This grocery budget report June 2018 includes money spent on actual groceries and dining out.
It's about that time for another grocery budget report! These are more like food spending reports. I would like to keep our monthly dining and grocery spending $700 or under which seems like a lot for 2 people, but we definitely have gone over every month because of all the "life things" that have gone down and surprise surprise, this month is no exception.
June is over and I am honestly kind of shocked about what we spent on food this month. It is nearly HALF of what we spend on average. Even though I think I know why, it's just proof that things really can be varied a bit month to month. I've also been looking up the #zerofoodwaste hashtag on Instagram and I am inspired to cut down on food waste AND unnecessary spending.
Even though I do like to focus on high quality foods, I do know that there are some things that I buy impulsively without a plan and there are things that I make with too many leftovers that go bad. Also, I did get a lot of shit for spending $1000 on groceries back in April from other people. They explained how THEY keep theirs under $300 and a lot of it came down to whether or not they bought or ate rice and grains. Not going to happen here any time soon!
Check Out . . .
Grocery Budget Report June 2018
Notable Things That Happened in June:
- We were SO DAMN BUSY! Honestly, I was fully booked most of the month in my Personal Chef Business and Mike was working 5-5p. We got home, ate dinner went to bed and repeated the process. I shopped for groceries for SO many other people that it was actually hard to shop for us. I mostly relied on the meat stash I bought back in April from Whole Foods but I depleted a lot of it!
- We did get a Butcher Box this month. I delayed it to come every 2 months and I also switched the box to only include beef. I kept feeling like getting things like chicken thighs and pork in the box was kind of a waste for us because I could easily find that elsewhere. With an all beef box, I am able to get a variety of grass fed beef to use. Even though I will probably stick to getting a box every OTHER month, I still am feeling like it may not be the best deal for us financially. Clearly, I cannot make up my mind.
- We only went out to dinner TWICE while we were home. We did take a 4 day trip to NJ I'll explain next but I somehow was able to cook almost every single night we were here. Not only that but we went to a BBQ place and 5 guys as our date nights which both costed under $30 each. I think that the way I eat (mostly keto) is a big determining factor of our dining out choices now. I tend to be happy with a lot less and don't feel like spending a lot on food I know will make me feel bad. I also know that only dining out twice made a DRAMATIC change in how much we spent so my thought is that maybe only dining out every other week may be a good thing for us? Obviously this will depend on the activities of the month.
- We took a trip to NJ for 4 days in my home town. Since I had some extra cash from being really busy, I withdrew a surplus from my business account to fund our travel spending. This meant basically food. I don't want to count this towards food spending since we usually put money aside for travel spending anyway. Had we not gone away, I think maybe we would have gone out to eat at least once and probably have made a small grocery run which would probably result in making the spending about $100 more. But that's not how it happened this month!
- I relied on SIMPLE IS BETTER method when it comes to food. I often think I have to make these elaborate recipes for dinner that have a lot of ingredients when in actuality its ok most of the time to pair meat with a veggie and some seasonings and call it good!
Metrics:
Grocery Budget Report June 2018
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- Grocery Spending: $372.26 ( -$210.91 from last month)
- Dining Out Spending: $61.61 (-$79.94 from last month)
- My Husbands Unfortunate Gas Station & Subway Habit: $59.51 (-$35.11 from last month)
- Total Spent on Food, Dining out and Husband's Addiction: $493.38 (-$322.62 from last month)
Looking at the numbers now, I am super motivated by the fact that it IS possible for us to spend less on food. That extra money can go towards house projects, travel and paying of dreaded student loan debt while still eating really good.
For the month of July I am vowing to meal plan more and actually write down what we're going to eat and make it on more of a schedule including our lunches during the week.
My goal for the month of July since we don't have any travel coming up is to spend abut $700 for the entire month. I will also be doing something different and withdrawing cash for for groceries and dining out. When I took out the cash in NJ I was MUCH more conscious of our spending seeing it physically go and I want to experiment with that feeling more and hopefully have that drive our motivations differently.
Valerie Skinner is a Whole30 approved personal chef & recipe developer that bridges the gap between healthy eating and busy lives by providing simple healthy meals and recipes for you and your family.
Thyme and JOY is a parnter with the Whole30 Approved program. For more information about the Whole30 reset and Personal chef services in Charleston check out these links:
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