These simple tips and ideas will help you know how to create a grocery budget, learn how to stay on a grocery budget, and reduce grocery spending.
Trying to stay on a grocery budget can be challenging. There are times when it may seem like there is never enough money left at the end of the month to purchase the groceries you need.
For some, you are trying to figure out how much money would be reasonable to spend on groceries and how to stick to a food budget. You might wonder how you can reduce your grocery spending.
For others, a grocery budget may seem restrictive and that you can’t buy your favorite things.
Whatever the challenge, your monthly grocery budget can have an impact on your overall financial situation, so it’s important to learn how to stay on a grocery budget.
If you struggle with how to stick with a grocery budget and make it work, or if you’re not sure of how to create a grocery budget, below are 9 tips to help you know how to stay on a grocery budget, create a grocery budget, and reduce your grocery budget over time.
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1. Calculate Your Current Spending
Before you can figure out how to stay on a grocery budget, you need to first know how much money you are currently spending on groceries.
This may take some of your time, but look back at your bank statements for the past 3-4 months and take a monthly average to see how much money you’ve been spending on groceries.
Another option to figure out what your spending on groceries is to track your food spending this month by keeping all your grocery receipts and writing it down on a paper or notebook.
Doing this will give you a good idea of how much money you are spending on groceries.
2. How to Create a Grocery Budget
Now that you know about how much money you spend on groceries in a month, you can create a realistic grocery budget.
Every family is different and has different needs. A grocery budget will be unique to your family situation, where you live, and your dietary needs. So it’s important to figure out a grocery budget that will work for you.
A recommendation and starting point when creating a grocery budget is to budget $100 per family member per month.
For a single-person, start with a base amount of $200. For a two-person household, start with a base of $300. This allows for room in the budget to stock up on sale items.
For my family, our food budget for a family of 5 is $500 per month.
When grocery shopping weekly, break the monthly grocery budget total down into weeks. And each week only spend that amount when you grocery shop. For example, for our family that would be $125 for a weekly grocery budget.
So you might be asking, “What should I include in my grocery budget?”
Some people say that the grocery budget is just that–groceries only.
However, for our family, our grocery budget also includes household and personal hygiene items.
I think it’s completely doable to include household and personal hygiene items in the grocery budget, but every family’s situation is different, so you decide what will work best for your family’s grocery budget.
With any extra money leftover at the end of the month, I also purchase extra food items that I can keep in my kitchen pantry and in my basement food storage.
As your grocery budget allows, try to purchase 2-4 extra items each grocery shopping trip when an item is on sale. This will save you money because it’s on sale, and then you’ll have the item on hand for a dinner another day.
This could also save you from having to run to the store in the middle of the week because you will already have the item in your pantry that you need for dinner.
