How to Save Money on Food by Teaming Up with Neighbors

Neighborliness can translate into major savings on food, with a little like-mindedness, planning and sharing. Teaming up with neighbors to grow, purchase and cook groceries has netted over $1,400 in savings on food in my two-person household in the last year alone. Although we mutually benefit from exchanges with most of the families on the street, you don't have to befriend the whole block to see this kind of savings. Most of our combined grocery budgeting efforts are with the family of four next door.

Community Gardening: $537 saved

Until this year, my neighborhood's community gardening efforts happened organically. We naturally gave excess produce from our gardens to the people we saw everyday, instead of letting it go to waste. Given the lack of variety at the tiny farmers' market, without this sharing we would have to resort to purchasing high priced fruits and vegetables at the local grocery store.

For example, we eat roughly three pounds of vine tomatoes per week. At $3.99 per pound, not having to purchase the fruit for five months nets a $287 savings alone. We are easily spared spending another $250 on food from sharing apples, cherries, cucumbers, corn, green beans, green peppers and more.

This year our neighbors broached the idea of doing actual planned community gardening. We were all still throwing out produce, when everyone's became ripe at once. Our gardens are also located in yards with different sun amounts and soil drainage, meaning some produce would thrive in one yard, but not others. We intend to plant enough seeds and starters in the yards each plant will thrive, dividing up the crop with neighbors.

Benefiting from Others' Leftovers: $72 saved

Sometimes the best, and particularly poor, meal planning results in an inordinate amount of leftovers. In our neighborhood, this means showing up next door with a bowl of homemade potato salad or being brought a plate of ribs. This type of sharing happens at least twice a month. Even a $3 savings per leftover dish equals $72 per year. None of us save a lot of money on food this way, but it helps.

Sharing Bulk Meat: $204 saved

Really good meat sales in our town, $1 or more off a pound, tend to run mostly on bulk family packs. Too much meat to put in my freezer, if the two of us want a good variety. By sharing purchases with other families, we get the benefit of the sale when we would have passed due to space and waste issues. An extremely conservative guess of $2 in savings a week, on just two meals (we generally cook one pound of meat per meal), equals a $104 yearly food savings.

As neighbors, we have also shared meat gotten for free. It's not as hinky as it sounds. If someone brings home, say, a deer, free turkey from work or extra holiday ham, we often share the meat. This doesn't happen all the time, but provides meat for about 20 meals a year. Figuring $5 in unpurchased meat per meal, that is a yearly food savings of $100.

Shared Grocery Shopping: $120 saved

Carpooling for shopping trips is something we have done for years. This is a direct savings money spent on gas, but if you are going grocery shopping, fuel prices can be added to the food bill. We shop for food at nearby larger cities once a month. It takes at least $10 in gas to drive there. Splitting that cost saves $60 a year.

Grocery bill saving ninjas that we are, it is not uncommon for a neighbor to offer to pick us up sale items on their own shopping trips. This works out extremely well, as they frequent more towns and a larger variety of stores than we do. Awesome neighbors that they are, they give us a heads up on these deals. A savings of $10 or more happens around six times a year, for a low-end total of $60. I don't figure in gas, as we probably wouldn't have gone ourselves, just straight savings on foodstuffs.

Cooking with Neighbors: $540 saved

We are a hardcore grilling neighborhood. You can bet if one household has fat sizzling off charcoal, which is almost everyday of the week March to November, someone next door is rooting around for meat to throw on too. Out of all this grilling, we use a neighbor's grill a whopping dozen times a month. That saves $5 a meal in quality charcoal and lightening fluid, nine months annually. That is a food preparation savings of $540 a year.