The grocery budget. The place where your budget goes to die and you throw away ⅓ of your rotten produce at the end of the month. This can either be a huge budget hurt or an awesome way to get back some of your money. Do you know what your grocery budget should be?
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Americans tend to spend 6% of their budget on food. This means if you bring in $4,000 every month you will probably spend $240 on groceries. This does not include eating out. Typically, people spend another 6% on eating out at restaurants every month.
Do you know how much you are spending on food every month?
Take a minute and look at your expenses for the last month and add up how much you spent on food alone…eating out included! If you have never paid attention to how much you spend on food, I am guessing you are about to be pretty shocked at the total. Once you have the total, take that divided by your total income for the month. This will give you the percentage of your income you are spending on food.
- If you are in the 12-14% range, you should cut that in half.
- If you are in the 7-9% range, work on taking it down by 1% every month.
- If you are at 6%, good job! BUT, you can still try to improve. 6% is the average….don’t you want to be better than average?
How can you trim your grocery budget?
1. Buy groceries less frequently.
This is my ultimate secret! I only go grocery shopping once a month. This means I only have one opportunity to buy groceries per month. Only one chance to load my cart with unnecessary things.
If you limit yourself to one trip per month you won’t have impulse buys. You won’t have to stop at the store 10 times in a month to pick up a few items each time and grab other things you don’t really need, but think maybe you will eat. You can also save yourself the gas and the time of having to go to the store.
I understand you may have to go for milk or eggs at some point toward the end of the month, but if you try to limit yourself to one trip for the month, it will be so freeing and decrease the chance for unnecessary purchases.
When you do all of your shopping at one time, a few things will definitely happen to you. Do I like the looks that I get at Aldi with a heaping cart? No. Have I been asked a million times if I’m feeding the whole neighborhood? Yes. These things will just have to be expected as most people do grocery shopping once a week or even multiple times throughout the week.
Do I love only shopping once a month and then not worrying about it again for 30 whole days? Yes. It is such a relief to not have to fit it into my schedule more than once a month.
Try this for one month and see how much you love it!
Related Posts:
How Grocery Shopping Once a Month Saves You Time and Money
How to Grocery Shop Once a Month
2. Meal plan.
This is how I am able to only shop once a month. Meal planning is a total lifesaver. We plan our meals out for the month focusing on using up all our ingredients as we go. We use meals with fresh produce at the beginning of the month so they don’t go bad and we use our ingredients that can be frozen toward the end of the month. We keep it simple in our home with our menu and once we have a month planned we add it to our rotation. That is how we ended up with our dinners on auto-pilot. We have a 12-week meal rotation!
If you are new to meal planning, don’t worry. It really is very easy if you aren’t trying to be too fancy. Here is how to easily plan a month of meals.
Related Posts:
What’s For Dinner? How to Easily Plan a Month of Meals
Meal Planning for Beginners: 6 Reasons to Start Meal Planning Today
Monthly Meal Plan on a Budget: Less Than $100 For Dinners for a Family of 4
The Life Saving 12-Week Rotating Meal Plan
