This is the 4th post of my Grocery Budget Tracking in 2018! Can you feed your family a Clean Eating diet and still come in under your grocery budget? I’m about to find out! This is the real grocery budget of our family, who eats 15 pounds a week of pastured meat…and sometimes Poptarts.
In 2018, I’m committing to tracking my grocery budget twice a month. I hope that will help make it less overwhelming. I have a spreadsheet if you’re curious about every little thing we buy, but I’ll report the general numbers here on All Day Mom (just search “grocery budget” to find all the grocery budget tracking reports).
Read on for the 2 important frugal grocery tips I learned tracking February’s grocery budget!
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Frugal Grocery Tip #1: Figure Food Cost Per Day
Looking at the final totals for January and February grocery spending, it seems like we spent less in February. February only has 28 days, and January has 31, so that’s logical.
Short month vs. long month doesn’t make as much of a difference in our spending as another “not quite a problem” problem for our family: we have fewer “at home” days each month because we travel a lot. Restaurant spending on our trips and Disneyland vacations comes out of our vacation budget, not our grocery budget. That way I can track how much we spend when we’re at home.
Counting restaurant spending on trips would throw our regular grocery budget wildly out of whack. Sometimes we’re at Disneyland and spend about $200 a day on food, and sometimes we’re visiting Grandma and Grandpa and spend $0 on food thanks to their hospitality.
In January, we hermited at home after a high-spend Christmas season, so we were home 29 out of 31 days.
- Grocery cost per day in January: $31.03.
In February, we were only at home 23 days.
- Grocery cost per day in February: $36.50.
As I detailed in the last grocery budget tracking blog, February got out of hand in the first two weeks because I spent a ridiculous amount of money on junk food for a Super Bowl party, plus we had 2 spendy restaurant meals.
My higher grocery cost per day isn’t totally due to restaurant spending though! If I take out restaurant spending,
January cost per day for groceries: $24.63
February cost per day for groceries: $27.05
The February grocery bill includes our meat order, 26 lbs of pastured meat plus beef bones for bone broth (read how I store bone broth here), about $190. That meat order only covers about 13 family dinners, so it’s not actually a super high amount.
I spent a ton of money on milk in February: $30. This goes hand in hand with junk food spending: $37. I count cereal as junk food, and fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) our Phoenix grocery stores practically give cereal away during at least one sale a month. When there’s cereal in the house, guess what everyone wants to eat? And cereal needs milk.
Budget Solution:
Stop buying cereal (even when it’s $1 a box!) and I won’t need to buy so much milk!
If I had only bought 2 “gallons” of milk (organic milk jugs look like a gallon, but are only 96 oz!) and just spent $6 on candy to cover our weekly movie nights, my February grocery cost per day would have been within a few cents of my January grocery cost per day!
Grocery Cost Per Day Problem:
I think spending $25 per day on groceries for a family of 4 is still really high! (We spent about $25 per day in January and February not counting restaurants.)
Since I figured out several family dinners under $12 back in January I’m not sure how we ended up spending the same on breakfasts plus lunches as we did on dinners!
- The kids usually eat eggs of some sort for breakfast, and KC and I don’t eat breakfast.
- I pack a simple lunch for KC, and the kids and I usually eat leftovers for lunch.
The high cost per day is probably because I lost a bit of steam menu planning after tracking the cost per meal for all of January.
Grocery Cost Per Day Solution:
Keep tracking those meals! Based on my January grocery budget tracking, I know that twice-weekly homemade cheeseburgers and easy fried egg sandwiches after a long Sunday Meal Prep session really keep the grocery budget in line. But, I didn’t actually plan for those meals in February! Doh!
Frugal Grocery Tip #2: Track Grocery Spending Per Quarter!
I knew when I started tracking our grocery budget in January that any single month’s grocery spending will not tell the whole story.
My line item “grocery budget” was $600 for January & February, but I’m changing it to $520 groceries and $80 restaurants for March (more about that in the last grocery budget post).
That means my total grocery spending for January, February, and March should be $1720. haha, No. That is not going to happen this quarter! Not counting restaurants, I spent $1337 combined in January & February, leaving me with just $383 for March!
I’ll be over budget on groceries for this quarter of 2018 for sure, but with each month tracking my grocery spending, I’m learning new ways to spend less on groceries, so Quarter 2 spending should be right on target!
Here are my grocery spending totals for February:
Total Grocery Spending for February 2018: $622.29
Total Restaurants & Alcohol February 2018: $217.27
Total ALL Grocery Spending for February 2018: $839.56
I’m tracking my grocery budget by individual categories so I can see what we spend on meat, produce, dairy, etc., and I’m even tracking how much we spend on junk food, fast food, and restaurants! To see my 2018 Grocery Budget Tracking spreadsheet, please subscribe to All Day Mom (you’ll get instant access to all my subscriber exclusives, like this adorable BB-8 multiplication table printable!).
Have you read these frugal blog posts?
- Found Money #1 Freebies #2 Gift Cards #3 I Made The Call #4 Credit Card Points!
- How to upgrade to organic and save money on your grocery bill!
- Put fast food in your freezer for busy nights with these Paleo Chicken Nuggets!
- Feed your entire family a completely organic meal twice for less than the price of one combination plate at your favorite Mexican restaurant when you make Easy Enchiladas!
- Build your vacation budget from $0 to Disney with my book: Disneyland on a Budget: How Our Family Spends 30 Days a Year at Disneyland Without Breaking the Bank!
What’s Your Grocery Budget? Final Spending in January! Grocery Budget Tracking #2 Jan 16–31 2018
What’s Your Grocery Budget? Grocery Budget Tracking #1 Jan 1–15 2018
This grocery budget tracking post is featured on The Thrifty Couple here.
