Maine and down my way near Boston, you'd be lucky to get 5 for that price.

Some things are much more expensive, some less...but it's hard to make fair comparisons because quality also varies so much.

Bread, cheese, milk, flour...the basic staples, you can get really cheap here, but they tend to be shit, you can get great bread but cost a fortune, it's finding decent bread that's not got crap in it for reasonable money that's tricky.

Thing is though, folks moving to the UK, and back, are they moving to similar CoL regions? NY city to London kind of thing? Moving from podunk Alabama to London would be as big a difference as moving from a town in Wales to San Fran.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

You're best just looking at the income required for a family of 6 with two of college age to live comfortably in California. I'm assuming you're living in a metropolis rather than the sticks.

I'll open the bidding @ 200k.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

If there is a Costco near where you'll be living that could save you alot of money. You seriously need to figure out the cost of health insurance as well. The area you live in will make a huge difference on what things cost.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

+1

We live up in Western Washington and when a friend came to visit a few years back she thought our grocery prices were higher than what she paid in California.

Everything has shot up extremely high (in my opinion) and there are ways to be frugal.

Anyway, best of luck in your adventure!

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

Fatbrit - are you calculating Health Care in that?

Thanks

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

It's 3 to 4 times the median family income in LA.

Health care is just a random number generator functioning only with additions and multiplication. Provided the idiots of America don't elect the GOP in 2012, the health care provisions of the current administration should start to reduce the theft a little. Unlike the UK, however, health care will always be a concern for you if you move to the US.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

Thank you - the type of job that my husband would go for would almost certainly involve a very good health care package but I know that we would still incur costs of our own.

Something else that we need to investigate :)

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

Definately do lots of your grocery shopping at Costco for such a big family. It doesn't work out cost effective for us, as we are 2 and a 9 year old, but you can buy boxes of apples, big punnets of berries...

I cook most things from scratch and find grocery shopping very expensive in CA compared to the UK.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

I don't live in CA. I find grocery shopping here A LOT more expensive, in the UK my weekly food bill was £50-£70 for a family of 5, here it's around $200 :blink: I am trying to get it cheaper by bulk buying certain items when they are on offer....

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

IMO, it's an insidious chain employers use to exploit you.

If you have a unique and marketable skill, you are always much better off working for yourself. However, in the US, you are then stuck with the fact that non-group health care insurance is essentially worthless.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

I was have a re think about Obamacare. all it has done so far is send costs through the roof.

We have a small business and if I am reading it right we should be able to qualify for the maximum subsidy.

It still does beg the question of who is going to pay for it.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

I'm now insured for $240 a month on Obamacare. I'm uninsurable without it unless I go to work for an employer. Brought my costs down considerably.

We pay an absolute minimum of two times what comparable nations do for a mediocre service. There's plenty of space for cutting costs to pay for it.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

I can only go on how I've found prices in Orange County, NY, and I find it much more expensive than the UK (Manchester to be specific!).

Stores we use most often for food - Shoprite in the US, Asda in the UK.

Obviously some stuff will be cheaper, but things like meat, fish, bread, cheese, veg, just for example, far more expensive.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

I'm in CA right now we have a family of 4 (we've been 6 for while in the past but one kid left home and my Mom only stays a few months) Now my bill is about $150 a week it wasn't much more than that for 6 of us. Prices have shot up recently.
Safeway.com only shows the sale prices and specials for that week when I look at it.
For example I'm paying anywhere from $3.20 to $3.99 a gallon for milk
Orange juice is $3 to $4 for 1.75 L
Bread if I'm lucky is buy on get one free the one we get is near $4 a loaf, or on sale for $3 each, other than that it's fluffy white stuff that is gross and sweet.
We don't eat a lot of meat as that is expensive mince beef mid range so not all fat and not diet lean is about $3.50 a lb
Cookies are close to $4 a bag

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

It varies a lot in different cities. Manhattan is absolutely ridiculous (I once paid $6 for a loaf of bread - not that nice either, and $7 for three tomatoes!), when we were in Chicago - we lived close to a Walmart and prices were more reasonable there. Same with drugstores.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

We are one on this issue, however this has yet to be addressed.

