All Food Budgets Are Not Created The Same
Yes, hers was a weekly budget, mine a monthly. Her family was smaller, but I had figured that into my calculations. I knew we had made some different food choices and that definitely was a factor, but why was I so far off from the bottom line?
Reading frugal blogs was most helpful to me in my quest to live within my means. My food budget seemed to be the area with the most “play room,” but I was stymied in trying to meet another blogger’s food budget goal. As my readings continued though, I realized all food budgets are not created the same.
Personally, I find it most helpful to shop monthly for my basic supplies at Costco and Walmart. The remaining week’s purchases usually consist of fresh produce, milk and any specials I might find at the grocery store. Where I live, there is only one main supermarket chain, and so couponing is not as beneficial as it might be elsewhere and is not a mainstay in my shopping strategy.
A separate hospitality sub-category is a part of my food budget in order to not be caught short when invited out or needing to purchase some item not found in my cupboards. Also, we often host houseguests on a regular basis and have many friends come to eat a meal with us, so I needed to be sure I was prepared for this part of our lives. I learned this lesson the hard way!
Continuing to evaluate different food budgets, I realized my overall amount would be more than some with which I had compared, due to extra categories. For instance, this is how my “food expenses” break down:
All foods
Pet foods
Paper supplies
Wheat berries to grind for homemade bread
Water filtering system
Water filters
Eating out (rarely practiced unless a special occasion. By keeping this in the regular food budget, it helps us to really see the “cost” of a meal not made at home.)
Cleaning supplies
Laundry aids
I also make some bulk purchases several times a year and I either save up for these items or prorate the costs in my budget for the next several months.
The realization that budgets are interpreted differently really helped me to keep a perspective and not be defeated about my personal progress. I also found that for our circumstances, keeping myself on too tight of a “leash” and seeking to meet a weekly total, defeats my personal shopping strategy. I have learned that the frugal life can be a unique experience for each of us, and I now know that all food budgets are not created the same.
What have you learned about food budgets?
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6 Responses to “All Food Budgets Are Not Created The Same”
May 27th, 2010 at 10:52 am
The thing I have learned about food budgets is to start paying attention to the cost of individual items. Certain things, like potatoes or sugar or eggs, I used to just toss in the basket without really registering the price. But the other day, I was at the store and I realized just how much everything had gone up – sugar was almost $3, potatoes $4 and eggs (I try to get the organic) were OVER $4! I was in shock. I had been feeling like a failure because I couldn’t seem to stick with my budget, but in reality stuff just costs more. A dinner of eggs and toast isn’t as economical as it used to be.
I am trying to re-align my budget with reality, figure out ways to cut costs (started baking my own bread), and think outside the grocery store (like hitting farmer’s markets).
May 27th, 2010 at 11:00 am
Our income has increased substantially in the last few years. I used to have to really work our budget to make it work so food was the area I had the most control over. I learned to do a lot from scratch and not eat out. I think my biggest and hardest thing to learn is to let loose more. Food is a way to create the home environment I want with delicious foods we enjoy. Also, it is nice to be able to allow more convienience foods during baseball season. It has been so hard to learn to let go in this area! We have the money, but I just am so programmed to hold it tight because we may need it in another area. I still see many friends constantly eat out while I just don’t find value in that.
May 27th, 2010 at 4:13 pm
I am so glad you posted this. It was the first post I read (saw your button on another blog), and it made me feel a lot better.
I have some unique situations in cooking. While some people can fix oatmeal for breakfast every morning, I can’t. My husband has to have savory breakfasts, which require things like eggs (sometimes–we waffle between vegetarian and vegan), tofu, potatoes, sweet potatoes, plantain bananas, and the occasional whole-grain cereal (millet, buckwheat, quinoa) with something like a soy souffle. He grew up in a country where wheat was a luxury, so he doesn’t like eating a lot of it. While we eat a lot of beans (which I soak and cook myself), we also use things like coconut oil that are more expensive than what the average person uses.
