By: Michelle
How much do you spend on groceries every week? Do you have one large shopping trip a month to buy non-perishables and other supplies such as toilet paper, paper towels, dish soap, etc? Some people like separate food from these other items, but I do not have the patients for that, so I group them all together. If you are unsure how much you spend on food, it is time to start tracking it. Keep all of your receipts that have anything to do with food (or if you are like me and feel that receipts might give you cancer someday, than just write down all of the amounts). At the end of the month, or pay period (whatever you want to base your final budget off of), total up all of your food purchases and you will have a reliable number to base your spending off of. Keep in mind that you should include every time you grab a snack, or a coffee as well!
If you are like Cole and I were, than you probably already know about how much you spend. You might have to make some adjustments to include your morning coffee, or your laundry soap, but you already have a pretty clear number. This is great if you do, because you can start trimming away at it! What can you taper down, or even cut out to make that number smaller? The less money that you spend on groceries (especially if you find yourself throwing out a lot of bad food at the end of the month), the more money that you have for yourself! Cole and I are lucky enough to live in an area where there is plenty of competition, so the food prices are pretty low, but some of you might have to take a look at the ads to see where the best deals are (although we still carefully read the adds to plan our menus during the week).
When Cole and I started our budget, we were spending upwards of $100-$150 per week on groceries. Now we spend, on average, $50 per week (that means we spend a little more than a dollar per meal, per person while eating mostly organic and natural foods)! We do not, by any stretch of the imagination, go hungry during the week, but we instead have a carefully thought out meal plan that uses our resources wisely. You will almost never find something in our fridge that has gone bad! I will show how I make my weekly meal plan in a future post because it was something that was extremely difficult for me to start, but now that I have it, I can't imagine going back to the way it used to be. Imagine never feeling that horrible sense of not knowing what to make for dinner ever again, and never breaking your budget because you just decide to go out to eat instead... Yep, feels good, doesn't it?!
For your homework, track your spending for the week. How much did you spend on groceries? Are there any trips that you only take once in a while that you need to keep in mind, such as the monthly T.P. trip? Brainstorm ways to cut your budget down? Finally, leave me a comment and share how you save money! I love to get new ideas!
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