
As some of you may remember, in January I wrote a post about food budgeting and shared that I wanted to be more intentional about cutting our spending this year. I wrote about how we budget food and shared 4 tips for spending less at the grocery store.
The last time I shared an update on our 2016 food budgeting was back in April. You can read that post here. Since then, I have to be honest, I really haven't been paying all that much intentional attention to how much I spend on groceries each month. We still eat at home most nights with Jordan or I cooking, and we try to cook healthy meals, although the occasional hot dog or boxed mac 'n' cheese does make it into our rotation every now and again, and I have no regrets. No regrets, I tell you.
I did also try a free week of Hello Fresh meals thanks to a coupon I got from a friend of mine. Those meals were very tasty, but at this point it's too expensive for our budget at nearly $10/person per meal. Does anyone else do the boxed meal subscription? Do you like it?
I did also try a free week of Hello Fresh meals thanks to a coupon I got from a friend of mine. Those meals were very tasty, but at this point it's too expensive for our budget at nearly $10/person per meal. Does anyone else do the boxed meal subscription? Do you like it?
Anyway, I wanted to share an update on where we are now with our grocery spending this year so far.
Just as a refresher, in 2015 we spend on average $277 per month on groceries. This does not include eating out at all. It's just food we buy to cook meals at home. Also, on average per month in 2015 we spent $80 on lunch (that's Jordan and I combined total) and $80 on entertainment (eating out for dinner).
As I said, I haven't been paying much attention to grocery spending since the end of April, and I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that in May, July, and August I spent a pretty outrageous amount of money on groceries. To be fair, July and August were birthday months for Jordan, me, and R, so that was a lot of extra food for family and guests and parties that I normally wouldn't be spending. But still. Ouch.
Here's how 2016 looks so far:
January $277
February $185
March $276
April $170
May $443 <--- seriously, what. happened. Apparently we ate gold this month. I don't know.
June $185
July $388
August $316
The good news is that even with those insane months of spending and even though I haven't been paying that much attention, so far in 2016 we have spent on average $280 per month, which is, as you will note, almost exactly our 2015 average. So, there has basically been no improvement overall (bad) but it has stayed about the same thanks to a few months of low spending (good!).
The other good news is that thanks to my grocery rebate apps: Ibotta, Checkout51, and MobiSave, I have saved $74.10! That is not even including money I got for referring people. That's just straight up dollars saved in rebates! If you don't have grocery rebate apps, hello what are you waiting for? Use my referral link for Ibotta and get $10 back your first time using it! None of the numbers above include grocery rebates, by the way.
OKAY. So depending on how you look at it, this experiment where I try to spend less on groceries has been a fail so far, because I'm not spending less at all. So here's what I want to do for the last 4 months of 2016: spend a maximum of $200 each month. If I do this, I will end up with an overall 2016 average of $255, which would be an average monthly savings of roughly $20 a month from 2015. That's $240 a year savings! Did you follow all that math? Sorry if that was confusing.
I'm not sure if I have a point in this post except to share an update of where we are. I will check back at the end of the year to see how I did with my new goal. In the meantime, check out my budgeting page for more or go back and read the first few posts in this food budgeting series!
Please leave any comments/feedback/questions in the comments or shoot me an email!
Please leave any comments/feedback/questions in the comments or shoot me an email!
Questions for you:
Do you eat at home a lot or eat out?
How much do you typically spend per month on groceries?
What is your favorite cheap meal to make?