Lightening Online

Don’t fall off your chairs peoples.  I really have posted 2 days in a ROW!!!  One of these days I might even get back into the habit of posting daily.

I’m so happy with my grocery spending for February.  With only 4 weeks, I ended up with almost a week’s worth of grocery money surplus.

That worked out to an average of around $115 per week spent.

I put aside $70 cash toward our next lot of bulk meat, taking the spend to around $130 a week.

To be honest, I was quite surprised as I didn’t feel like we were all that careful with our grocery spending.  I know there are areas that I could tweak if we needed to.

I’ve been trying to figure out why our grocery spending is so much lower than others we know, even when I’m not really trying.  I guess there is a certain amount that is just “habit”.

Anyway, it’s nice to think that I’m on track with the budget and even have a little bit of room to move with rising prices and growing kids.  At this stage of the year, it’s probably better to have a little more than we need than be right on budget.

Will be interesting to see if things stay this way or whether I’ve just been “lucky” this month.

Now that February has begun, my new budget has clicked in to play.  As has my grocery challenge.

This month all I’m trying to do is TRACK what we’re spending on groceries.

I really can’t set myself any goals or challenges until I KNOW what we’re already spending.

As it turns out, I’m beginning the challenge with a well stocked freezer and pantry which should help.  It also means I need to take that into account when considering how much it is costing us in groceries.  One thing I would like to do is to set aside $50 each month toward the cost of our 1/2 cow.  We seem to get one about once a year and the cost is around $500 so that will give me the cash all ready for the next one plus enough to get a couple of sheep butchered as well.

BUT, we’ll see how we go.

For now I have allocated $150 for groceries.

I found an old little coin purse which should work well for our grocery money.

I’m a little bit peeved that our local supermarket has just instated a new “no cash out” rule.  My plan *was* going to be to do the weekly shop and take the “change” from $150 out in cash.  Now I’m going to have to be a little bit more organised and go to the bank first.

Anyway, so far this week:

Spent: $72.45

Leaves: $77.55

I know I’ll need to buy milk and fruit tomorrow when I go through town (they get fresh fruit and veg on a Thursday so when I know I’m going back through, I leave some of my stuff until then to buy).

Unless something goes drastically wrong, I think I’ll make it “within” the $150 this week.  Nice way to start.

EDITED TO ADD:

Second shop came to $15.70

Spent: $88.15

Leaves: $61.85 which stays in my “grocery” purse for future use if needed.

It doesn’t seem like that long ago that I did my $100 a week grocery challenge.  Over a 12 month period we managed to average just under $100 spent on groceries.  That did include cleaning products and personal care products but not medical supplies.  It was a fun challenge and I was surprised at the time how easy it really was.  We didn’t even have to go without treats.

Lately I’ve been a lot more “slack” when it comes to grocery spending (and all spending in general).  We’re buying more prepackaged stuff and a few more expensive items (like frozen berries for our smoothies).

However, I’m SURE groceries have risen in cost quite considerably in the past 12 months or so.

I know I can spend $100 and not even come close to half filling a trolley.  It’s scary really.  I have no idea right now WHAT I’m spending per week but I’m not sure if I really want to find out!

BUT…

I also know I need to get back to tracking what we’re spending.  It really is the best way to keep spending under wraps.  And with all our plans for what we want to do around the house, the less we spend, the more I’ll have for the fun stuff.

I’m going to start tracking our grocery spending from February 1st.  I haven’t decided yet whether to set myself a budget or to start with simply tracking and take it from there.

While I’m thinking about it, I thought I’d run a poll to see what people are currently spending per week on their groceries.  I know there are a lot of variations that effect how much we spend but I’ve just kept it simple for this time around.  Feel free to make more detailed comments about your grocery spend in the comments section if you’d like.

 Loading ...

It would be great to get as many responses as we can so if you feel like tweeting this or encouraging your own blog readers to visit and add their “vote” to the poll, it would be much appreciated. 

Well, May didn’t go quite as planned.

How unusual!!!!  LOL.