Obamacare is not available as far as I know in CO.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

It was a miracle anything got through with the health care bill. Strangely enough, if the health insurance companies had had to compete with a government controlled universal health care plan, then there would have been something to kick the monopoly out. But despite the oft-heard claims of government inefficiency, they obviously thought they couldn't compete and bought such an outcome instead.

If Obamacare is not available in your state, there should be a pre-existing condition insurance plan run by your state instead.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

Horrendously expensive, I did look at it a long time ago and I seem to remember $1000 a month.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

Pointless, then. Protect your assets. Go to the county hospital if you get ill and get treated. If actual bill exceeds $X, file for bankruptcy. Stupid way to run anything, but it's not like you have a choice.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

It's not just the cost of groceries you need to take into account - you really need to compare the *quality* too.

Most of the cheap food items are high in high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, salt/sodium and pumped full of preservatives or MSG (monosodiumglutamate) which is a 'flavour enhancer' - it can cause the 'jitters', headaches and hair loss if a lot of it is consumed.

You will often see items such as breakfast cereals labelled 'natural and artificially flavored' (sic). Why would I want anything artificially flavoured? It's often horrifying to see the list of ingredients on the cartons and cans....many of which are unpronounceable. I avoid those items.

As already mentioned, sliced bread is usually pretty disgusting here, the only palatable white bread is the Italian bread, the rest is sweet - even the wholemeal bread. The supermarkets don't clear the bread off the shelves daily as they do in the UK....the 'sell by dates' could be into the middle of next week as they have so many preservatives in them. However, I've found that the freshly made bakery loaves tend to be very expensive; I bought a 'Tuscan' rustic loaf today and it was almost $5. (I love the Kingsmill and Warburton loaves in the UK!)

Many food items have been genetically modified or irradiated - I understand this is still banned in the EU. Many 'fresh' food items have been picked weeks before they are ripe and put in cold storage....leaving them tasteless. For example, strawberries are enormous compared to English strawberries, utterly devoid of taste and can last as long as a week before starting to go mouldy... Peaches and nectarines are rock hard - even the 'tree ripened' ones and again are usually tasteless. However I'm in New Jersey, and fresh produce generally travels long distances, especially during the Winter - maybe it tastes better in CA.

What many people do in the US is to do 'coupon shopping'; the Sunday newspapers tend to have pages of supermarket coupons. I almost never use them (I was stuck behind someone at a till a couple of days ago, when she went to pay she bought out a stack of coupons and then her iPod where she'd downloaded them so the cashier could scan the barcode....it took ages....grrrrr!). Many supermarkets also have loyalty cards where you can get discounts too (nothing like the 'nectar' cards in the UK though).

A very popular grocers is Trader Joe's (owned by Aldi! - but far nicer). They have their own-label products, not all of it is organic but has far fewer preservatives than many of the big conglomerates. I go there a lot but can't buy all of my shopping there; there is a limited selection of cleaning and toiletry products for example and they don't have a fresh fish or meat counter, it's all pre-packaged.

http://www.traderjoes.com/ (my favourite product there is their Lemon & Triple Ginger Snap ice-cream....OMG it's so delicious!)

By the way there are a few Aldi and Lidl stores in the US ie. hardly any.

The most expensive nationwide food chain is Wholefoods where their produce is almost all preservative free and organic (they have some in London and one in Glasgow - in the yuppy/trendy affluent areas) and commonly known in the US as 'whole paycheck'.

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/

TBH when I'm in the UK I'm almost in raptures going round Tesco's, Waitrose, Sainsbury's etc. I'm so disappointed with the horrible yoghurts in the US - a lot of them especially the Danone ones have the aspartame sweetener...I'm craving the Tesco's Finest "Champagne Rhubarb" yoghurt and the "Devonshire Fudge" ones right now! Forget about nice refridgerated desserts like trifles and gooseberry fools - they don't exist here :(

Don't even get me started on horrible American chocolate! I never, ever buy choc bars here unless they're imported from the UK or Switzerland and if I see the candy if I'm in a convenience store there is absolutely nothing which tempts me (eg. a Picnic bar or some Munchies.) Just as well I suppose :D

Educate yourself on how food is produced in the US: I strongly recommend that you watch a copy of Food Inc. It's a real eye-opener :eek:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Food-Inc-DVD...7356704&sr=1-1

and this too:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Super-Size-D...7356774&sr=1-1


:ohmy:

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

Forgot to add; it may be just the State I'm in (New Jersey) but the supermarkets only really sell food and only the larger ones may have a few appliances such as toasters, coffee makers.

