Lightening Online

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.

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.

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.

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.

Things that mysteriously made their way in to my trolley uninvited this week:

2 x Double Choc Tim Tams

1 x 10pk Bulla Splits

1 x 8pk Bulla Double Choc Ice Creams

1 whole pineapple (at least that’s 1 healthy “extra”)

In my defense, they were all on special!!!

Grocery spend for the week: $57.30

Amount now in grocery “kitty”: $157.40

I was going to wait until the end of the year to transfer my accumulated savings into my BHAG account but I think I might empty it at the end of this month (or maybe most of it) and start again. I don’t really like carrying too much cash around with me.

Menu Plan For This Week:

Monday - Homemade Pasties with potato wedges and vegetables

Tuesday - Chicken Pieces (haven’t decided exactly how I’ll cook them yet)

Wednesday - Fried Rice

Thursday - Roast Lamb in the Slow Cooker

Friday - Hamburgers

Saturday - Quiche

Sunday - Leftover quiche

Shopping List so far:

bread

milk

fruit & veg

margarine

Image via WikipediaThroughout my grocery challenge, many of you have made comments such as “I don’t know how you do it”. So, I thought I’d do a series of posts outlining the “hows” of how I got to where I am with our grocery spending.

So, where do we start? I think the very first step is to believe that you CAN do this. One thing I really struggle with is people saying they desperately *need* to reduce their grocery spending but they’ve done ALL they can to do so. It’s as low as it will go. I am yet to meet someone who actually *has* gone as low as they *could* go. I’m not talking here about people who are content with their level of grocery spending. That’s fine. I *could* make ours lower. I’m well aware of that. Right now I am happy with our level of spending. For $100 a week we eat well with a wide variety of healthy foods as well as a few treats.

I have learnt a LOT in the past 3 years. Sure, finding new ways to reduce our grocery spending has slowed down a lot in recent times in comparison to when I first started. But, I am still learning new things. I don’t actively seek new ideas quite the same anymore. But, I am open to the fact that there are ideas out there that I don’t know about yet. There is *always* more to learn. If you have it in your mind that you’ve “arrived” as far as grocery budgets go - you’re less likely to find those new ideas and miss opportunities to make the $$ stretch further.

So, your mind is now open to new ideas. Good. You believe you CAN do this. Excellent. LOL. What’s the next step? Do you know how much you currently spend on groceries? I’m not talking “oh yeah, we budget around $200 a week” type knowledge here. I’m talking, last week I spent $123.62 at Woolworths, $25.00 at the Fruit and Veg shop, $6.35 at the corner store and $2.50 at the Petrol station. That kind of knowledge. (Those figures are completely made up by the way.)

Some people think that they are better off not knowing. Well, knowledge is a VERY powerful thing. When I first started on this “frugality” journey, we budgetted $140 a week for groceries. That was a GREAT budget. In fact, that was already lower than what most of our friends budgetted (those that budgetted). But I have NO IDEA what we were actually spending. The budget was completely useless. It didn’t *tell* me anything. It wasn’t really great at all.

According to the above figures, “I” have spent $157.47 for the week on groceries. Some people would get to the end of the week and say “I spent about $120 on groceries this week”. Going only on the approximate figure they spent at Woolworths. Already they’ve *lost* $37.47 of their money. That alone is $1948.44 a year!!!! Can you see what I’m getting at here?

If you have the time, I’d encourage you to take this one step further. Sit down with all your receipts for the week and break things down into categories.

Here are the categories that I started with:

* Treats - very important. You need to know how much of your money is going on “non nutritious” food. I think it’s *very* important (unless you do want to get down to a bare bones level of spending) to allocate at least a small portion of money to treats. It helps with the whole deprivation/poverty mentality issue that often makes you spend more money rather than less. What do you include as treat items? Well, that’s up to you. I tend to include cordial, ice cream, chips, lollies/chocolate, desserts (that are non fruit) and sweet biscuits in mine.

