Coming clean on grocery spending
First off, I love goals. Love them. I tend to set really unrealistic goals that I couldn’t possibly ever reach, but I still love them. However, when I mentioned my Spend Less Money on Groceries-Goal, I wasn’t quite fair. I didn’t want to admit how much I’m normally spending each month on groceries…
No. I don’t want to.
Alright, ok fine. I’ll admit what my average monthly grocery spend normally is. It’s around $400. Yes, $400. And that doesn‘t include eating out. (Although I usually only eat out 2-3 times per month.) I “justify” this by the fact that I don’t spend money on drinks, like most of my peers, because I just don’t really drink that much. Anyways.
grocery receipt
(source)
We’re 9 days into this month, and I’ve spent $132. It probably doesn’t SEEM like I’m doing better, but part of the reason it’s high, is because I had to buy Coffee, Truvia, & Vitamins when I was at the store over the weekend. (These are things I tend to buy in bulk, so I only buy them every couple of months.)
Anyways, the goal is to spend less than $250 this month. That means I have a little over $100 less.
Now that I don’t have to buy almond milk, I think that will help. I know it’s not that expensive, but it’s usually my excuse to go to the grocery store, and every trip to the grocery store means I buy more things I probably don’t need…
Do you have a grocery budget? Or do you just buy what you need when you need it?
My other goal that I’ve been running toward (ha, pun. I’m so clever.) is the Monument 10k. I ran 6 miles last week, so I know I can at least run the distance. Last night I was aiming for 7, but in the middle of mile 5, my ipod took a fall (ok, fine. I dropped it. Twice.) and it FLEW off the treadmill. (Um, yes, this happened twice. In a row. In the span of about 5 minutes.)
And that was it. Bye bye ipod, thank you for the magical gift of music that you gave me for so long.
(source)
Time to buy a new one!
What kind of ipod/MP3 player do you guys have? I had a classic, but now I’m leaning towards a nano, so it’s smaller and less likely to be thrown off the treadmill. Recommendations?
<3 Liz
Right now it seems like Expression Engine is the best blogging platform available right
now. (from what I’ve read) Is that what you are
using on your blog?
I think what you said was actually very logical.
But, think about this, what if you added a little content?
I ain’t suggesting your information is not good, but suppose you
added a post title that makes people desire
more? I mean Coming clean on grocery spending – I Heart Vegetables is a little plain. You should peek at Yahoo’s front page and watch how they create
news headlines to grab people to click. You might add a
related video or a related pic or two to grab readers interested
about everything’ve written. In my opinion, it might bring your blog a
little bit more interesting.
oh god, i remember that symbol on my ipod when it died. so sad.
I definitely have the same grocery spending problem as you!!! I could probably eat out every night and spend a lot less than I actually do cooking and buying groceries, but then the food just wouldn’t be the same!! My bill is ridiculous. We need to both start a grocery goal and STICK to it! but it’s sooo hard!!! 🙂 Great post!
Thank you for your comment:) We must have been thinking the same way this week haha! Can you believe I’m trying to set our grocery goal down to $800 a month! Believe it or not but that’s cutting it in half!! And it’s just two of us! Just so you know this number did include, dining out, paper products, cleaning products and alcohol but the majority of it was on food! Crazy! Anyway, that’s what is cost to live here on Maui I guess….Much aloha! A
I probably spend about that much on groceries too….I justify it because it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than eating out or paying medical bills down the road 😉 [Hey, I look for any excuse…]
Good luck with your grocery bill goals. 🙂 Goals are great to have.
I know what you mean about the cost of almond milk… it is quite expensive, but it’s the only milk my family buys anymore. I’ve considered making our own, but my mom doesn’t like the homemade kind as much as the kind we buy. Plus I just like the convenience of buying it, haha.
We have a grocery budget that we always come in under, but I wouldn’t stress that much if I went over on it.
I still don’t have an mp3 player/ipod. I had a cassette player in high school and a portable CD player… that was about it, haha!
I also love grocery shopping. My main expense is fruit. I’m a fruit bat and can easily spend 30 bucks a week on fruit. In all, I’d say my grocery bill is about 250-300 dollars per month. Considering the fact that I’m a vegetarian who doesn’t eat faux meat (ie. expensive veggie food), that is probably way too much!
Grocery budgets are definitely a good idea–especially when you’re eating clean and healthy because it can be easy to get sucked into those deliciously expensive “health” foods 🙂 We try to meet a weekly grocery budget of about $75 per week. Some weeks we go over (like when we’re buying a 30 lb. bag of dog food!), and some weeks we’re under, but we try to stick to this as close as we can 🙂