Only the very largest shops eg. Walmart and some Targets have non-food related items but in general their food aisles are more of a smaller add-on to the main part of the entire shop and the food is mainly pre-packaged and certainly no butchers, bakery, fishmongers section etc.

Walmart owns Asda in the UK and apart from a few 'George' items it is nothing like the UK counterpart. I very much dislike Walmart (they have questionable employee practices and destroy local shops in many communities) and only go there if I can't find an item (eg. buttons) anywhere else and I can't stand the place - it truly is full of obese shoppers and they check your bags and till receipt as you exit the store to ensure you haven't been shoplifting. Here's something to make you laugh and horrify you at the same time:

http://www.peopleofwalmart.com :eek:

In my local area none of the supermarkets *ever* reduce the price of food which is close to its sell-by date....they keep it at the same price until it expires!

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

Get a breadmaker - I got one in the UK and never bought supermarket bread again while I was living there (hate the stuff). Just got a replacement one here in the U.S this Christmas.

Now, if I could just find a way to make decent sausages...

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

:lol: OMG Engishmum that was all very well said, I was trying to be gentle and didn't want to scare the poor woman.
So Ditto to everything you said, and no the fruit isn't much better in CA, the peaches are still rock hard, It makes me wonder if it's the type they are growing. I really yearn for one of those huge juicy drippy peaches we got in Spain when we'd go on holiday, every year I get suckered into buying peaches they smell so good and can be used as a bocce ball.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

They can be found, but usually have to go to local farmers markets, which tend to be very good, if pricey.

Around here, there's quite a few and they're great....as for the grocery shop, Trader Joes tend to sell stuff from local suppliers in season, so the peaches and apples tend to be quite decent in summer but they're grot rest of year as they're brought in from California.

Hannafords is another grocery store that tends to sell local produce and they promote the stuff made in the state the store is in quite well.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

My husband and I have recently moved to California and find grocery shopping much more expensive. Like others have said if you are prepared to eat a lot of proccessed rubbish then yes you can eat cheaply however anythig of quality is extremely expensive.

We are 'foodies' and make most things from scratch so our grocery bill as a couple has shot up and we find we really have to budget whereas in the UK we could go into Tesco and buy whatever the mood grabbed us. I have totally given up on finding good bread so now bake our own bread by hand a couple of times a week. We buy lots of frozen veg because it is cheaper (after reading the label of course to check freezing methods), and our main meat is chicken. We ate beef regularly in the UK but avoid it here because of all the antibiotics/hormones, every so often we buy some expensive organic beef as a treat. I find that when going to the supermarket if you want to eat quality food there is less choice and you really need to be clued up on what is actually allowed in the different foods here.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

I guess I'll be the one dissenting voice. I have to say I haven't noticed grocery shopping being proportionally more expensive than when I lived in the UK (much the opposite in fact - seem to be able to get a lot more on a tighter budget). I think it probably depends to a great degree on where you shop. Yes If I shopped for the best quality organic produce down at the Idylwilde farm stores in Acton then I would be out of pocket pretty quickly - however the reality is I buy most of my stuff down at the Downtown 'Ghetto Basket' which is pretty cheap tbh. Quality isn't going to set the world on fire but then I don't remember Tescos exactly being a nirvana of amazing produce.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

have to agreed with all Englishmum and Mommy say. Food over here is expensive and not good quality unless you want to get chemical rubbish all the time. It no wonder so many people have diet related illness over here, especially the poor as they are forced to eat this stuff if they are on food stamps.

In our area of TX, we don't even have a good choice of supermarkets as a local chain is dominant - HEB (H E Butts), other choices locally are Walmart and Target with one Randalls store about 5 miles away.

