Grocery Budgets
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We’re now into the 3rd month of the year (although only the 2nd month for my “budgetting year”) and I’m yet to decide on our weekly grocery budget for the year. Fortunately so far (for February) I’ve spent less than $100 a week on groceries so there’s no real panic but it feels strange not to have a set “budget”.
Part of my problem is I’m torn between taking the “easy road” or the more “challenging” road.
The easy road would be $150 a week. It’s not excessively high and I can easily justify it given my children are growing and eating more and that I now have 3 at school and therefore it would be nice to have some room for those hideously expensive, yet very convenient, prepackaged lunch box snacks (at least some of the time). It would also be a way of “cheating” on my BHAG and leaving more room for savings - and therefore more to be put aside for our trip.
The more challenging road would be $130 a week. Given in 2007 we spent under $100 a week (all tracked and accounted for - so our actual “expenses” rather than simply a “budget”), $130 should still be reasonably comfortable.
I went up to $130 a week in 2008 due to rising grocery costs and the fact that I needed a break from the effort of being too frugal. I enjoyed my $100 a week challenge while I was doing it but it does take a lot more time and thinking to achieve that.
That extra $20 a week equates to just over $1000 over the course of the year. If I was budgetting and tracking properly, that could make quite a difference to our budget and overall savings for the year. The thing is, I’m not. I have NO budget for 2009 and no plans at this stage to even try and create one. Which means the $20 is likely to just get eaten up by some other spending anyway.
Mind you $50 a week (jumping from $100 to $150) is $2600 a year - OUCH!
It does feel kind of backwards for me not setting a budget but it’s a complicated year with our trip and all. It seemed like a good year to take a bit of a break from the figures. I’ll still work to keep our expenses down but with a lot of unknown health expenses cropping up lately, I’m finding it hard to put a figure to categories like I usually would.
What do you think?
$150 - easy road, feels a little bit extravagant but would allow for some bought lunch box snacks, few more expensive cuts of meat and some cash in hand savings for our trip.
$130 - feels more frugal. Might lead to $1000 in savings but then again, might not.
$100 - Nah, that would send me insane, even if I do believe I could do it if I wanted to!
I’d like to use cash for groceries so that I’m at least budgetting and tracking in this category (in a simple kind of way) and it would be good if I could make a start this Wednesday (being the first shopping day in March). I just need your help and input in making a decision.
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I’m giving up on budgeting altogether. Sort of. instead I have a set amount for the fortnight, break it down into ‘x”$$ per day. If that day’s money isn’t spent it gets put aside towards a day when we might need to spend more than the alloted amount. I’m doing this instead of a big weekly shop, since I always seem to buy the wrong things lately (i.e. NOT what he wants to cook/eat.) at the end of each fortnight any leftover goes into a christmas fund.
I’d go middle of the road if you can afford it…
We have a monthly grocery budget of $450 and last year that was plenty, but this year I am having to work at it a lot more, so if I could even another $20 of fresh fruit and vege in that last week I’d be a happy woman.
Oh and the cash thing really works for us.. we take out the $450 in cash and put it in a special box. We do our monthly big shop and then divide up whatever is left between the remaining weeks of of the month. I need to SEE IT and HOLD IT IN MY HANDS to get things quite often so this works really well for my blonde brain!
I’m so dam depressed about the uncertainty of the economy and the fact that I’ll be working for another 10 years my brain won’t let me think this through however your wonderful for taking the time to consider all your options..so good luck and I hope you are successful it is the right thing to do during these tough times.
Dorothy from grammology
grammology.com
River - that sounds like a wise move given the circumstances. It’s really still budgetting though isn’t it - in a different way.
Kate - I think I’ve just had a light bulb moment after reading your comment. I’ve always budgetted monthly and when I broke the grocery budget down to weekly, it was still an approximate figure of our monthly budget. I have no idea why it didn’t occur to me to still allocate a monthly amount. $130 works out to $563 a month which sounds extravagant against your $450 a month. I can see why an extra $20 would be super appealing to you.