Or maybe the plan was a little ambitious?

Or maybe I’m just really BAD at NOT buying food?

The goal?

Spend $50 or less a week over the 4 shopping weeks in May for a total of $200 for the month (bearing in mind we’re using up as much of our on hand food as we can).

The reality?

*clears throat nervously*

Total spend of $351.65 or an average of $87.90.

In my mind that is a pretty ordinary effort. 

Don’t ask me what happened.

Everyone wanted to EAT (how rude!!!!).

Every week I kept thinking that next week the list would be shorter.

But it wasn’t.

Oh well.

Balance left in kitty to go toward my BHAG = $248.35

A little short on my goal of $400 but better than nothing.

The plan for June?

There is no plan.

Who knows what is going to happen?

I’ll continue to try and use up as much of what we have.

At some point during the month we’ll run out of meat and that’s going to increase the weekly spending quite considerably.

So, I’ll take it week by week and we’ll see what happens.

APRIL

Total spend for April was $515.25.  Just a little over my goal of $500 but not too bad considering extras bought for Easter (not Easter Eggs but extra food, hot cross buns etc).

That works out to an average of $103.05 per week.  I think my days of cracking under the $100 per week mark are well and truly gone.

Still, I’m pretty happy with that result and now have $84.75 to add to my BHAG total (an update on that coming soon….).

MAY

I’ve done an inventory of the freezer and we currently have around 30 or so meals of meat on hand.  I say “or so” because some “meals” actually stretch to 2 depending on what I do with them and how much we have leftover at times.

The plan for May is to spend as little on groceries as possible and use up as much as we have on hand as possible.

It will be a challenge because I find it very hard NOT to pick up meat when it’s on special.

I want to go away with as little food left here as possible, particularly in the fridge/freezer.  I’m not sure if I’ll leave them running and fill with cold water/ ice or whether I’ll actually turn them off while we’re away.

But the last thing we want to come home to is a freezer disaster so no meat is going to be left here, just in case.

Plans And Goals For May:

• Menu Plan!!!!  I’m currently working on a menu plan for the entire month to help use up what needs to be used up.
• Buy NO meat.  Zero.  Nilch.  Nada.  Let’s see if I can make myself not buy any meat for a whole month??????
• Keep spending under $50 a week.  With 4 shopping weeks in May, that should leave me with $400 out of my $600 budget to go towards my BHAG.  How awesome would that be????

Wish me luck as I find it incredibly hard NOT to buy food.

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:

I have started tracking my daily spending using the Simple Savings Diary. It’s a feature of the site offered to paid members that I only discovered recently.

While it doesn’t offer me quite as much detail as my old tracking system did, I’m finding it a simple way of keeping some kind of record. I get sent an email reminder each day as well which helps prompt me to keep it up to date. It’s so much simpler to enter figures if you’re doing it on a daily basis rather than allowing them to accumulate.

The other thing I like about it is that it has a section where you can make some reflections on the days spending and consider what the next day will bring. This is something that I’ve never really done in the past. I’ve budgetted and tracked but not necessarily reflected a lot on my spending habits.

It’ll be interesting to see if this has an impact after a while (and whether or not I stick with this system). It’s working well for me at the moment though.

Grocery Budget Update

As a follow up from my recent musings regarding our grocery budget, I have made a decision on what I’m going to do. I was thinking weekly, but something Kate said in her comment reminded me that I’ve always based my figures on monthly in the past.

So I’ve decided to budget $600 per month which is around $138 per week (so pretty much a middle ground between $130 and $150) . I’m using cash as a way of tracking it so it’ll be interesting to see what we actually spend after a few months of not tracking at all.

If I feel up to it, I’ll start working on bringing it down from there but for now I’m trying to accept the fact that I haven’t got the energy to focus too heavily on minimising the grocery spending.

Image via Wikipedia

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.

I know this is probably the worst time of year to abandon my attempts to purchase all groceries by cash but with Christmas and Birthday Parties, it’s all getting rather complicated and I’ve temporarily dumped it in the “too hard” basket.

