This
year I plan to do better. I want to try
and get back to our original $100 per
month food budget. It works out to
about $33.33 per person which is a little more than a dollar a day. I really think I can do it too. It means I’ll have to be a little more
creative in my meal planning, cooking, shopping strategies and use of coupons.
Did you
know the average family of three, my size, typically spends $500 to $600 a
month on groceries? This total does
happen to include their non food items as well, like shampoo, toothpaste,
toilet paper etc.
Per the
SNAP chart for food stamp eligibility the federal government will give a family
of 3 up to $526 in monthly benefits with the average benefit for families of
this size coming in at $401. In my house
this would buy a lot of groceries and
may even lead to hoarding.
On the whole it seems “The average American family
spends $537 per month on food -- $312 of that on groceries, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Expenditure Survey” per an article posted
by Your Money for MSN on December 9, 2012.
That means $225 of that is spent eating out. That’s a lot of money!
Now
that we have a garden area in the backyard I need to focus my efforts on making
it a truly productive garden. Getting
our fruit tree pest problem under control is a biggie on my list too. Adding more fruit producers like blueberry
and raspberry plants to our yard and expanding our growable space is another
area to focus on.
I
bought a lot of seed packets last summer so I would be ready to start my
seedlings this spring. I plan to start
them at the end of March. There may be
some additional expense of fertilizer and top soil in new planting beds. Our compost will help defray most of these
expenses so we most likely won’t need to purchase too much.
I would
very much like to get our greenhouse constructed as that would help extend our
growing time quite a while. Hopefully
our budget will allow for that this year.
Hopefully
our chickens will keep us in eggs this year.
I don’t include their feed in our grocery budget. Instead I put it in the non-food budget along
with the cat food. Our nonfood budget
will remain at $25 a month.
One
thing I used to do was take any amounts left at the end of the month and add
them to the next month’s budget. I
stopped doing this when I raised it to $125.00.
I plan to go back to doing this now that I am back to my original
budget. I’m just going to take it one
month at a time and see how I do. All I
can do is try my best. J
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