How Instacart Delivery Helps Me Stick to My Grocery Budget
Do you have trouble sticking to your food budget? How about getting to the end of the month and realizing you have more month than food budget left? Does anyone else have issues stocking up on things because they are a “good deal”, which then causes you to blow your food budget? Yeah. . . me too. And what’s a worse confession. . . I haven’t been able to stick to our food budget for years. Yep, the food budget is mainly my department in our family as I do the majority of the shopping and the meal planning, and it’s been a thorn in my side and our budget for as long as I can remember.
Several years ago, I read an article about tips and tricks to save money while grocery shopping. The main premise was all about watching prices and buying large quantities of an item when the price was low. In theory, it’s an awesome idea, and I think makes sense if you have the food budget to allow for it. But what I found was that since I’m actively trying to keep our food budget low, buying a lot of things even if it’s a good deal blows my monthly budget every time.
I recognize stocking up on good deals is something I do (knowing is half the battle), but I fall into this trap and blow my budget all of the time. Oh! Look what’s on sale, I should stock up! Oh! Look at this new thing — let’s try it! Come to the end of the month, I have more month and nothing left in my budget except for a bunch of stuff that I stocked up on that I can’t actually create a meal with. Facepalm.
Also, I struggle with keeping our food budget down. It’s so hard, and I find it so hard to say no to good food. I mean, I love food. My entire family loves food. We love to cook, we love to bake, and we love having yummy things to eat. Who doesn’t? Also, I care about the sourcing of our food, I care how our food is grown and that it’s GMO-free, and I’ve used this excuse to justify our ever growing food budget. I have been wrestling with this for years, even trying to contain it by doing a lot of the things that are generally recommended: Buy in bulk, join Costco and Thrive, use subscribe and save with Amazon, shop the sales, meal plan using what’s on sale each week, coupon clip, shop at multiple stores to get the best price. . . you name it, I feel like I’ve tried it. And while I know that all of those things have contributed to keeping our budget manageable, I never really felt like I was in control of our food budget. And quite frankly, a lot of those things take so much darn time and effort that it’s unsustainable for me. I don’t have the desire or time to make huge tracker sheets that compare prices, drive to multiple stores so I can get the best price, or search online and print a quadrillion coupons to the make savings worth it. I did that for a while and I just got burned out.
About a year ago, Zach started mentioning some of the stores that we frequently shop at are now offering Instacart. Instacart is an app that you can use to go online, choose your items from a store (such as Whole Foods or Publix) and have it delivered to your house. Someone does all the shopping for you and delivers it to your doorstep.
For months, I ignored Zach’s request that we try it out. He tried several ways to convince me, even talking about how the budgeting software we use, YNAB, recommends using Instacart to help save with groceries. In my mind, a service such as that wouldn’t save us money at all. We’re trying to stick to a grocery budget for goodness sake! Surely, paying for delivery and tip every week seemed outrageous to me for something that I could do myself.
This past fall, I decided that I needed to put some concrete numbers to the question of Instacart. I challenged myself to use Instacart for one month. One full month of groceries, and then I would compare it to our previous month and see if/how it changed our budget. I can’t have an accurate opinion about something when I don’t have all of the facts. Plus, I would prove Zach wrong once and for all and he’d stop bugging me to try it.
So let me cut to the chase. Using Instacart, even with tips and delivery fees, decreased our grocery spending by 5% for the entire month. WHAT?? I was honestly shocked. I was proved wrong not only by the numbers but also I found that Instacart solved a few problems that I didn’t even realize I had with grocery shopping.
Number one: stress. Yes, grocery shopping stress. Anyone who has ever tried to shop with two young children knows what I’m talking about. I could have an easy breezy time in and out of the store, but that’s a rare occurrence. Usually, it’s some form of, “I want something to eat, I’m hungry, I’m tired, Mom, can we buy this?, When are we done?, I don’t want to walk, I don’t want to be in the cart, My brother/sister is touching me. . . ” You get the idea. That type of mental stress. On top of that, I am trying to make decisions in the store about which product to choose, and especially since we’re on a budget, I need to figure out which item is the better deal. Grocery shopping = a whole bunch of tiny decisions to make while simultaneously being harassed by two children. Talk about mental fatigue. As we discussed on Episode #7 if you can find ways to cut down on your decision fatigue, do it.
Instacart circumvents this whole she-bang. I didn’t realize how much shopping with kids took out of me until I wasn’t doing it anymore. It was so lovely to just have my groceries show up at my door. It’s downright luxurious, to be honest.
Number two: fewer impulse purchases. Clearly, I have a problem with impulse buying. I didn’t realize it, but clearly, I do. And probably I also easily give in and buy food items that my kids ask to get. I have looked at the numbers and tried to analyze how the heck Instacart decreased our budget, and what I’ve come up with is that Instacart makes me super intentional about what I buy. As I add items to the cart, I can see the total at the same time, which makes me aware of how we’re doing relative to our budget for the week. There are no aisle displays to tempt me into trying things, and throwing it in the cart because it’s just $4. Yep, I do that a lot.
Number three: time-saver. I don’t think this one requires a lot of explanation. Something Zach often asks me when I’m weighing a decision is what is your time worth? Time is a precious commodity. Gaining that time and not having to go to the grocery store each week is amazing. In our family, we shopped together on weekend mornings, and it literally took up one entire weekend morning. We’d hit Costco and the grocery store and boom, a whole morning has gone to food shopping. Instacart has helped us reclaim some family and weekend rejuvenation time.
So we’ve been using Instacart for the past few months and I’m sold. Overall, Instacart has kept me in check with our food budget, cut down on general shopping stress, and saved me time. All wins in my book.
Has anyone else seen the same results as us using Instacart? I’m curious! Let us know in the comments below. And if you don’t know, try a food budget challenge for a month. See how it goes with your family and your food budget. When you have the numbers, then you can really decide if it’s worth it. Want to give it a try? Here’s a link: https://inst.cr/t/TqLWhgLhW
In my next post, I’ll share some quick tips and tricks that I’ve learned along the way for using Instacart.