* Fruit and Veg - When you start trying to cut your grocery budget, it can be tempting to skimp on fresh fruit and veg. I find it helpful to keep a separate category so that I can keep an eye on this. I’ve also heard it said a LOT of times that it’s more expensive to eat healthily. I guess that all depends on what you were buying before but so far I haven’t found this to be the case myself. Having it there in front of you what you actually *do* spend on fruit and veg is a good way to see what is happening. I also include frozen vegetables and tinned fruit and veg in this category (so things like tinned peaches, beetroot and so on).

* Meat - I no longer keep my meat spending separate from my general grocery spending. But when I was first starting out I did. Mainly because meat is one area where most people *can* cut back on their grocery spending. I know we were consuming way too much meat for what is considered a “healthy portion”. Because I was working hard in this area, it was good to be able to see the results of my efforts in dollars and cents.

* General Grocery - In this category I include all food items that aren’t covered by the above 3 categories.

* Non Food - These are all the bits and pieces like toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, deodorant, cleaning products, cleaning cloths etc. It’s up to you what you do and don’t include here. Things that I DON’T include are make up, larger household items like mops, toilet brushes, batteries, socks, toys, stationery etc that can be bought at the supermarket. Those things have their own separate categories.

One of the benefits of breaking down your grocery receipts is that if you have bigger items like those above, it can really upset the balance of your grocery budget. I subtract them from my total and enter them elsewhere in my budget book. If you don’t have a “budget book” (see Tracking Spending for more info on this), that’s fine. Just subtract these items from your total spend (unless you *want* to cover these within your grocery budget).

What categories you use is completely up to you. I also have a category for “hospitality” where I allow extra money to accumulate and be spent when we have friends coming over.

What about TAKE AWAY? Do you include that in your grocery budget? Some people don’t have a separate category for their take away spending. They work on the principal of “if there’s anything left in the grocery cash at the end of the week, we’ll use it for take away”. Like I said, we’re all different and you have to do what works best for you.

Here’s why I DON’T do that. I find that the best way to get the *most* out of my grocery $$ is by NOT spending the same amount each week. Some weeks I’ll spend $25 and other weeks I might spend $200. Part of that is because of my location and the way I shop. BUT, I do tend to find that some weeks a LOT of what we eat is on special when other weeks very little is on special. Particularly when it comes to meat. If on the weeks I only spent $25 on groceries, we then spent the remainder of our budget on take away, that extra money wouldn’t be there to stock up in the weeks when LOTS of stuff is on special. Does that make sense?

We nearly always eat out of the cupboard and freezer and my shopping then replaces those items. It would be really easy to *blow* money on take away that we really *couldn’t* afford and then I’d be left with an empty pantry and be *forced* to pay a higher price for things. That can be a very nasty spiral. You get less for your money. Then you get frustrated and depressed and buy take away as a bit of an “escape”….. and so the spiral continues.

I am NOT advocating buying no take away. I just personally prefer to have a separate budget for our take away and to keep this cash separate. No cash=no take away.

Well, if you’ve made it this far you can probably see why I’ve decided to do this series in parts. Here’s a bit of a summary:

BE OPEN - to new ideas and the fact that you CAN reduce your grocery budget if you want to.

BE HONEST - you don’t have to show anyone else your spending figures. But be prepared to face up to them yourself.

BE REAL - if you only spend $25 this week on groceries, you *know* that it hasn’t *really* cost you that little. You’re eating off reserves you’ve paid for in the past. Great idea, just make allowances for the need to replace that food at some point in the future.

BE DISCIPLINED - yeah, I know it’s *almost* a swear word. LOL. We’re not born with discipline (just ask my high school maths teachers lol). It comes with practise. Believe me, a few minutes here and there of keeping track of what you spend could add up to hours of work you don’t have to do in order to earn the money being wasted (or could add up to that holiday you’ve always wanted to take….or new shoes…..or *add your passion here*……..)

STAY TUNED - I’ll post my next instalment on reducing the grocery budget next Friday.

In the meantime, keep a record of what you spend on groceries over the next week and break it down into categories. Just try it for 1 week…. For me? LOL. (I need a little puppy dog face emoticon to go here lol).

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