Here's the link to Jan Part 2...
Jan Meal Planning Part 2

Feb. grocery budget will be $160 ($150 reg. grocery budget + $10 carried over from Jan.)

Feb meals will incorporate what I have in the freezer (mostly items bought on sale).

Fresh produce, dairy, and meat have gone up quite a bit in my area. Hopefully it's only for the winter. I'm going to try and do everything with $300 for a month. That does take in pets, household, health and beauty, food.

I think that I can do it.

Striving, That would be very impressive!

I've set up a spreadsheet to do a better job of tracking February "grocery and household" (GHH)expenses. Anything that is either groceries or household counts, wherever it is bought - doesn't have to be only at the grocery store.

I don't have separate budgets for every category. That would not only be time-consuming to set up, but what I buy varies enough that having a "standard" amount wouldn't be very feasible. But for each type of expenditure, the total amount should be fairly consistent from month to month.

The subcategories within the GHH are: food; household items (cleaners, light bulbs, paper products, batteries, trash bags, etc.); pet food and related items such as kitty litter; personal items (toothpaste and brushes, shampoo, lip balm, soap, cough syrup, etc.); cards or gifts, including flowers;donated items (such as for church food baskets for the needy, or grocery certificates also given to the needy); supplies (pens, paper, staples); and other (whatever else is left, including film, the occasional magazine or potted plant); and sales tax. The tax is a separate category, which I won't break down. Most food in MD isn't taxed, but other items are (except prescription drugs, but I don't get them at the grocery store).

I'll try this and see how well it works. The secret is to record the expenses AS SOON AS I CAN AFTER I BUY THINGS, and EVERY time I buy them. An incomplete record is only marginally useful. But we can find out interesting facts if we keep track of what we spend.

Keeping a spending log is, indeed, an eye opening experience. That was the first thing I did, when I started budgeting. I kept a daily log of every single expense for 3 months and augmented it with a year's worth of check book entries to catch those quarterly, semi-annual, and annual expenses. I used those records and averaged them to come up with a monthly spending amount.

I do have to watch myself with tracking, though... I can easily get obsessive about "perfect" charts and lists, and forget to actually use them as TOOLS. All the planning sheets in the world won't help me if I'm not using them as tools, rather than as a result.

One thing I've done to help track without letting myself get toooo into it, is to give myself rough budgets within the grocery budget. For instance, if I have $100 to spend in the week (which is pretty common for us), I'll allocate $15 of that to household supplies (non-food), $20 to produce, $20 to meats, $25 to dairy, etc, and put that target at the top of that section of the grocery list. It's far easier for me to keep track of 4-10 items and come in under that budget, than to keep a running total of the whole list, and I can adjust on the fly, but still stay under my total cash budget.

Elizabeth, if that works for you, that's the system you should use. I don't think it would help me, particularly. Some weeks I need mostly food, other weeks I seem to buy a lot of household items, personal-care items, etc. For now, I am striving to simply hold the line at the total amount, and am getting better at it.

How do you only spend $100 a week for food AND non-food for 6 people? In proportion, I spend more than you do for 2 people. I believe you grow some of your own food (veggies, eggs, chicken (?)), but I'm still amazed that you can spend so little. I don't think groceries are that much cheaper where you are than where we are.

Those allocations change as needed; it entirely depends on what I need to do that week. We tend to run out of things like laundry soap and TP at the same times.

We don't need to buy a great lot in the way of household and personal care stuff, which makes a difference, I think. Our cleaning supplies are pretty basic, we buy shampoo/conditioner twice a year or so in bulk. And there are some ways of eating that are just a lot cheaper for larger families, versus small families or singletons. We're sure not growing things right now, though we are enjoying "home" eggs; they're definitely egg-only chickens, as they are also the 5yo's beloved pets, so they can look forward to a long, clucky life.

The vast, vast majority of everything we buy is unprocessed, single-ingredient food, since I'm willing and able to cook from scratch most of the time. Not everyone is set up to do that.

