Lightening Online

Image via WikipediaI have to admit that I have been suffering from a LOT of denial in regard to our spending habits of late. My budget/spending book is an absolute MESS!

I think denial right now is my way of coping. Particularly with the rapid rise in prices at the supermarket (grocery store).

I’ve been feeling kinda ill doing the grocery shopping of late.

My coping technique is to kind of close my eyes (not physically but mentally) to the final tally at the checkout, hand over a wad of cash and then get out of there as fast as possible.

So it’s not surprising that my enthusiasm for updating the spending book is waning a little.

The problem is that denial is causing me more anxiety that facing up to the truth.

WHAT IS THE TRUTH?

Drought, rising interest rates, rising fuel prices and no doubt other factors ARE having an impact on the prices we are paying at the checkout.

BUT

We need to be careful how we view rising grocery prices. As I’ve said before, news of rising grocery prices can actually cause us to spend MORE than we actually need to.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

1. Dig our heads out of the sand

NOT knowing really is WORSE than knowing. Knowledge gives us power to implement change. Lack of knowledge can result in more stress and going on my experience, stress = more spending.

2. Continue Our Education

If you’ve yet to read my series on “Reducing the Grocery Budget”, the links are in the sidebar. I’m a firm believer in never having enough knowledge. There are ALWAYS new ways we can learn to trim things here and there. Of course, time and interest both factor into this as well. I’m not saying we HAVE to find new ways to cut spending. Just that we CAN if we NEED or WANT to.

3. Celebrate our Successes

One of the great things about being frugal is that you’re already ahead of the game when it comes to spending. Generally costs rise as an overall percentage. 15% of $1000 is a LOT less than 15% of $3000 for example.

I always try to begin my year with some “wiggle room” in my budget. Particularly when it comes to groceries. My growing children are eating more and more as time goes on and prices are nearly always going to increase. I know this increase is a little more than we normally get but I’m grateful I have at least a little “wiggle room” to help absorb the impact.

4. Time For a Reality Check

Just after my “I feel sick at these prices” grocery shop, I picked up our mail. Inside was a letter from one of our sponsored children. How’s that for a timely reality check? Here I am worried about the cost of fruit & veg rising as it might mean I can’t afford to buy CHOCOLATE or my favourite magazine. While so many people in the world don’t even have ACCESS to healthy foods, let alone a way of paying for them.

5. Don’t Give Up

One of the biggest problems with dieting is that slipping up causes people to give up. Rather than accepting a small slip-up and getting back to it, they decide they’re no good at it and forget about trying. Budgeting can be the same. Slip-ups WILL happen (at least to MOST people). The important thing is to get back on track and do the best you can with what you have. I’m in the process of sorting things out with my budget book in an attempt to get back on track. Starting over is also an option.

The main thing here is NOT to GIVE UP. Every small step we take towards a better handle on our budgets brings us closer to our own goals and dreams.

WHAT ABOUT YOU?

Anyone else paddling up the river of denial and getting nowhere right now? Pleeeeaaaasssseee tell me I’m not the only one who’s been living in denial.

(Note to my regular readers: I have deviated away from my series on The Complete Tightwad Gazette discussion over the past couple of Fridays. I do intend to come back to them. Please bear with me.)

* For those not living in Australia, I’m not sure if “generic” is a familiar term. It basically refers to the “stores own brand” of product. Here you might also hear terms like “homebrand”, “black and gold” and other variations of two colours (eg “blue and white” and so one).

I remember as a child when generic brands began appearing in the stores. I’m not sure if this was their first appearance or whether they were just becoming more widespread at this time. What I do remember is that there was a certain stigma attached to the generic type items. They were considered “poor people’s” food.

For a teenager at the time it was considered “social suicide” to be seen with homebrand or other generic items in your possession. I wonder if perhaps this “social conditioning” has stuck with some people. I’m surprised at how many people still seem reluctant to even give generic products a try.

There are a few common objections to using generic products.

My Husband/Children Object

Honestly, I think this is often more about mind over matter than anything. Yes, some things do taste different but different isn’t always bad. It’s about what you’re used to.

I’m not saying that EVERY generic product is a winner. Just that too often they get discounted as no good without being given a fair go.

