Meeting Grocery Budget Goals – Almost There

I’ve been working on getting the grocery bill decreased.   In December we reviewed our Quicken reports and realized that the spending on our grocery bill was much higher than we had budgeted.  That is one of the many great features of using Quicken for tracking finances.  It is very easy to find out what you spent on any category of purchases from entertainment to food costs to medical expenses.  This is dependent, of course, on how accurately you enter the information in to Quicken.  Since we update our finances on a weekly basis, it has never been too much of a burden.  However, I find that if I am tired when doing the weekly update, I may not do as many “split” transactions as my husband does, because he will really hunt through every receipt and make sure that every item is categorized exactly.  I may just “round the numbers” and lump stuff into “household” if the majority of items on the receipt are household related, such as when I shop at Target. 

Anyway, back to the grocery budget.  After analyzing the spending, we came up with a plan to aggressively reduce the amount of spending on food.  Our new monthly food budget was set at $500.  I wrote down a detailed menu including some items that are meatless dishes since they tend to be less expensive.  After compiling the menu list, I then came up with a grocery shopping list.  I’ve been very vigilant to watch the grocery store ads this past month and was fortunate to have found a wonderful Buy One Get One free sale going on which allowed me to stock up on items we regularly use.  I have also been compiling a price comparison worksheet, which is comprised of the specific items we purchase along with prices from the local stores.  At a glance I can see which items are cheapest at which stores.  (Surprisingly, Target seems to be cheaper on several different items including cereal.)  I have kept a running total of grocery expenses for the month by keeping our Quicken finances updated daily instead of weekly.  Now at any time I know what our total grocery expenses for the month are.  This has allowed me to really curtail the spending.  Our current expenses are $440. 

 

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