I give myself $350 a month to spend on household stuff. This is our grocery budget, yes, but other stuff too. I play a game with myself to see how far under the $350 I can keep it.
Once in a while, like this month, I skip my giant monthly stock up grocery trip and live off the stockpile (except for dairy and produce, obviously) when the pantry goes from "full" to "stuffed".
So... here's the cost break down, with only one week left in January:
The Good: (Total $173)
$108 on edible groceries
That's $4.50 a day, for two adults, one toddler, and one infant. Pretty good.
(However, DH bought hot dogs and buns and donuts, and I bought cereal and pop- these junky items accounted for $22 in stuff we didn't need, roughly 1/5 of our total edible grocery spending.
Wow. Junk food is expensive.
If we had nixed the junk, we only would have spent $86 so far this month, or $3.58/day.)
I've also spent $12 on durable goods- cloth napkins, an apron for myself, books and magazines, a man jewelry box for DH, several small books and toys for the kiddos, and two pairs of shoes for DD. (Gotta love Vinnie's!)
I also bought DH and I new stainless steel water bottles from Walgreen's, but I had a $10 gift card to do that, so that's $0.
Again, nothing super frivolous. Pretty good.
I also spent $7 on postage, to send prints to my annoying, emailess relatives
, $21 on gas for my van (had already burned thru the gas money this month, so it came out of household), and $25 on DD's dance class tuition.
The Bad: ($61)
$41 on non-food consumables.
Bah! I cannot seem to get this budget category down to less than 1/3 of what I spend on groceries. To be fair, DH was very sick this month, so $11 of that $41 went to prescriptions, but geez... I make toothpaste, sunblock, laundry stuff, cleaning stuff, SIL keeps us in soap, I use reusable containers for leftovers... why do I spend so much on stuff that gets thrown away?! Drives me nuts.
$20 a year of magicJack service. Forgot about this bill so we didn't have a phone and spent a whole day trying to figure out why,
. Didn't have it left in our allotted utility money, so it came out of household.
The Ugly: ($33)
I spent $33 this month of fast food! Eek! Three different drive thru visits. And I have the pimple on my chin to prove it.
One visit was excusable- I took the kids to the evil McPlayland when DH was sick so he could get some rest. But the other two were just poor planning.
So my total is $267. That leaves me $93 to get through this week (which hopefully I won't spend anything, as we have plenty of food in the house and the van is full). I'm under budget. Good.
But... if we had planned better for gas and utilities, I'd have $41 more left in household. If we'd bypassed the junk food, we'd have $22. And if we'd cruised passed the evil drive thru, we'd have $33 more. That's $96 total, or over 25% of total household spending.
So not too bad, but I can certainly do better.
Once in a while, like this month, I skip my giant monthly stock up grocery trip and live off the stockpile (except for dairy and produce, obviously) when the pantry goes from "full" to "stuffed".
So... here's the cost break down, with only one week left in January:
The Good: (Total $173)
$108 on edible groceries
That's $4.50 a day, for two adults, one toddler, and one infant. Pretty good.
(However, DH bought hot dogs and buns and donuts, and I bought cereal and pop- these junky items accounted for $22 in stuff we didn't need, roughly 1/5 of our total edible grocery spending.
Wow. Junk food is expensive.
If we had nixed the junk, we only would have spent $86 so far this month, or $3.58/day.)
I've also spent $12 on durable goods- cloth napkins, an apron for myself, books and magazines, a man jewelry box for DH, several small books and toys for the kiddos, and two pairs of shoes for DD. (Gotta love Vinnie's!)
I also bought DH and I new stainless steel water bottles from Walgreen's, but I had a $10 gift card to do that, so that's $0.
Again, nothing super frivolous. Pretty good.
I also spent $7 on postage, to send prints to my annoying, emailess relatives
, $21 on gas for my van (had already burned thru the gas money this month, so it came out of household), and $25 on DD's dance class tuition.The Bad: ($61)
$41 on non-food consumables.
Bah! I cannot seem to get this budget category down to less than 1/3 of what I spend on groceries. To be fair, DH was very sick this month, so $11 of that $41 went to prescriptions, but geez... I make toothpaste, sunblock, laundry stuff, cleaning stuff, SIL keeps us in soap, I use reusable containers for leftovers... why do I spend so much on stuff that gets thrown away?! Drives me nuts.
$20 a year of magicJack service. Forgot about this bill so we didn't have a phone and spent a whole day trying to figure out why,
. Didn't have it left in our allotted utility money, so it came out of household.The Ugly: ($33)
I spent $33 this month of fast food! Eek! Three different drive thru visits. And I have the pimple on my chin to prove it.
One visit was excusable- I took the kids to the evil McPlayland when DH was sick so he could get some rest. But the other two were just poor planning.So my total is $267. That leaves me $93 to get through this week (which hopefully I won't spend anything, as we have plenty of food in the house and the van is full). I'm under budget. Good.
But... if we had planned better for gas and utilities, I'd have $41 more left in household. If we'd bypassed the junk food, we'd have $22. And if we'd cruised passed the evil drive thru, we'd have $33 more. That's $96 total, or over 25% of total household spending.
So not too bad, but I can certainly do better.
And I got out of Target by only buying 1 item I hadn't intended to (winter themed pj's which will be a gift for my SIL next Christmas for only $4.98!!!). But then bombed in Jo-Ann's.