My tip? Remove the contents from their packaging and either add them to the old packaging (the brand name stuff) or put them into another container. What they don’t know won’t hurt them.

OR. Try mixing half generic with half label brand.

They Are an Inferior Product

I think these days it’s a fairly well-known fact that most generic products are manufactured in the SAME place that label brand products are made. Often you’re looking at purchasing an item that is identical with a different packaging. Which means that with the label brand product, the extra you are paying for is advertising, cost of shelf space (I assume supermarkets don’t charge THEMSELVES for shelf space) and pretty packaging.

Now I KNOW that not ALL generic products are exactly the same. You do need to pick and choose a bit.

But lots of them are REALLY good and I think it’s worth giving them a try just to find the good ones.

People Will Think I’m Cheap (or Poor)

GREAT!!!! So let them!

Okay, I’ll be honest here, occasionally this still bothers me.

BUT, we all make choices in life.

If I spend $100 less than others on groceries per week for 10 years that’s $50,000. AFTER tax!

Now, we don’t save $100 a week using generic but it certainly does make a BIG difference to our final grocery tally.

Hence leaving us money to spend on more funner stuff! Like saving up to do our BIG trip next year!

They Dilute the Products

Maybe in some products.

1. Check the labels. I was looking at tinned tuna the other day. Tinned (canned) products are great because they give your percentages on the labelling. The cheapest generic (Australia now seem to have supermarkets carrying different “levels” of generic product) had 1% MORE tuna than the other tins of the same size.

2. Ask yourself, does it matter? I have noticed that tomato sauce is one product that is a little runnier in the generic brands than in the label brands. The thing is, my children like to cover their food with tomato sauce. Being a little less thick doesn’t actually matter in this case. In fact, it means they use LESS sauce overall - do a double saving!

Where Do I Start?

If you’ve never used generic products before, the best place to start is with basic items like flour and sugar (I DON’T recommend cocoa). Once you get beyond those, it is a bit of trial and error of trying products to see what they’re like.

Honestly

Some generic products are duds! BUT, I would have to say in my experience that there are a LOT of wonderful generic products out there, far outnumbering the duds.

Lightening’s Generic Products Love-Fest

Remember the Zucchini Love-Fest we had a few weeks back? Well, now I’d like to host a “generic” love fest. What do you need to do? Write a post outlining the products that you like (and those you definitely DON’T like) when it comes to generic/store brand grocery products. Make sure you mention which store they come from so people don’t get confused. You can post it anytime between now and next Friday and send me the link. Or if you’ve already written a post on this topic in the past, sending me the link to that post is fine too.

Next Friday (or Thursday for some of you) I’m going to post my own list of products we particularly like. I’ll also post any links that get sent in to other posts on this topic. Hopefully this way we can cover a good range of products AND a range of other countries too (c’mon my international readers, I need you to help me out some here)

Likes and dislikes vary but it’s always nice to be able to start with products that others have found to be good value.

It’s going to be a big generic link-love fest! If you’d like to be included, I’ll add a contact form right here to make it nice and easy for you to send me your link.

OR, if you don’t have a blog - you can send a review or two of your favourite generic products and I’ll add those to my post as well.

Happy Shopping (and Saving) Everybody!!!!

P.S. Feel free to pass the word around to your blogging buddies. The more participants we have, the better for all!

cforms contact form by delicious:days

I always find tips hard to write. It can be rather laborious to wade through tip upon tip that you’ve already heard or read. The best tip I can offer you is to take a look at 1 item you buy regularly and really think hard about how you might go about reducing spending on that item.

Having said that, this week I’m going to go through the list of non food items that I include with our grocery budget and explain what I do/have done to reduce spending in that area. Hopefully there is something here that will help most of you.

For those not familiar with the term “generic”, it is simply a reference to a stores own brand. We have many different generic “brands” now in Australia.

TOILET PAPER

This is one item where I tend to be rather fussy. I have a limit of 50c per roll and stock up big when a good special is on. Our personal preference is Kleenex Cottonelle. For some reason most people like Quilton these days but I really don’t like it much at all. It all comes down to personal preference.

