My Home Made Simple

Getting the most out of our food budget has been a daunting and unsuccessful task my entire homemaking career.  I never have seemed to get all of the working and moving parts of the food budget under control and in sync.  Just now, after 20 years of trying and failing, have I finally been able to see some tangible and lasting positive results.  

In this post, I want to share the tips and tricks that have helped me make the most of our family’s food budget, and hope that something I have learned can bring some clarity and simplicity into your life, too!

First of all, let me say that I have failed at making the most of my food budget. 

Like, failed a lot. 

I have wasted thousands of dollars for simple lack of planning and knowledge of what works best for my family.  I know that planning, buying and cooking food is not rocket science.  But for me, it has been a losing battle.  

Until now.  

While I am surely no expert on the subject, I do have some practical tips and advice that have completely transformed the way I plan, buy, store and use the food that my family eats.  And I have come in under budget over half the time!  These practical tips can help you make better use of your food budget, too!  

It is going to take several sessions to cover all the ins and outs of the food systems we need to discuss, so I hope that you will join in on each session and will add your tips and hints to the discussion.  I am here to encourage us all in growing our skills as homemakers―but it will take all of us encouraging one another to be the best we can be as a collective.  So, please join in and add all your know how and ideas to our comment board! 

Topic #1

Fuel for Food-Funding your food budget

We all have different scenarios when it comes to our family’s food needs and requirements.  Some have a small family with minimal requirements, while others are feeding a seemingly ever hungry army of kiddos.  Some of us are feeding multiple generations, and some of us are empty nesters.  So, obviously our food budget needs are going to be vastly different.  This session about budgeting will be a helpful general how-to that will give you confidence in creating your own personal family food budget that fits your family’s current needs.  And, remember, our families grow and change, and so does the cost of goods, so this will need to be a topic that you revisit every year or so.  

Decoding your food purchase history for the purpose of creating a useful food budget sounds like the worst possible way to spend a day. I promise it isn’t as bad as it sounds, and once you do it, you will have a game plan for shopping with a purpose. AND you can kiss that “stress induced stomach ache at the check out” feeling goodbye! 

When we buy groceries without a plan and without a budget, it gets expensive and discouraging really quick.  When I go to the store without my plan in place, I end up spending at least 25% more than I should and don’t even get what I need!  But, when I go with a plan in place and a set budget, I feel confident in what I am doing and feel a sense of success when I get the receipt!  Completing a grocery shop and coming in at or under budget is a great feeling―and you can do it each and every time!  

The key is to PLAN to SUCCEED!!

You see, I used to think that the best way to set up a food budget was to aim low and hope for the best.  I would say “I think I can do it for $100!” but I would be wrong every time.  I would spend more than we had budgeted and I would feel like a failure.  But it wasn’t the items in the cart that made me feel like a failure.  It was the poor way of going about funding those items.  We can’t shoot an arrow in the dark and hope we make the mark―we have to use accurate information to decide what funds we will actually need if we are going to make a successful, working budget.

So. The first thing we need to do is create a Master Menu Plan.  This plan will be the game plan that shows us what we will be making for the week, without having to use precious brain power to make those decisions.  Creating this master plan will take an hour or so at the beginning, but then will save you dozens of hours over the next year!

Start your master plan by thinking of 15-20 simple, tried-and-true, quick dinner meals for you to choose from each week, then add ten or so breakfast and lunch options to complete it.  I will give you my list, but your list is certain to be different (and better, no doubt) than mine.  You can see the format and then go about filling it in with your own family favorites! The link for my plan is at the bottom of this post, but you may want to start over and create your own that better fits your needs.

Now that you have chosen your meals, you will want to go through them and estimate how much each will cost to make.  Make a note of the cost beside each meal.  This estimate doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does need to be close to accurate.  Go through the list of ingredients (either in your mind or on a piece of paper) and add up all the ingredient costs together. If you haven’t paid any attention at all to prices, that’s ok!  Try using the Walmart grocery app to search the items’ prices in your area.  This will give you a ball park idea, and you can adjust the prices from your receipts later!  

