Grocery Makeover Challenge, am I up to it?
I am participating in a Grocery Makeover Challenge sponsored by 5 Dollar Dinners so that I can revamp our grocery budget. As I have shared before, I am challenged with two very big hits to our grocery budget. The first one being that we are gluten free. That in itself is huge. Here is a small example: A one pound package of spaghetti may cost you .79 on sale. My gluten free pasta is $1.88 on sale. Basically almost 3 times the price. The second challenge is we switched to a paleo diet. That is HUGE. The true paleo diet is ALL organic, non GMO, organic meat, dairy, fruit, veggies, etc. That basically added about $200-$400 to my monthly budget.
So thanks to this grocery challenge, I am taking baby steps to getting my grocery budget under control. Baby step one, was actually getting down and dirty and deciding what is a good budget for me. For my family of four, with the issues I face, and living in the San Francisco Bay Area. I decided on $1,100.
This number is loosely based on the numbers suggested by the United States Department of Agriculture.
For a family of four on a “moderate plan” which is what I considered mine to be, it says $1070 so I rounded it up to $1,100.
Another method I have used to get a good idea what my budget should be is by saving my receipts for a month and then adding them all up. You can then compare that to the numbers on the USDA recommendation or use Dave Ramsey’s suggestion of 5-15%, but that includes all food (dining out too).
What I plan to do with my budget is continue to work on shaving some of that down. I would like to try shaving off 10% every 4 weeks by using coupons, sales ads, etc until I get down to around $860 which is the “thrifty” category on the USDA recommendation. I’ve been slacking off with this method even though I know it works. So can I save $110 this month? I sure hope so.
I want to share a link to a grocery budget series I’ve done in the past. Its by Don’t Waste the Crumbs she has a great article and worksheets.
Here is the link to the current challenge I am doing Grocery Budget Makeover.
