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Grocery and House Budget

November 10th, 2006 at 02:50 am

I've been looking at how much I'm spending on cleaning supplies. toiletries, pet supplies and food.I've just calculated that I've spent an average of 318.00 for the last three months. August was my highest month at 383.

This seems high to me. There is just me 2 cats and a dog. I do tend to eat out a lot. I've pretty much stopped cooking since I was widowed but Have been trying to reestablish the habit of cooking.

I think that I will try cutting this back a little at a time until I feel seriously deprived. For the rest of the month (excluding Thanksgiving) I am going to try and stay under $10 a day for food and supplies.

I'm not sure what a reasonable

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »

8 Responses to “Grocery and House Budget”

  1. tinapbeana Says:
    November 10th, 2006 at 02:56 am 1163127373
    1163127373

    well, $10 / day is more than reasonable if you're eating home-cooked food more often than not. if you're eating out, well, it's going to depend on where it's at i guess.

    one easy way to cut pet costs is to buy their food on sale and in the biggest bag you can store: those little bags are an absolute rip off! my cats will tear in to any cat food bags, so i keep mine in a plastic bin...

    cleaning supplies are also pretty easy to trim: most things you can clean using baking soda, vinegar, and water. bleach and amonia are good to keep on hand as well (just don't mix them!).

  2. yummy64 Says:
    November 10th, 2006 at 03:32 am 1163129568
    1163129568

    I can't say how much is reasonable for you. I have spendish months and not so spendish months. Maybe you just hit a lot of really great sales!

    However, I have to ask, are you stockpiling? I tend to do that which is why I ask. Would it help to look at what you do have and put a moratorium on some items (personal favourites are deodorant, toothpaste, pasta sauce). Those are three items I will not be buying for a while!

    The other thing you can do is to challenge yourself to cook out of your pantry, fridge and freezer. Recipe sites like recipezaar can help to find recipes with what to do with all that stuff!

  3. threebeansalad Says:
    November 10th, 2006 at 03:43 am 1163130185
    1163130185

    Ahhh.. stockpiling! I find myself doing that, too! I live in an area with double coupons up to $1 so sometimes I find myself thinking the deals are too good to pass up! I have to remind myslef that the SAME items are always on sale (hence the stockpile) and to let it go! Or, once I have a sufficent stockpile on something like toothpaste, I refuse to buy it (even if it will cost me only $0.20) and focus on "stockpiling" another type of item, like tissue. If nothing else the stockpiles come in handy for food pantry donations. I had the Boy Scouts stop buy last week adn was able to give them cereal and 2 toothpaste sI paid nothing for, as well as other canned items I did pay for.

  4. baselle Says:
    November 10th, 2006 at 04:03 am 1163131398
    1163131398

    November is actually a good time to start to stockpile - I've found food to be a bit cheaper now in time for Thanksgiving.

    If you are data-driven - and data interests you - you might want to start a price book, which is just a list of the stuff you bought, the unit price of what you bought, where you bought it, and the date that you bought it at. The trick is to buy/stockpile your items when they're at their cheapest, and you can find out for yourself using the data from the price book. Works perfectly well for cleaning supplies too.

  5. PRICEPLUS Says:
    November 10th, 2006 at 06:13 am 1163139207
    1163139207

    10 dollars a day is a good place to start. Eating out is where I run into trouble at times! Maybe that is where you look first?Smile

  6. LuxLiving Says:
    November 10th, 2006 at 12:43 pm 1163162587
    1163162587

    ....ah PricePlus - good idea looking at the eating out - here's a question for everyone...When you don't use the $10 one day but say .00 or .89 do you roll it over to the next day in the week OR do you immediately take it to savings???

  7. tinapbeana Says:
    November 10th, 2006 at 12:56 pm 1163163375
    1163163375

    i hold onto it for the rest of the month just in case DH and i want a splurge. anything that's left then goes into savings. i don't feel bad about splurging if i pay for it with money i had inteded on paying out anyways!

  8. PRICEPLUS Says:
    November 10th, 2006 at 02:41 pm 1163169703
    1163169703

    I think I would keep one extra day handy and then roll the others into savings!Smile

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