I’m decreasing my weekly food spending because I know I can do it and still eat healthy. Care to join me?
Obviously, a food budget depends on the number of people in your household and the amount of effort you’re willing to make to plan menus, clip coupons, shop sales, and get creative. In 2010, I budgeted $40 per week for food. (I’m single.) I found that amount to be challenging because I eat lots of fresh fruits and veggies and try to stay away from processed foods. Although, I don’t eat red meat or dairy, so I save a bit there.
From now on, I’ll only be spending $25 per week. It might mean cooking with more dried beans and the like, but I’m hoping it will help me slow down, taste my food, and enjoy life. Then again, I might just go hungry. I’ll keep you posted on my progress. ;)
I’ll also be back to posting grocery deals here because I need to work on my stockpile! The coupon matchups won’t be as extensive as before, but rather a “Top 5 This Week” for each store.
Your turn: What is your weekly food budget and how many are you feeding? Do you have any special strategies outside of clipping coupons? Discount stores you frequent, etc? Please let us know!
More Food Budget Challenge here.
This is probably horrible but I have NO idea what our grocery budget is. We really need to do the whole budgeting thing. The things I make tend to be low cost since the cookbook I was cooking through focused on low cost items (in season produce, a little meat, lots of beans/pasta).
Which cookbook was it, Wendy? You’ve talked about so many lol. I know what you mean on the budgeting thing… but we all have to start somewhere, no? I’m going to be posting some menu-planning and food budget tools. Maybe that will help?
Simply in Season :-) The one I have *almost* finished. Lately I’ve been cooking from More with Less though – that one is even more frugal.
I am horrible at budgeting in general. DH does most of the bills, and we just sort of pay things off as they come in and put any extra funds towards extra payments. We don’t pay much attention to what we spend on food/going out, although we probably should. I think we just figured “within reason” is a good rule of thumb. I have no idea where to even start with a budget. When we first got married we made a list of all of our bills and income, and since the income was more than the bills we each get a bit of “fun money” for haircuts and lunches and hobbies with each paycheck and the bills get paid out of a joint account. If nothing comes up that month (like vet bills or furnace or weird stuff like that) extra payments are made on the mortgage. I know if we actually put our minds to it we could pay more stuff off.
We all do a bit of “mindless spending” when there’s a bit of wiggle room in our budgets. I don’t think we have to anguish over every penny, but I think it’s a good exercise to monitor where the money’s going. I’ll post more general budgeting resources, in addition to the few I already posted, since our minds tend to focus on those sorts of “resolutions” in the early part of the year. Let me know if you come across any you like!
You would think I would already be at $25 /week, considering it just me and my boyfriend, but no! I dont get it. I went to the grocery last week and spent $110. I actually tried to budget this time! Agh! I think I just need to plan out my meals a little better. I end up having to buy those frozen two serving bag meals and frozen pizza just so I dont have to cook every single day.
$110 for two people for one week??!!?? Wow! I spend that (or less) for 3 people…one adult (me), my 13 year old son (who eats like a teenager in every sense of the word…not overweight…very athletic), and then my 10 year old son (who surprisingly is eating more than normal as well. Do you plan your meals? I’ve found that really helps. I’ll make a menu each week before I go grocery shopping…and I’ll work it together so that 1) I’m not cooking every night and 2) I can use ingredients from say Monday night’s meal for Thursday night’s meal, etc. It really saves me a lot of money…and time in the grocery store. Helps if you know exactly what you need.
Great point! Having a plan and a goal always helps!
Meal planning and cooking might just help, though I know sometimes it’s hard to find the time. Let me know if the meal plans I post this week spark any ideas for you. Stick with it, Becca. You can do it :)
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I used the same budget when I was on my own! Now that I’m married, I spend $40 a week for the two of us. I’m tracking my grocery spending (in pictures) every Friday on my website to hold me accountable to my budget. Good luck to you!
You’re right, Kristen – blogs are a fantastic way to stay accountable! :)
Grocery shopping…what’s that?? lol! We hardly eat at home during hockey season…it’s pathetic. We are home only 2 nights during the week and the weekends are hit or miss. The amount we spend eating out is not cool either….but what do you do? Any suggestions?