So when I choose $60 for June's grocery budget. I knew that was not going to be sustainable, and I made that clear to my husband. I just knew we could make some sacrifices in the food department in order to get more cash flow to help get our snow ball going.
But that has egged the question for me of "What should our grocery budget be?"
1- I want a sustainable budget to feed my family of 6 to be full and healthy eating.
2- Room for the occasional fun items.
3- Comfortably have money left each month for saving for food storage.
4- Wiggle room for my every-other-month trip to Costco and trips to the bread store.
5- But still reflects the sacrifice we are making to get out of debt.
What should be a reasonable amount?
After searching a ton of blogs on what other thrifty people are spending I found one of them quoting Dave Ramsey, then I found it on his web site.
"We recommend spending 5–15% of your take-home pay on food, which includes groceries and meals out."
So this was a good place to start. My husband and I did the math and decided that our previous spending (before our money make over) was reasonable for the grocery side, not reasonable when you considered what we were spending eating out. Our previous grocery bills averaged $250-300 per month.
Taking my list of what I want in a grocery budget, what we were spending before, and Mr. Ramsey's advice, I am going to aim for $210. $200 for groceries & household items, and $10 for food storage and stocking up. I know I can do this. It will mean rethinking some of our meals- I have never been a big potato using person. I will be utilizing those much more. I'm going to be cutting any store bought junk food. I will be doing better with my meal planing and making more deliberate choices on what I purchase. Yes that means no more sushi lunches (a pleasure I have always justified by buying my husband his own sushi for lunch too).
I think this is totally do able, and as we do this longer we can adjust as needed.
But that has egged the question for me of "What should our grocery budget be?"
1- I want a sustainable budget to feed my family of 6 to be full and healthy eating.
2- Room for the occasional fun items.
3- Comfortably have money left each month for saving for food storage.
4- Wiggle room for my every-other-month trip to Costco and trips to the bread store.
5- But still reflects the sacrifice we are making to get out of debt.
What should be a reasonable amount?
After searching a ton of blogs on what other thrifty people are spending I found one of them quoting Dave Ramsey, then I found it on his web site.
"We recommend spending 5–15% of your take-home pay on food, which includes groceries and meals out."
So this was a good place to start. My husband and I did the math and decided that our previous spending (before our money make over) was reasonable for the grocery side, not reasonable when you considered what we were spending eating out. Our previous grocery bills averaged $250-300 per month.
Taking my list of what I want in a grocery budget, what we were spending before, and Mr. Ramsey's advice, I am going to aim for $210. $200 for groceries & household items, and $10 for food storage and stocking up. I know I can do this. It will mean rethinking some of our meals- I have never been a big potato using person. I will be utilizing those much more. I'm going to be cutting any store bought junk food. I will be doing better with my meal planing and making more deliberate choices on what I purchase. Yes that means no more sushi lunches (a pleasure I have always justified by buying my husband his own sushi for lunch too).
I think this is totally do able, and as we do this longer we can adjust as needed.
No comments:
Post a Comment