Wednesday, February 27, 2013

A budget question: How much is acceptable to spend on food?

Right now I am working on a realistic budget that will work for the two of us and our two dogs but I am unsure on what to aim for when it comes to setting an amount for food. Right now I know that we eat out waaaaaaaaay to much and we also spend more then we should at the grocery store as well. I would say on an average week we spend 50 dollars on eating out and 75 at the grocery store. Thinking of spending at least 500 dollars a month on food for two people gives me a headache. I am trying to lower our take out bill to 20 a week (one take out a week) for now hopefully lowering it as time goes on. What I am unsure of is how much to try and lower our grocery budget to? Since we are going to be eating out less I am tempted to keep it the same and try to lower it as the months go on but that seems like a cop out so I think I am going to shoot for 60 dollars a week with hopes of lowering it more as the months pass and I get better at this whole being thrifty thing. That will take us down to $320 a month (I tend to shop 4 times a month even if it  works out to be 5 weeks) with a savings of $180 dollars. Does this sound realistic or should I be aiming for even better savings? Making a budget I think we can stick to is harder than I thought!

2 comments:

  1. I don't think your numbers are unreasonable. ALthough I lump dining out and groceries into two different categories, since I consider dining out more as entertainment. Back when we live din the shack, and I was trying to scrounge every penny, the budget I tried to get to was $300 a month, but I rarely made that, usually it was $325 or 350. Now that we eat more whole foods, I spend a good $400 a month, but really sometimes I'm up to $500. We still spend about $150 a month on dining out, we only go out maybe once every two weeks but we like to go to nice places and we rarely order takeout (like once in the past few months). hope this helps!

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  2. Thanks so much for the reply! Im glad to hear we are not the only ones to have a flare for fancy foods! On thing I am really trying to work on is eating more whole and from scratch foods. Luckily we have a store called Sprouts in Colorado and they tend to have bulk items, (beans, rice, flour, sugar ect...) for very reasonable prices. Thanks again for the insight!

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