11/03/08
Holy grocery bill, Batman!
Well friends, momma really screwed the pooch on the grocery budget last month.
As you may recall, less than halfway through last month I noted that we were dangerously close to reaching our grocery budget for the month. I wondered if I could be creative enough to make the remaining little bit of money last through the rest of the month. Embarrassingly, I not only did not stay within the budget, I went well over the budget. Shameful.
This is the first month I've really and truly kept track of how much we are spending, so on most categories I just randomly assigned a figure for the budget. I allocated us $400 for groceries (including Nate's formula and jarred baby food) and last month we spent $695.41. Yes, I will give you a moment to recover and pick yourself up off the floor.
Almost $700 for two and a half people. That's beyond ridiculous. When I decided early last month that I was going to be really creative and make use of all the food we have in our freezer and pantry to get us through the end of the month, I was psyched and ready to make it work. But you know what they say about good intentions and that darned road to hell....
All I can do now is evaluate where I went wrong, figure out what I can do to avoid making those same mistakes this month (and all the months to come), and actually do the things that will keep us within budget. Because goodness gracious, do you know what I could have done with that extra $300 we spent for food? Well, yes, we could have saved it, but I could also have bought these beauties. Or just the left one of these.
4 comments
Another great thing to do for food (we've done groceries in the past, but still do eating out to this day!) is to put your grocery money in an envelope each month and then only buy groceries out of said envelope. It provides such a visual, tangible way to track your spending and for us has been extremely helpful.
Best wishes!
on 11/05/08 at 13:33
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