I did find a great recycled, made in Australia pack that was more like 35c a roll in Bi-Lo one time but when I went back they no longer stocked it and I haven’t seen it since. I also didn’t write down the name of it.

TISSUES

Everyone in our family has hankies. The kids don’t use them as much as DH and I. I don’t push this one way or another. DH and I just happen to prefer hankies. I buy generic branded tissues (usually Coles) and then I purchase the Aloe Vera tissues if someone has a cold. We’re lucky to go through a box of tissues a month.

CLEANING CLOTHS

As I mentioned last week, I use old face washers and cut up towels for cleaning cloths. I do occasionally buy cleaning cloths and when I do I tend to buy generic and wash them many times. We’re hardly ever use the “chux” style of cloth.

For dishes I do buy those yellow sponges with the green scourer on one side - again, generic branded. We also have a dishmop (although they’re getting harder and harder to source these days) and occasionally use plastic and metal scourers (which don’t need replacing very often).

My biggest expense with cleaning are those George Foreman Grill cleaning cloths. DH loves them and who am I to deny him if he’s happy to do the cleaning up?

PAPER TOWEL

We don’t tend to use a LOT of paper towel. Most spills get wiped up with an old cloth nappy (if you see any of these in op shops - they make AWESOME mop-up-spills cloths).

When I do buy it, I tend to go with a generic brand. It’s usually just used for grease based spills or stuff that we really want to throw in the bin rather than wash a cloth from.

SOAP

I’m not a big user of soap (and no I don’t STINK!). DH on the other hand tends to need quite a bit of it. He’s quite limited in what he can use due to my sensitivity to perfumes so we tend to stick with Velvet which just happens to be about the cheapest soap there is.

I seem to accumulate a never ending supply of liquid body washes so that’s what the kids will often have in their bath (if anything).

For handsoap at the basins I prefer a liquid soap and most commonly I use a very cheap shampoo (watered down) for this. It’s also a great way to use up bits of shampoo that I’ve bought to try and haven’t liked.

SHAMPOO AND OTHER HAIR PRODUCTS

My biggest money saving tip? Cut everyone’s hair short! Since Farmboy has decided he likes his hair razor cut, we’ve used nowhere near the shampoo we used to! The kids hair gets washed once a week (or less often for Leighton if I forget to remind him ). I wash mine whenever I’m going out (which is 2-3 times a week at the moment).

Most people use TOO MUCH shampoo. Try cutting back how much you use. You can also put it into a pump pack to prevent other family members overusing. You can also use either soap or bicarb soda for washing your hair.

I used bicarb for quite some time but apparently it can strip any colour (artificially added that is) from your hair so I haven’t used it for a while. Must try it again one of these days. My hair was amazingly soft and silky when I was using bicarb.

We use very little in the way of conditioner. I use apple cider vinegar to condition my hair. I have it mixed in a spray bottle with a little Rosemary essential oil and about 3/4’s water to 1/4 vinegar.

For the kids I have a bottle of water with a small amount of conditioner in it that gets sprayed onto their hair before brushing. It gives them more than enough conditioning treatment for their hair and in fact has solved the problem of trying to wash all of the conditioner out of their hair. The diluted amount from the spray bottle seems to be enough to get rid of tangles and leave their hair shiny and manageable (well, mostly).

HAIR REMOVAL EQUIPMENT

Farmboy uses an electric razor so this tends to come out of a different budget (his first one was a birthday present). That requires no other products so I’m not constantly buying shaving foam or anything else for his shaving requirements.

I use a reusable razor with heads that have their own product for shaving. I also use some Nair but one tube lasts me the whole summer quite easily.

TOOTHBRUSHES, TOOTHPASTE AND FLOSS

I prefer to use Colgate Total Gel so look out for this on special. I will sometimes alternate with a generic brand. One of these days I’ll get around to trying a more natural toothpaste.

We mostly use pretty basic toothbrushes. The kids get fun ones in their Christmas stockings and the rest of the year just have plain coloured ones. I’ve found the Coles generic brand quite good in terms of the kids toothbrushes and tend to buy whatever is on special for Farmboy and I (Colgate do a reasonably priced multipack).