I make almost everything from scratch and try to buy in bulk as much as I can, but for the past few months I have struggled to stay within my food budget. Just when I think I’ve got a handle on it, something changes. Right now I’m buying my son hemp milk, because he’s allergic to dairy and soy, and rice milk is pretty protein deficient (although he still drinks a lot of that–homemade, mind you). I buy him organic beets and carrots, and we have all started eating the organic carrots, because the regular ones are so tasteless! So it seems when I cut one area (like buying my own soybeans and making soymilk and tofu–which is way cheaper than buying those in the store, or their dairy counterparts), another area goes up.
We just recently adjusted the food budget to a more realistic number. I realized that if I wasn’t buying the hemp milk, I could stick with my budget. I also realized that a good portion of our budget went to fresh produce, and I wasn’t about to make my family not eat fresh fruits and veggies.
Like you, I can’t really get much out of coupons. I tried for a few weeks when we lived in town a couple of years ago. I opened the Sunday or Wednesday or whatever-day-it-was-that-the-coupons-came paper and looked for things I could use. Mostly I ended up buying cleaners that I didn’t need, because none of the food items on sale are things we would eat.
But I’d like to think that in a way we are investing in our future. By eating healthier, slightly more expensive food, we are hopefully setting ourselves up to be healthier in the future and to avoid some of the debilitating diseases that people who live on junk food end up getting. At least, that’s my theory, and I’m sticking to it!
May 27th, 2010 at 4:34 pm
my food budget is exactly as it should be…a food budget….and where i live forget coupons unless you want to spend what you save in coupons to buy the gas to get you at a store that accepts the coupons. food prices have gone way up and are right now still high. the price of tomatoes used to be .69-.79 cents per lb…now up to 2.79 per lb. i actually do have budgets for meat, veg., dairy etc… i stock up on meat and dairy for the frreezer at the military base when i go to the base for medical care or prescription refills. produce i get from local grocery or farmers market. toilet paper and pet food i usually get at walmart. i make my own laundry detergent and other cleaning supplies using baking soda, vinegar, a bar of fels naptha (which will last more than one year) and a bottle of ammonia for the tough grease or wax. also i keep on hand a large tub of oxyclean (which has lasted for approx three years now) for cleaning mold, mildew and stains. i use cloth instead of paper towels/paper napkins. also, when i buy veg. or fruit i usually will buy large quantities and what cannot be consumed quickly will get canned (sometimes with the leftowver chicken or beef roast for stew or dumplings or soup). i am getting pretty good at making my own bread which is less than half the cost of buying it. i try reallly hard to not just save in the grocery store but also on the gas to get me there so i may have five or six stops before getting back home with the goodies…for instance drug store, grocery store, library, walmart, gas station, maybe a department store, visit with friends and so on. i rarely eat out after getting deathly ill from restaurant food many years ago and when i showed my husband how much a year he was spending so he could have pizza once a week he fell into being cooperative and helpful. even with the scrimping, making do and not wasting anything..it is becoming harder and harder to do…especially for those who live on a military or social security pension..especially today, a person has to think out of the box, be resourceful and creative.
May 28th, 2010 at 11:36 am
I recently starting making a spreadsheet to track the best prices I’ve found on items we regularly buy. I get a lot of items at Sam’s club, where the prices are very stable, so if I’m at a regular grocery store I can compare a sale price to the list of Sam’s club prices I have stored in my brain.
I’ve also learned to stock up when prices are at their lowest. It sounds ridiculously obvious, but for some reason this concept only recently clicked for me. I currently have a freezer full of chicken breasts and over a dozen boxes of pasta in my pantry, and that’s just to feed two people! But the prices were the lowest I had ever seen them. It’s all about looking at the math to figure out what really is a good deal, and not getting tricked into “sale” prices that the grocery wants you to think is a good deal.
May 28th, 2010 at 5:26 pm
I think the most important thing is that you are aware of what you’re spending on food, and that you’re content with the choices you make in that regard.
I happen to have a market nearby with amazing markdowns on meat, plus a Mennonite CSA which is very affordable for produce, supplemented by a backyard garden. Those are the 2 factors which keep our food budget in check, at least until my little ones grow up to be bigger eaters!
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