We have a separate budget for special occasions which includes birthday parties and Christmas but right now I’m not tracking quite so specifically which means it’d take a bit of extra effort to separate it all out. Effort I don’t really have the time and energy to put in. For simplicity and sanity’s sake, I’m choosing to make life easier for myself, even if it means we end up spending just a little bit more.

And as for menu planning. I made up a plan this week, all the while muttering to myself how much I hate menu planning, and we haven’t even stuck to it!!! Things are just getting a little too chaotic right now and while a menu plan “should” help, this week it hasn’t. *sigh*

So, I will back to my normal grocery challenge, tracking my grocery spending and menu planning when the kids go back to school at the end of January. In the meantime, I think perhaps I’ll write a list of the meals we have on hand and use that in place of a menu plan as such.

One of the things I find most challenge when it comes to being frugal with groceries is finding the balance between money well spent and money wasted.

As many of you already know, I’m currently on a mission to make use of money we’ve already invested in food, so that it doesn’t go to waste.

While I’ve been menu planning to this effect, there is another aspect to this that I’m starting to look into.

In the past I have tended to purchase in bulk in order to save money. This might be purchasing a bulk number of items when at a good price or buying in a bulk size to get an overall cheaper “unit price”.

This works well when everything is going well.

It doesn’t work so well when the wheels fall off the wagon and stuff gets left languishing in the cupboard or freezer.

After Christmas I’m going to do an audit of what I have left and actually plan to make use of what we have. Right now life is starting to get busy and I need to be mindful of what I can and can’t manage right now. It’s also a little overwhelming right now because we really do have too much stuff on hand. Another 6 weeks of doing what I’ve done for the past 3 and we should see a little bit of a dent in that stuff.

However, there are a couple of things I already know I have way too much of:

1. Bread Mix

This comes in a large bag and I don’t usually make bread over the summer. I’m trying to take advantage of the cooler weather now to use this up. The kids are enjoying home made bread, particularly as it’s been a while since I’ve made any.

2. Milk Powder

When I’m making yoghurt on a regular basis, we go through milk powder quite quickly. This has gone by the by in recent times and I have quite a bit on hand that I picked up at a particularly good price. So, I’m going to focus on using as much of it up as possible in the coming weeks.

We don’t drink it but I do use it in cooking.

I’ll let you know how I go using these 2 items in the coming weeks.

LAST WEEK’S GROCERY SHOP

I ended up spending $84.55 in last weeks grocery shop. That’s the most I’ve spent since beginning this challenge. However, it was all “real” food (with the exception of toilet paper - we don’t usually eat that! ). I’m looking forward to the garden reaching a stage of supplementing our diets again as fruit and veg has become a large expense once again.

I currently have $203.85 saved in my “grocery surplus” fund which I’m going to transfer to our “holiday fund” and begin again with my $130 per week cash amount.

THIS WEEK’S MENU PLAN

I’m not feeling particularly creative this week so my menu plan is rather uninspiring but here it is:

Monday - Quiche (didn’t end up making one over the weekend).

This goes well with homemade potato wedges and I’ll make enough that DH and I can have some for lunches a couple of times through the week.

Tuesday - Spaghetti Bolognese

Like it or not, we have a lot of mince to get through as well as some frozen grated vegetables so I think this, along with tacos and lasagne is going to feature prominently for a while. The kids love it and it’s easy for them to eat so it works well as a family favourite.

Wednesday - Take Away

I have a hair appointment and then need to pick kids up from various places in town around 5.30 so we’ll take the easy option this night. It’ll be a hot chook, chips and salad so not too expensive as far as Take Aways go.

Thursday - Chops

The joys of being a sheep farmer. Plenty of chops. LOL.

Friday - Homemade Pizza

Saturday - Tacos

Sunday - Toasties

We like to go simple on a Sunday.

For what it’s worth, that’s where I’m at with groceries for this week.

I know some of you are joining me in the challenge to use up what food you’ve already paid for. Feel free to share how you’re going in the comments section below.