After you have compiled the cost of each meal, you can add all the cost of each section and divide by the number of entries in order to find the average of the cost per meal (do a separate average cost analysis for breakfast, lunch and dinner). Then you can add the three meals’ averages together to find the average daily meal cost. When you multiply the average daily meal cost by 7, you will get the average cost to make three meals every day for the coming week. Remember this is an average, but it will be really close to the real cost of making the meals!

This meal cost number is going to be a good starting place for your actual budget requirements.  But this isn’t the final number!  You will also want to include money for staples that are going to be replaced often―things like oil, flour, sugar, salt, etc.  Also, you will want to have plenty for snack time foods―fruits and veggies your family likes to snack on, popcorn, cottage cheese, etc. Make sure that you budget enough for these important items!!  This is an major part of your purchasing routine and it deserves a fair portion of the budget!  We will go over ways to reduce the cost of these later, but don’t forget to add money for them! 

You’ll also need to think about how many non-food items you purchase each week―for example napkins, diapers, hair care, bath soaps, etc.  I think a good guess for most families would be about $25-$35 per week, on average.  This is also an important part of the budget calculations because you don’t want to be discouraged by always going over budget, when the problem isn’t your purchases, but the plan itself! 

Because of the trying times of the current economy, it may also be wise to give yourself a little bit of money each week to build a little bit of a stockpile of things that you use regularly, so that you can supply your family with its food needs, even if the store’s shelves are empty.  This has become more of the norm than our generation is used to and I think it is wise to have a little bit of staples and non perishables stocked up for “just in case”. 

Finally, you will want to consider whether or not you want to put a little bit of a buffer amount in the budget for things that come up that weren’t expected―like a surprise hospitality opportunity or a sale that is too great to pass up.  Just a $10 buffer per week can give you the wiggle room to make choices for those kinds of situations without feeling guilty for blowing the budget.

I want to be as transparent as I can be here, because I think real life examples help us know if we are on the right track, so I am going to share our food budget numbers with you.  HOWEVER, so many factors go into the right number for your family, so remember this is just an example.

Our family has 6 people.  Me and Chris, three teenage girls, and a toddler.  We buy disposable diapers, but not baby food.  I buy napkins and paper towels on occasion, and a LOT of shampoo.  I would love to always buy organic, but it is often cost restrictive, so I choose to always buy grass fed or organic beef, cage free chicken, and organic corn.  I will buy organic fruits and vegetables when the price difference is 25% or less than conventionally grown produce.  I make our own cleaning supplies and we have chickens for eggs, and a dairy cow for milk, so some of the food we eat is produced here at home.  We bake our own bread to save costs (and it tastes better) and don’t buy very many prepackaged items.  I shop mostly at Aldi & Sam’s Club (I got a free membership from groupon!) but sometimes have to go into walmart.  I try to find a neighborhood one, because super walmarts make my skin crawl with annoyance…but that is really neither here or there, I just felt like you needed to know…

With all that being said, our family’s weekly food budget is $250.  I can often come in a little under budget, but I often hit right at it.  The fact that I go in with a plan and come out right at it or under is a great feeling.  No more grocery store receipt guilt!  It is one less thing I have to feel bad about, one less thing I have to worry over!  And I want that for you too!!

We will talk more about family budgeting in another series (because I am pretty passionate about the subject), but for now, this is a great place to start to get your spending under control―and to get your meal plan set for the next several months―all at once!!

I would love to hear your ideas and tips on keeping and maintaining a family friendly food budget!  Please share them in the comments so we all can learn from your expertise!

Here is the link to the master plan I have created. I will discuss how to us the top portion effectively next week, but you can use this week to get the menu portion compiled and your grocery budget number set!

Thank you SO much for visiting My Home Made Simple. I am glad you are here, and I hope you will leave a comment to let me know about your visit and thoughts you have on family food budgets!

I love you and appreciate the hard work you put into building your family’s home and life.

Blessings!

Lori