CLEANING PRODUCTS

As I mentioned last week, I use a LOT of water for cleaning. Then a mixture of bicarb, vinegar and Tri Nature natural cleaning products as needed. Tri Nature products are highly concentrated and last me ages (it’s been over 12 months since I’ve bought any).

DISHWASHING

I use Tri Nature Chamomile for handwashing and Tri Nature Citrus Dishwashing Powder in the Dishwasher. Both of these are concentrates and last us a long time. As a member of Tri Nature I get a 15% discount on these items when I order.

LAUNDRY DETERGENTS

I’m currently using up Tri Nature laundry products that I have always used in the laundry. When they are gone I want to try some different ideas I’ve read about natural alternatives (such as soap nuts).

One thing I have found with the laundry is that we need much LESS detergent than we were using. This is one of the reasons I still have product to use up - it’s taking a lot longer to go through now we’re using LESS. Keep cutting back until you notice a difference in how clean clothes are getting.

I very rarely use a fabric softener and when I do I use a natural one. When that is used up I intend to try vinegar as a fabric softener.

PEGS

I use a mixture of more expensive pegs and generic branded pegs. I always bring them inside when not in use as the sunlight ruins them very quickly.

In a pinch you can actually use bread tags as pegs (for thinner fabrics). We get plenty of wind and they seem to stay on the line!

GARBAGE BAGS AND BIN LINERS

I try to reuse grocery bags and fruit and veg bags (which fit our toilet bins perfectly) for rubbish as much as possible.

Garbage bags is one item where I have found generic to be inadequate so we tend to use Glad. I try to stock up when on special and buy the larger packs as they end up being cheaper per bag.

For white bin liner bags (yes, I do buy some) I can’t remember the name of the brand (and we currently don’t have any). It’s not generic and it’s not Glad but a brand that is somewhere in between in terms of cost. I *think* it might be Hercules.

WRAPS AND BAGS

I try to avoid using throw away wrapping where possible. We still use more than I’d like. I know it’s an area we could cut back on but it’s also an area out of my control at this time.

When we do use plastic wrap, I tend to buy generic. You do need to shop around a little to find the generic brands that work well. I’m not a big fan of much in the Black and Gold brand but have found a lot of the Coles Brand quite good.

I use generic brand freezer bags but up until recently preferred to use Hercules Snap Lock Bags (cheaper than the top brand but dearer than generic). For Princess Singstars birthday party I bought some Coles brand snap lock bags and found them to be great. I don’t reuse freezer bags but I do wash and reuse snap lock bags (unless they’ve had raw meat in them).

I also reuse bread bags for freezing items in. Not so much for the actual “savings” as for environmental reasons. Still, a few cents here and there can add up.

Items like alfoil and baking paper I tend to use generic brands as well.

But I generally work on the principle that if I can use something reusable rather than throw away, I will.

Now I’m going to throw it over to you. Do you have a tip or two that have saved you money when buying non food grocery items? Feel free to share in the comments section so we can all learn together.

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This is the third post I have written in a series about how we reduced our grocery spending. If you haven’t already had a chance to read the first two, or would like to review them, you can find them here:

Reducing the Grocery Budget - Part One

So, we’re up to part 3 and we’ve yet to really touch on the big “B” word – the budget. How do you decide what a realistic budget is for your own unique situation?

Well you START with what you’re currently spending. That’s one of the reasons WHY it is so important that you KNOW what you’re currently spending. Because that is your starting point for your new grocery budget. THEN you start to play the grocery budget limbo. Now, I’m pretty sure I read about this idea at http://www.cindysporch.net/. Unfortunately I cannot find a place on her website that refers to this exactly. Nonetheless it’s a website that is well worth having a read when you get the time. She has lots of great ideas that I have found helpful in my quest for frugality and home organization (yes, it definitely is an ONGOING learning process lol).

The grocery budget limbo is quite an easy game to play. Now I’m assuming you all know how to play limbo? You know that game where you have a broom handle or similar held up nice and high and you all take turns going under it without touching either the handle or the floor (and without bending forwards). If you break any of those conditions, you’re out and the game continues with each round the broom handle being lowered slightly.

