Our Grocery Budget

This is the one thing my friends are the most interested in.  I said I would teach them, so let’s begin. 

We have an extremely tight budget for groceries - $33 per person, slightly more than a dollar a day + $25 for additional stock up food items I find on sale.  We are a family of three – so $99.  I rounded up to $100 + $25 = $125 per month for food before sales tax.  Believe it or not, sometimes I don’t spend all of it.  I have an additional budget for non-food items of $25 per month for toiletries, pet food, cleaning supplies, etc. 

I am not an “extreme” couponer.  I am a strategic planner and shopper.  I have done this for so long that I don’t even have to think about it - I just do it. 

Born out of necessity when my son was very young, I had to develop a way to get the most amount of food for the least amount of money.  Back in the late eighties, after the bills were paid, I was left with $10 a week for groceries and non-food items.  At that time I had way too much pride and ego to apply for food stamps so I had no choice but to make it work.  Every week I would sit down with the weekly grocery ads and decide what I could buy and what meals I could make out of it.  I remember I would always buy a gallon of milk and three bananas for my son.  He loved bananas and I wanted him to have plenty of milk.  Based on those ads I had that grocery list figured right to the penny.  We did just fine. 

As I began to make more money and student loans got paid off I was able to add to that budget over the years, but at a certain point it wasn’t necessary to go up too much higher because I was in a routine and we had full cupboards.  Until my girls came along we were at a $60 a month budget for years.  When my oldest daughter came a long we coasted at $100 a month for a long time.  My son left home and joined the army and my youngest joined the household.  Without a big teenager to feed anymore we continued just fine. 

In 2008, the recession hit and gas prices jumped, we inherited another cat and prices on everything started to soar.  It was getting harder and harder to stay on budget so I had to adjust and now we are where we are.  It irritated me that our budget had to increase by 50%.  From a business standpoint that is horrendous, but then if I compare it to the national average, in 2009, based on a family of four that spends $1000 a month I was doing extremely well.  I only spend 15% of the national average.  So now I know why my friends are so interested.

I will be posting about the things I do in the coming weeks.  I promise we eat really well.  I don’t expect anyone to do what I am doing but if you find something here that helps you then that is great.   I also recognize that the cost of food is higher in some areas than others.  I live in Idaho.

These are some of the areas we’ll be touching on: 

·         Meal Planning – You have to have a plan.

·         Pantry List – as long as I have the items on my pantry list in my home I can make almost anything.

·         Scratch Cooking – I make almost everything from scratch.

·         Be Creative – sometimes you have to think outside the box and don’t be afraid of a good challenge.

·         It Takes Self-Control & Self Discipline – sometimes it is tempting to stop at a restaurant or the grocery deli.

·         Portion Control – we tend to eat too much, which requires us to purchase more food and as a result we have weight issues.

·         Leftovers – they aren’t evil.

·         Shopping For Food – that is its own adventure.

·         Food Storage – you’ve got to have a place to put it and a system so you know what you have.

·         Food Waste – now that is evil.

·         To Use Coupons Or Not – that truly is the question.

·         Track Your Expenses – you can’t know where you are if you don’t know where you are. 

We’ll cover a lot of other areas too but this will get us started. 

Note:  We are very fortunate that no one in our family has any diet restrictions or health conditions requiring a special diet.  For those that do, you will want to take that into consideration.