bumbershoot
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Mar 5, 2007
I had been attempting to track our grocery spending for ages. It never really worked for whatever purpose I vaguely had in mind, but when I found DR it was very helpful to set a start-point for the grocery budget.
There are only three of us here, no pets, but we eat organic, attempt to eat whole foods, but end up with organic/natural snack type things because I'm just not energetic enough to cook from absolute scratch all the time. Our grocery budget is *high*.
So I started off at the highest I'd seen, and we've whittled that down. Not to the point of pain, but to where we're generally hitting zero at the end. Though honestly this last month went so well despite some big differences that I think I can knock it down by another 50 and we won't feel it (yay).
I started off high and went low because I felt that would be better than having to take money from elsewhere, if I'd underestimated.
Along with figuring out where to start with groceries, I found the absolutes, the things that are paid every month and can't NOT be paid. We did not need to knock down cable, etc, and it sounds like you don't have to do that either...so our "absolutes" are higher than some others using DR (by the way, have you checked out llnoe.com? that's livinglikenooneelse.com, a message board for people who use DR's plan)...but we still needed to know them. So I worked that out, then the grocery, I set a small (compared to what we'd been spending) "family fun" budget/envelope, then a very small bit of money for each of the grownups in the house. This goes beyond your grocery budget, but...we did stop contributing to the 401k for this time, and that money is part of the "absolutes" that goes to the debt we're working on now (car). Plus another bit of extra money that had been part of an envelope that just didn't work out (we had "sinking fund" envelopes for things like clothing, but we realized that we like to just "cashflow" those things when needed, since we send what's left at the end of the month towards the next month's car payment instead of hitting zero at the beginning of the month). So those bits of money are sent to the car, along with the leftover at the end of the last month (this works for US, at this point in our lives, but isn't recommended b/c probably it doesn't work for most just like it woudln't have worked for us a year ago!)
Anyway, that's what we've done. Having the grocery budget has been so great for us. Especially since we get a monthly paycheck. If we got two paychecks we'd have to change the way we do things, but this way works out really well for us. It was a bummer at the end of April when we were at bare bones in the grocery envelope, and I came across a huge quantity of Prego Organic spaghetti sauce (our absolute favorite, it's SO good, and none of the normal stores are carrying it anymore) at Grocery Outlet, and could only buy two.....wahhhhhh! But then again, we just don't have the room for 20 jars of it.
There are only three of us here, no pets, but we eat organic, attempt to eat whole foods, but end up with organic/natural snack type things because I'm just not energetic enough to cook from absolute scratch all the time. Our grocery budget is *high*.
So I started off at the highest I'd seen, and we've whittled that down. Not to the point of pain, but to where we're generally hitting zero at the end. Though honestly this last month went so well despite some big differences that I think I can knock it down by another 50 and we won't feel it (yay).
I started off high and went low because I felt that would be better than having to take money from elsewhere, if I'd underestimated.
Along with figuring out where to start with groceries, I found the absolutes, the things that are paid every month and can't NOT be paid. We did not need to knock down cable, etc, and it sounds like you don't have to do that either...so our "absolutes" are higher than some others using DR (by the way, have you checked out llnoe.com? that's livinglikenooneelse.com, a message board for people who use DR's plan)...but we still needed to know them. So I worked that out, then the grocery, I set a small (compared to what we'd been spending) "family fun" budget/envelope, then a very small bit of money for each of the grownups in the house. This goes beyond your grocery budget, but...we did stop contributing to the 401k for this time, and that money is part of the "absolutes" that goes to the debt we're working on now (car). Plus another bit of extra money that had been part of an envelope that just didn't work out (we had "sinking fund" envelopes for things like clothing, but we realized that we like to just "cashflow" those things when needed, since we send what's left at the end of the month towards the next month's car payment instead of hitting zero at the beginning of the month). So those bits of money are sent to the car, along with the leftover at the end of the last month (this works for US, at this point in our lives, but isn't recommended b/c probably it doesn't work for most just like it woudln't have worked for us a year ago!)
Anyway, that's what we've done. Having the grocery budget has been so great for us. Especially since we get a monthly paycheck. If we got two paychecks we'd have to change the way we do things, but this way works out really well for us. It was a bummer at the end of April when we were at bare bones in the grocery envelope, and I came across a huge quantity of Prego Organic spaghetti sauce (our absolute favorite, it's SO good, and none of the normal stores are carrying it anymore) at Grocery Outlet, and could only buy two.....wahhhhhh! But then again, we just don't have the room for 20 jars of it.
! I love that thing, lots of fun and easy to use.
