Eating Out and Buying Groceries
I doubt that anyone has really scanned my monthly budget, but if they have, they may wonder why I only budget $20.00 for groceries. This is because when I first went back to school and moved into my friend’s house, I was not buying groceries. My friends paid for all the food and I did all of the shopping and cooking. It worked out to a pretty good arrangement. At the time, I was spending about $100 a month eating out, and $4 a month, on average, on groceries outside of the household spending.
That arrangement eventually fell apart due to busy schedules and soon I found myself with no groceries and no grocery budget. I mostly made up for it by eating out more often and making do with whatever was in the kitchen for when they went shopping. Also, the partner started buying groceries occasionally.
So, I am now budgeting $100 for August’s budget for groceries, a completely impractical number for feeding a family of three, but I won’t be the only one buying food. I look forward to having a real budget come September for food and seeing what I can do to make our limited budget stretch enough to cover groceries.
I have food issues and money issues that are in conflict with each other. I am constantly concerned over not having enough food and not having enough money. I have a very hard time spending money, even when I have it to spend, and will talk myself out of buying things. Seeing as how I’m always worried about not having enough to eat, it seems foolish that I will also talk myself out of buying food items of things because they *cost money* (shock!).
Unfortunatly, It is easier for me to spend money eating out than it is to buy a week’s worth of groceries because it feels like a smaller amount of money though I know that is not true. I hope that I will be getting over this very soon, but if I’m supposed to make $100 provide a month’s worth of groceries, it won’t be happening anytime soon. September will be easier cause I’ll have control/overview of both of our incomes and be able to really see how much we can spend on food and hopefully it’ll allow me to lose some stress over spending money at the grocery store.
Rebecca
August 11th, 2006 13:21
I have some of those issues too. My husband often tells me, “we’ll probably eat more than once this week”.
Once we calculated that in the same amount of time we could cook a Papa Murphy’s pizza (a frequent stand-by), we could cook a salmon dinner, and for the same price. Much healthier, no more $$.
Now if we would only remember to do it.
Donna Jean
August 11th, 2006 16:54
Hi rebecca, thanks for the comment and for visiting.
I have the perfect weekday dinner solution — the book “Saving Dinner” which is awesome for providing a week’s worth of menus and the shopping list to go with (including side dish suggestions).
I’ve used this religiously in the past and it was the only time that we ate well consistently and without the stress of figuring out what’s for dinner for weeks on end. As soon as school starts and this move is over, I’ll be using the book again - or the “menu mailer” options on the savingdinner.com website.