Our 2013 Grocery Budget

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