Grocery Chronicles – Week 1

Who hates grocery shopping? I certainly do. I especially dislike it now that I am trying to be budget conscious. I don’t mean to sound like a spoiled brat, but I never had to watch our food budget until this year. I, quite frankly, never paid any attention. I just bought whatever I knew the family liked or wanted and barely payed attention to any sales. For me, it was all about convenience. I know that sounds very stuck-up of me. Unfortunately, I am guilty as charged.

I admit I have not been a good money manager. I am very embarrassed that it has taken me to this point in my life to pay attention to where our money truly goes. Okay, the first step is always admitting there’s a problem. Thank you for letting me do that here.

What should I do now that I know it’s time to address this issue? I started reading articles about food budgeting and the number one take away I got was – you need to brutally look at how you are spending money on food. You need to understand your current patterns before you can change anything. So, the first thing I did was research our food spend via our past three months’ bank statements and WOW was that an eye opener. The amount of money we spend on eating out, take-out, and Uber Eats is insane! In fact, it’s probably equal to some people’s mortgage payment (okay, that might be a bit of a stretch).

I also looked at our typical weekly grocery bill and I was surprised with that tally as well. I realized that we were in the habit of doing two grocery shops per week – one on Sunday that was technically our big shop and then again mid-week for staples. But the staples excursion always included much more than milk and bread. Bottom line, there was an incredible amount of room for improvement!

Besides the grocery store, there’s also those sneaky, pesky toiletry items you need from CVS or Rite Aid. It’s easily another $100 drop in one of those stores every time we visit. Again, I have not been looking at sale items or doing any cost comparisons before purchasing in these stores. This is another place that I need to put some focus on in order to save money.

My intent is to weekly chronical my budgeting success with food/toiletries here on my blog. Eventually, I intend to publish a detailed list of how to save money in these areas. Next week I will detail some “tricks” I’ve implemented that immediately saved me money. This week, I leave you with the following advice, 1) take an honest look at how much money you are spending on food/toiletries; 2) do not let your teenager set up an Uber Eats account; 3) eat in more than you eat out.