When I talk about 'groceries' in our budget, I'm actually referring to all of our food, toiletries, baby supplies (diapers, wipes, etc.), cleaning products, and household supplies. I do this because the reality is, I get almost all of our toiletries FREE. I haven't paid more than a few pennies for a toothbrush, shampoo, deodorant, etc., in at least 8 years. I also get our cleaning products, paper items, diapers and wipes considerably discounted using coupons and deals. So...because I pay so little for those items, I include them all in our grocery budget.
Last year, our grocery budget was $400 per month - $4800 for the entire year for our family of 7. Recently, I did a little number crunching and discovered that our total amount spent last year on groceries was actually $5682.54 (yes, I track every penny spent). That works out to $473.55 per month. So...that means on average, we went over our budget every month! Most months we were slightly over budget; we had a couple of months when we were at or below budget, but we also had a couple of months where we totally blew it!
Well, that's depressing. But, looking on the bright side, if I assumed that money was just for food...that works out to $.75 per person per meal, 3 times a day for a year. That's still excellent! The reality is, I may have paid a little more or less, depending on how much we spent eating out and how much of that budget went toward other household supplies, but still...$.75 per person for each meal is a great average!
So, last week I reworked our budget and set some financial goals for the new year. I decided that for now, we should leave our grocery budget at $400 and actually work harder at hitting that goal every month. To get started, I decided to go even further and challenge myself to the Eat from the Pantry challenge over at Money Saving Mom. We sort of made up our own rules for our home, but we've been doing well - trying new recipes & getting creative. I aimed to spend no more than $150 on groceries this month. I wanted to spend this ONLY on fresh fruit & veggies, milk, bread, and really great deals (at the grocery stores and drug stores to keep my stockpile intact).
So...I realized this morning that it was January 14th (almost halfway through the month), and I thought I'd do a quick check and see how much we had spent so far. I was very excited to discover that mid-month...we've only spent $85.63. And actually, I got back a rebate for $26.98, which brings my net amount spend down to $58.65. This is great news! We're still on track to reach our goal for this month!
About that rebate...when I buy rebate items that I classify as 'grocery' expenses and that rebate comes in, I put that money back into my grocery budget. Yes, it means that technically I have more than $400 a month to spend, but the reailty is that I'm spending the same money over and over again - which drastically stretches our money! If you'd like to know more about rebates, I wrote this post a few weeks ago explaining how I save thousands a year doing them!
So..what will we do with the extra $250 saved this month? I haven't decided for sure, but I'm leaning toward just sticking it in our savings account. That way, if we have a bad month, or we have a party, or some other oddity comes up and I need some extra grocery money, I'll have it already stashed away and not have to BUST our budget!
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