So the grocery budget limbo works much the same way. The goal is to lower your spending a little bit each week/fortnight/month. How much you’d like to lower it by each time is completely up to you. You can choose a percentage or a dollar amount. And yes, it can be $1 a week if that’s what you’d like. If there are just 1 or 2 of you and you already have a reasonably tight budget, $1 might well be the most appropriate starting place.

If you have a family or feel that you spend plenty on your groceries, I would suggest starting with a nice round figure like $5 or $10. You can get more adventurous than that if you’d like but my experience has been that if I take smaller baby-steps, I’m more likely to make changes that will LAST. Biting off too much at once can lead to getting overwhelmed, frustrated and ultimately giving up and resorting to “whatever I spend I spend”.

To give you an idea using my own figures. It has taken me 3 years to move from spending $140 per week to spending $100. Under ordinary circumstances (ie. if I wasn’t trying to reduce our grocery budget) we increase our grocery budget each year by 5%. This has been to allow for both increasing food prices and our growing family (growing in both number, from 2 people to 5 people and also in appetite as our 3 “little people” grow into “bigger people”). So in essence, our spending has decreased over that 3 year period from what *would* be $160 per week down to $100 per week.

I guess I’m sharing these figures to encourage you that it can take a while to really see changes in your grocery spending. I haven’t spent the past 3 years completely focused on reducing our grocery spending either. I prefer to challenge myself for a short time and then have a break from focusing too much on the figures. I still prefer to record all my spending all of the time - I like the security of *knowing* where our money has gone. However, if I were always focusing on getting our grocery bill lower, I think I would find that too boring. It works for me to focus on it for a time and then give myself a bit of a break. The breaks also help me to see if the changes I’ve made have become “habits” (and therefore stick even when I’m not specifically trying) or whether things blow out as soon as I’m not watching carefully.

I have found that tracking our spending has been the most significant change we’ve made to managing our finances since we chose to take the path of more frugality and a simpler lifestyle. There is more information about how I do this in my Tracking Spending post that I wrote a little while ago. Basically I do it by starting with my “budgetted” amount and subtracting anything I spend from this so that I always know how much I have left in a given category at any time. You can achieve a similar thing with using cash and some kind of bag or envelope system as well (as long as someone doesn’t move cash from one spot to another…..).

So, back to the “how low can you go” game/concept. How do you know when it’s time to stop trying to lower the bar? Best not to keep going until you fall flat on your back. I think it’s helpful at this point if you can understand a little of your own personality here. With my budget amounts, I prefer to allow a little bit MORE than what we *really* need. I personally find that if I have overspent on our budget, I’m more likely to throw the towel in and spend more. All the time that I’m comfortably under budget, I seem to find it easier to spend less.

Some people have a tendency to spend every last cent so if they allowed a “buffer” amount in their budget, they would always spend that. If you’re that kind of person, adding a buffer amount into your budget is only going to encourage you to spend more.

Don’t be afraid to have a bit of a play around to find what works for YOU. There is no perfect system out there that suits every single person. There is no “magic” figure out there for the “perfect” grocery budget. Take some time to just observe what is happening with your spending and how that makes you feel, react and so on. The same applies to whether you use cash, credit card (that is paid in full - I’m not advocating credit for groceries if you can help it), debit card and so on. We could debate for hours on whether or not you’ll spend more using one method or another. The only way you can really find out what works for YOU is to try a few different ways and see what happens.

One thing about budgeting in general that I have found really hard to get my head around is allowing some flexibility. When I decide what our budget will be for various categories, I usually do so for a 12 month period and during that time things can change. I’m not so good at dealing with change. I much prefer things to stay the same. One way I do get around this is by allowing some “buffer” in my grocery budget. Like I said before, that will work for some and might not work so well for others. Just be aware that you need *some* flexibility when it comes to budgets (without giving yourself permission to just spend whatever you feel like! LOL).

What you really want to avoid as much as possible is frustrating yourself. If you feel like you’re somehow “failing” in your attempts, it’s more likely that you’ll give up. That’s what we want to avoid. If you expect to be able to decide on a budget without allowing any flexibility along the way, there is a real danger of that happening.

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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