I have a budget for everything! I only budget 350 dollars for our monthly food expenses. We are a family of four and I think we do pretty good with it. What is your monthly budget? I am asking because a friend asked me and when I told her, she told me that this was cheap! :lol:
I budget everything too, and we have 400 a month for a family of 5 ( my kids are fairly young). But that includes all house hold items, like bathroom supplies, paper products, cat food, dog food, and chicken feed. Basically everything you can buy in the grocery store ( plus the chick feed) I also buy lots of things when they are on sale. For example I bought 10 lbs of chk breast because they were on sale cheap. We just recently upped the amount. I used to do it with 200, but I needed some more money to buy more convenience items. Like frozen meals, and paper plates. If you cook your own meals, and shop sales. It is way cheaper to buy things. But also local seems to be factor as well. HEB rocks for a grocery store chain. Other places do not have a good cheap place like that to shop at.
My monthly food budget for food expenses, which includes paper products, detergents and soaps, for a family of 5 is 500.00 This covers our soaps which are hand made by a local woman, detergents which are natural, paper products, cleaners again natural, toothpaste and all the other stuff! We do well for what we buy, and some months I don't spend the full 500.00
I don't have a food budget but jus told DH that I think we need one. So I have a question, what do you do if you run out of say milk or bathroom supplies and you have no more money for the month in the budget? Do I need to start an other thread for this question? I don't want to step on the toes of the OPer.
We're not monthly, but bi-weekly, because that's how dh gets paid. Every paycheck I am given $200 in cash for groceries, detergent, feminine supplies, TP, dogfood, etc. If I were to decide to take the kids through fast food, it would come out of that, too, so it's not something I do very often. So monthly it's between $400 and $500, depending on how it falls.
That is a great question, so I will answer what I do! I make a menu for the whole month which includes breakfast, lunch, dinner Shop for toilet paper, shampoos, hair spray, etc. once a month.. I pretty much know how much we use a month so I can buy accordingly. Then I shop and buy stuff weekly. I don't have a whole lot of cabinet space so I can't buy a whole lot of bulk. I have been doing this for a few years now, and it works well for our family. and I dont buy snack items .... I may buy popcorn or ice cream once in awhile but for the most point I dont. I can say that I can usally get an idea of how much I will spend at the store before I go now, which helps a bunch! I make a list and stick with it. ( my husband tho loves to add to it!) If I run out of something, than we make do, unless it is something of an emerancy... like no sugar, than I may just pick some up at the dollar store. (sorry for any type os.. it is late and my brain is fried)
Ours is 300-350 per month. We finally got a deep freeze so when something is on special, I can stock up. So if money is going to be tighter one month, (blew a tire, someone gets sick,etc) we have a reserve. If we run out of something before payday, we do without. We drink about 6 gallons of milk a week and I can't store that much, so I do end up making another trip or two. But that's part of the grocery budget. Fortunately, our store has milk for $1.99 a gallon!
We don't necessarily budget for food alone, but I spend around $200 a month on food and necessities. I've posted on other threads how we are able to do that: hunting/fishing, gardening, bakery outlets, and special arrangements with grocery stores to purchase expiring produce and dairy and split it between friends. I also visit a food panty on occasion. I take a bunch of garden produce in to share and take home with me a few canned/dry products for my pantry.
For a family of four, on a good month when we're able to have a well-rounded three meals/snacks daily, it runs $300-$400, but on the months I don't get any hours at work, we stretch $100 a month as much as possible.
I also make a fresh budget every two weeks because I'm hourly and my pay varies from check to check. I usually allot roughly $200 every two weeks just for food. I have a separate budget for household expenses (soaps, cleaners, lightbulbs, etc) of around $20 each check. Dog food/cat food/horsey stuff goes into a "pet" category. That one is $100 monthly, mostly because it costs $50 for the horse's boarding and we put back whatever is left for unexpected vet bills. We use an envelope system now and it's saved my sanity. (We're a family of 6, btw)
Wow. I don't know how you all spend so little. I try to spend $150 a week but right now our shopping choices rarely allow it. The store down the road depresses me as it seems every week prices are rising. The nearest store that would save us money would cost us in gas so it wouldn't even be worth it.
My husband calls me a scavenger. I buy what's 'cheap' and use what I get. I found that when I was making a meal plan, I was spending gobs more because I was shopping what I wanted, and not what was on sale/clearance/whatever. We don't eat processed foods for the most part because they are (unhealthy and) more expensive. I take the "shop the perimeter" approach: I buy produce, meats, and dairy. And that's about it. I rarely go down the aisles; the baking aisle, mostly, since I use tons of flour. Farmer's Market tends to have better deals on produce, but not always/everywhere.
Dustindreamer, trying spending cash for groceries. It REALLY makes a difference! We kind of use the "envelope system" Amie mentioned, but not exclusively. It's something I would do well on, but DH is a lot less careful about money than I am, and I have to constantly bite my tongue or else I'd be nagging all the time.
I find that grocery prices vary greatly depending on where you live. When we lived in Pennsylvania I was able to spend only 400 a month at the grocery store and I had two children in diapers and one that drank formula (we did get some formula from a local food pantry). We were a family of 4 then. Now here in Arizona I am spending 500.00 a month buying many of the same products (except our soaps and things because we are more natural now), and no diapers or formula, we don't even buy milk (I make soy and rice milks which are cheap to make myself).
Our budget is allocated a little differently... We have about $800 a month to cover food, paper/cleaning/hygene products, gas and any other entertainment that's not covered in our regular monthly bills. Some months I stock the pantry, some months we live on the pantry because we drive more places and pay more for gas. It's all kind of random and flexible! But as long as we stay within that, we are good. I've gotten better about just not going to the store as often... we save both food money and gas, and I just get more creative with what we have!
See, I can wear them, eat them AND save money by not having to do laundry. Who's laughing now. Hmmmm? ....... BWAHAHAHAHA!!! Wasn't too long ago someone else caught one of my typos with similar implications. :lol:
There are five of us and we have two options. Shop at the commissary or get yen and shop locally. I spend easily 500-600 dollars a month for our food and non food needs. Stateside I could the same shopping for 300-400. I miss getting grocery adds and comparing but back in the states we usually went to the super Walmarts.