(The up-side of using more processed things is that there are great coupon options... no one gives coupons on bulk carrots that are already down to 40c a pound, versus packaged baby carrots that run closer to $2.50 a pound. )

A normal shopping trip sees us buying heavily in the fresh produce section (in-season fruits & veg, local and regional preferred), then hopping over to the bulk bins (where we buy targeted quantities of grains, flour, sugars, herbs, spices, dried fruits, nuts, honey, baking supplies, and chocolate).

From there, we hit canned goods (usually the smallest part of our run, actually!) and then we're into the meat/cheese section. We go local/regional there for most everything, but we get a lot of our protein from grains/legumes and eggs/cheese, so our meat needs are smaller per meal without reducing the nutrition content. We have local dairies, so low milk prices can be had... I can regularly find gallons of whole, sustainably-farmed milk under $2 a gallon, which is a LOT lower than most areas of the country, and it's a good thing, too, because we can go through five to six gallons of milk in an average week!

DH is slowly becoming resigned to a less-carnivorous lifestyle. I go for small roasts and whole chickens or thighs over cuts of meat or breasts, and then prep them in such a way that the meats are finely sliced or shredded, used as a flavor, rather than a main feature in the meal. Most of the cuisines we like incorporate that feature.

After that, we hit the freezers for fruit if it's on special, and frozen peas (I love those, and won't eat canned, so it's fresh in the summer, and frozen the rest of the time), then the household aisle if we need to, then we're done.

Back when we had two children, the budget was $50 a week, so you can see that we've opened it up quite a lot adding two more kids; I don't have to budget quite so rigorously as I once did.

So, all that's very long-winded to say: I don't pay for packaging. The vast majority of what comes into the house is in "original format", with as little processing and packaging as possible.

I'm thinking of the packaged stuff in the pantry right now: it's canned veg & canned beans, some canned fruit, jars of marinated artichokes and olives; two boxes of pudding mix; a bottle of syrup, and some peanut butter. I've got a big stock of various mustards and similar condiments in the fridge, but beyond those few things, if someone wants food at my house, there's going to be prep work involved, as everything is in a "single ingredient" state most of the time. It gives me a lot of flexibility, particularly in how things are budgeted.

If I bought prepared pizza, all that money is tied up in just pizza. However, buying single ingredients, I can use flour for a zillion different things, and those tomatoes might be turned into pizza sauce, or pasta sauce, or salsa, or bruschetta... I'm not restricted, and that spent money is very flexible.

I have a bulk container of dry pasta. If I bought packaged pasta/sauce combos, they are limited in application. My raw ingredients can let me turn that pasta into mac & cheese, or primavera, or lo mein, or cold pasta salad, or a saucy casserole. LOTS of options to utilize that grocery money.

Come summer, we'll divert some of the produce money (as we'll be growing our own) and use that to stock up on local sustainable meats for the fall/winter. It's a whole cycle.

Since DH and I both work from home, and we do have willing hands to help, and we *like* growing our own food and having pet chickens, and *enjoy* cooking as a family, this sort of process and budget work for us. It's definitely not something everyone is going to enjoy. I think it's important to focus individual priorities; this is one for us, but not for everyone, and that's cool. I do consider groceries as a "flexible" budget category, and can tighten down by a good half for a week or three if I must, though I'd prefer not to do it.

Tuesday: We had cranberry chicken, cranberry risotto, and tossed salad.

Wednesday: We had salmon patties, baked beans and Oriental salad.

Thursday: We had manicotti and tossed salad.

Friday: I premade stuffed peppers with brown rice and gound beef. We'll have corn and steamed broccoli. For dessert, I have some apples that we need to use so I'll make an apple topping to put over ice cream and crumble up some cookies.

This weekend, I hope to make up some muffins and do a couple of bulk cooking sessions.

On Saturday, before we leave, I'll put sloppy joes into the crock pot so we can come home to a hot meal after being outside for the day. I'll prep some fresh vegetables as well.

Sunday we're looking forward to our buffet.