Renee Emerson

this month i’ve been trying to cut back our grocery/out to eat budget.

bryan keeps our finances (i mean seriously, are you going to let the poet in the family keep the finances?), but i buy the groceries and do the meal-planning and cooking.

my weekly grocery budget has oscillated a lot the past year–the lowest i got it was $50 per week (which basically meant zuzu got to eat and that’s it haha), but now i figure i probably spend between $80 – $110 a week–a pretty wide range really.

i’m not sure what is really a good goal for a family of three. i figure this month my goal will be to see how much i actually spend per week on groceries and to keep it under $100. next month i’ll try to keep it under $90 each week then go down and down as much as i can.

as for our out to eat budget, i feel that varies wildly–on months where we travel or have family in town, we eat out more often, on months where we don’t have anything special going on we don’t eat out at all. ideally we would never eat out, but being a working mom it is sometimes hard to get up the gumption to cook a healthy dinner after a long day of teaching instead of head to chickfila.

i’m also going to start researching ways to cut back the grocery bill. a lot of the ways i’ve heard of aren’t possible for me–a working mom, i don’t have time for couponing. my yard is far too forested to get much from gardening (as the previous owners warned us), and our small town doesn’t have an aldi. farmers markets are a possibility–but, again, its finding the time.

one cheaper option i am going to try is making more things at home; i generally don’t buy frozen meals anyway, but there are some things i’ve recently discovered i can make just fine without a mix. most any dessert, for example.

and as i run out of cleaning supplies, i’m planning on trying some natural homemade options instead of buying more from the store. cleaning supplies are expensive, so hopefully this will help the budget. i’m wanting to especially try making my own laundry detergent, dishwashing soap, all purpose cleaner. and also trying out some homemade all natural health/beauty items–translucent powder, blush, deodorant, toothpaste. i know some of these might be time-consuming to make, but if i make a large batch then i won’t have to make them super often. ideally i would make my laundry detergent and such in-between semester breaks when i have much more time on my hands.

so, just to help me out, how much do you figure your family spends per week on groceries?
how much do you spend on out to eat (if any)? any tips on cutting back the grocery bill?