Budgeting

Sigh. I'm sick of economic bad news and feature stories on how to save money. This one caught my eye today - an article about what is the "right" amount of money that a family should be spending on groceries. I thought it was interesting, because a few months ago, I read another article about how much the average family of four spends on groceries each month. I think it was around $900, which I found shockingly high.

K and I like to cook. A lot. We eat nearly all of our breakfasts at home and most of our dinners, except for one meal out each week and maybe one night of easy takeout (pizza, subs). K eats all of his lunches at home or packs a lunch when he goes to the office. I probably eat lunch three times a week in the cafeteria and pack it the other two days.

We buy a LOT of fresh produce - nearly 1/3 of all our grocery spending goes to produce. Participating in the farmshare this year will raise our produce spending by $500. I expect to save some of that by NOT buying as much at the grocery store. We don't include meat every night, maybe 3 or 4 nights a week, and we try to eat something vegetarian 1-2 nights. I buy store brand for some things, but am convinced that they will never match up with name brands for other things (like, I ONLY eat Ocean Spray cranberry products).

I don't buy many things that are pre-prepared since we like to cook. I don't many things that are in special snack-sized packaging or any other packaging just for the kids. Maybe a dozen things or so fall into this category, all for the sake of convenience - applesauce and fruit cups, kid-flavored yogurt, small pkgs of crasins, cheese sticks...gee, I can't even think of any others! We don't buy much junk food because I would just eat it all! So, very few chips, cookies, etc.

Anyway, I don't know what I would be buying if I spent $900 a month on groceries. That's nearly DOUBLE what I normally spend! K and I use a little budgeting tool called You Need A Budget. It's really just an elaborate set of spreadsheets that does a great job of tracking every penny we spend in about 3 dozen categories. We spent an average of $465/month in the last 12 months on groceries. We spend about $350/month eating out (about $50/each for dinners, $25/each for pizza nights, and about $50/month for my lunches out).

Should I be upgrading my menu at home to include steak and lobster more often? Last night we had a pork roast. Tonight, roast chicken. Pasta tomorrow and ham with cabbage and potatoes/carrots for St. Pat's Day. I think I eat pretty well (too well when I'm counting my Weight Watchers points...)!