It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted anything as we’ve been busy moving into our new home this summer and have been working on improvements with the place ever since! I’ll be sure to post some updates on what we’ve been up to soon for those of you that might be interested!
In the meantime, let’s pause and take a moment of silence for our wallets and savings/investments!!!! WOW!
We just finished our monthly budget review of August 2022 and we were flabbergasted to find out that we spent $1,555 on groceries!!! We’re a fairly frugal family and occasionally splurge on dining, trips, etc. but its typical for us to buy fresh produce and meats/cheeses month to month as we prefer to eat well at home so we do pay a bit more for groceries overall. Having said this, this number does not break out paper (toilet paper, paper towel, plates/cutlery), pet food (for our cat Pika), or other non-edible grocery items separately. Roughly $100-$150 accounts for non food related goods. That still means that we spent about $1,400 on food this past month! DANG!!
My first mortgage payment wasn’t this expensive! Food single handedly has become our single highest expense outside of our housing costs, which run about $2,500/month. We were curious when the last time we spent this kind of money for groceries was and we had to look back to December 2021 when we hosted family at our place for dinner at Christmas time. The time before that was Christmas 2019! Both of which we hosted a number of people in our home for dinner and visit and likely accounts for an additional 10-15% in additional food expense that month. A-typical for what we would normally spend on food throughout the year!!
When we reviewed what we had spent our money on for food this month a few things stood out. Mainly it appeared that we had gone off the rails being that we’re in a new place and been busy working on different projects here at home, we leaned toward prepared foods and easy prep meals. The new house we moved into three months ago has been alot of work (think flooded basement, new double garage, and complete overhaul of the front and rear yard), so we’ve been heating up prepared meals, and buying low prep dishes as opposed to making home cooked meals from scratch. With the rising costs of food lately, this really took a toll on our pocketbook! Another thing we noticed is that we don’t have a large freezer or fridge in the new place so we’re needing to make more trips to restock fresh produce, etc. than we did previously.
That being considered, we were always struggling to keep our monthly grocery bill below $1,200 and would consistently hit $1,300 but moving in on $1,600 this past month was eye-opening! We will be cutting back down to $1,200 for October and will be hosting Thanksgiving at our home this month also.
So What Now?! I think it’s important to recognize that inflation is definitely cutting into our cost of living and to give us some grace! We haven’t become totally reckless with our grocery spending, but it’s good to take note that we’re in a place where correction is now absolutely a must if we’re going to turn the ship around. Now is the time, not later!!
We’ll continue to monitor our food purchases on a weekly basis and gauge where we need to be towards the middle and end of the month before we end up overspending again. Fingers crossed we’ll be back at our $1,200 mark!
What do you spend on monthly groceries and is it getting out of hand? What are you doing to curb your spending, or stretch your dollar?? I would love to hear from you..
Until next time!
– RAFI
Excellent post!