Now it is just the 2 of us, its even harder to shop as everything is in bulk over here- even cakes come in a packet of 3.

Hate grocery shopping over here.:thumbdown:

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

Hello, we have recently moved over here from UK and live Upstate NY.

Grocery prices I feel are comparible with UK, Hanniford being the best locally, as someone has already said. Something to make you all think, (and laugh) is we moved back to UK in 2002 (before we moved back again) and mistakingly the packers packed a loaf of American Bread. Our stuff went into storage back in the UK for 5 months. When everything was eventually unpacked, we found the bread..... Guess what.... it was fine!!! Talk about preservatives, lol, so gross. And no we didnt eat it, but tell everyone the tale of the preservatives in US bread. So the moral of the story is to make your own.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

Thank you to everyone for your detailed responses, especially to EnglishMummy for your very indepth reply. I have a feeling that it was cathartic for you :)

Don't be under any illusions - food prices here have rocketed in the last few years. I would estimate that we pay approx 20% more for the same basket of food than we did 12 months ago. When you add this to soaring fuel and utility costs with long term pay freezes - well it's all a bit depressing. In real terms we are worse off now then we were 8 years ago.

Have also noticed that packaging seems to be smaller (and I am not just referring to the infamous Wagon Wheel observation)

We did stay in Naperville IL for several months (this was about 12 years ago) and I must say I didn't pay too much attention to food prices although if I recall, both myself and my husband were given a daily living allowance of $25 each on top of salary and car hire - wouldn't get that now!

I do remember that I hated the bacon (too streaky), the cheese (bland and orange), the bread (for all the reason stated above), the cereals (always accompanied by pieces of marshmallow/choc chip/toffee pieces - why?) and the chocolate (simply because it wasn't!).

I also seem to recall that the spiciest thing you could find was tabasco sauce - wonder if that has changed since then?

VJW - your story about the bread is very funny and thanks to those of you that have suggested bread machines - I think that this will be the way forward for us.

jjmb - there is nothing wrong with sharing 3 cakes between 2 ;)

humphreyc - thank you for your post and I love your blog - you have a talent for writing there!

gillymonkey - we are 'foodies' too - I think we have a learning curve ahead of us :)

mummyinthefoothills - thank you for those prices. Minced beef is about that here too although took me a while to do the conversions!

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

I just bought a breadmaker recently, too, and I love it!!! Unfortunately it's just me at home so even a small loaf is too large for just me, so I have to make it whenever I have more people around to eat it. :(

Rene

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

Make a loaf, then freeze half of it? That's what I did in the days before husband/children. Now a loaf lasts a day if I'm lucky!! :lol:

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

Either I take more notice of my food lately or I think it's gone both ways - in the UK some food is full of crap; other stuff is about as simple as it can be. Take a typical packet spice mix for Thai curry - full of ingredients I can hardly pronounce, costs £2, makes one portion, masses of salt and sugar, and is crap. Go to an Asian store (or even some of the big supermarkets these days), buy an imported tub of Thai curry paste, not a single ingredient you couldn't grow in a greenhouse, no preservatives, yet lasts 6 months or more, makes dozens of portions, and costs... £2.

I looked at some of those prices. I think the milk worked out about the same as it is here. I also looked at Safeway prices, remembering to add about 9% sales tax, and found quite a bit of stuff wasn't that much different from here - differences you could find simply by shopping at Asda instead of Tesco, for example. Bread, yes definitely more expensive in the US and that was noticeable on our last trip as well. But raw meats didn't seem much different and quite frankly some of the beef we have here is atrocious unless you're prepared to spend a lot of money - or have good gnashers.

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

This grocery ad may interest some of you.

http://www.harmonsgrocery.com/ads/

Re: Cost of Grocery Store Shopping
 

I think it's the every day staples that are either much more expensive or much worse in quality here though, with the own brand stuff especially.

Bread, cheese, soups, meats and veg....and especially the convenience foods.

The quality stuff is more like for like, but suffers far more from regional variation here I found.

A grocery shop in the UK, well in London, Oxford and York, didn't find the cost or the quality to vary all that much, certainly compared to the cost of living difference in housing and salaries, but here, it's massively different.