Grocery Spending For March
As March draws to a close, it’s time to evaluate my grocery spending for the month.
At the beginning of the month, I decided to take $600 in cash and put it aside for all grocery purchases throughout the month. My grocery costs include cleaning items and personal care items (other than my make up) but doesn’t include take away (we have a separate budget for take away and eating out).
I have $184.05 in the bag.
This means for the month of March we spent $415.95.
With 4 shopping weeks in March (I usually shop on a Wednesday), that equates to an average of around $104 per week.
That amount included some bulk meat purchases and a pantry stock-up as well as some extra items for the baking I did for the funeral, so I’m REALLY happy with the outcome.
That $184.05 is getting added to my BHAG total.
April has 5 shopping weeks (and I’ll still have the same $600 starting amount) as well as Easter (so some extra goodies I imagine as we’re going away) so it’ll be more of a challenge. I’m hoping to come in at around the $500 mark.
We’ll see how that goes.
Here’s my latest BHAG figures. Still a long way to go to reach my final goal by June 30th 2009:
Similar Posts:
- Grocery Spending For April and May
- BHAG Update - 2 Months To Go
- Grocery Budget Blues
- BHAG: Passed The Half-Way Mark
- May Grocery Spending
5 comments:
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COngrats… you do so well….. i just cant seem to get mine down at the moment…. maybe i need to go back to “Bagging the dollars” but i hate carrying it with me when working etc….
Please clarify for me.. does your grocery section include toilet paper, tissues, washing powder etc….
Sorry am a bit tired after nights with a croupy coughing boy and am home today to let him catch up too…. must go and have some breaky as it is 9 am afteralll!!!!
Well done!
That’s a great result.
Hi Lightening,
I have a BHAG too but am not even hopeful about achieving while my dh continues to be unemployed. My only hope is living within our means in a very straight and narrow way.
My current grocery budget is $450/fn for 2 adults, 10yob, 7yob, 4yob, a baby in nappies and 2 small dogs. I feel like I am so close to being able to live on less but each fortnight starts with high hopes only to have them dashed by about day 10 and I am feeling hopeless all over again.
I know your March figure was a lot lower than what I spend in a month, but overall when you take into account the big bulk buys of meat etc over a year what would you say your budget is like? I can make mine look that low once every couple of months by doing pantry and freezer clean outs but the others are huge blowouts.
Thanks for your time,
Jen in Lorn, NSW
Lynette - yes, it does include those things although it’s been some time since I had to purchase laundry powder (I buy it in bulk). It does take more time to spend less at the grocery store and sometimes you have to weigh up where your time is best spent.
Mistress B - thanks.
Jen in Oz - hi and thanks for your comment. Sounds like you’re going through some tough times at the moment. It’s hard for me to give you an accurate answer on that one as I haven’t been tracking my spending over the past 12 months. In 2007 I tracked very carefully and we spent just under $100 per week on average on groceries. However, prices have increased since then so I don’t expect I’d keep it that low now. I have never included nappies or pet food in my grocery budget though - we’ve always bought those kinds of things separately. The best piece of advice I was ever given was to very gradually try and cut back your spending until you get to the point where it hurts - then increase it slightly and you find a comfortable equilibrium. I just picked one area of my budget each week and looked for ways to reduce in that area, rather than trying to blanket cut back everywhere at once. Have you read my “reducing the grocery budget” series? There are links in the sidebar which might give you a few ideas on what I did. Hope that helps a little. If you have any more questions, I’m happy to try and give you an answer.
I think that is a great total to spend on the groceries for the month. I have found I have been saving more by converting my shopping to monthly and buying in bulk too.