The Grocery Budget

2 years ago, I had NO IDEA how much money I was spending on groceries. I'd get sweaty and defensive anytime someone even brought up the topic, and try to change the subject. I think that, right there, is probably a good clue that I wasn't doing my best in the grocery budget department.

I was, as I said yesterday, just buying what we "needed" so how could I cut my spending? How could I still provide tasty, healthy, home cooked meals if I was being asked to spend less at the grocery store? Was I supposed to just buy boxes of mac and cheese for 64 cents and call it a day? (Not knocking the mac n cheese. I still buy those, but not for every meal). I honestly didn't see a way to lower our costs and still be well fed.

I am a naturally defensive person. Super sensitive about pretty much everything pretty much all the time. It's definitely my best quality. (Not). So when my husband would bring up a grocery budget, I always immediately felt like I was being accused of doing a bad job. As a stay at home parent, and primary grocery shopper for the house, it felt a little bit like I was getting a negative performance review, and I did not take it well. It took me longer than I'd like to admit to realize that he wasn't criticizing me or the jobs I was doing for my family, but was just looking for ways to make our money go farther so we could do more of the things we wanted to, with less of the stress about money. It wasn't just groceries that he wanted to budget for, but without a grocery budget, how could we budget for anything else?

Once I finally got on board, it was like magic. Grocery shopping was somehow even more fun on a budget, and, while I had worried that a budget was going to put me under a spending microscope, it was actually so freeing! There was no more anxiety when a credit card bill arrived, having to remember what I bought to justify the balance ("That was for diapers! We ran out of toilet paper and laundry soap and dishwasher tabs all on the same day! There was a sale on chicken!"). We had a budget, and we made a plan to stay within it. It was almost like a game. I felt like a little kid in a candy store with a handful of money, "I have this much. What can I get with this much?"

Because I was so clueless about how much money I was leaving at the grocery store every week, when we first started budgeting we didn't even know how much was reasonable or realistic to allocate to groceries. I was willing to just throw out a random number: I think I can make $650 work for the week, ha ha, awkward laugh, kidding but not really, I don't know anything about money, and numbers make me nervous, ha ha, blinking deer in headlights, awkward space filler noise, wanna know how to spell something? I'm really good at spelling, hah ha, blink blink blink.

Luckily for everyone, my husband is WAY more pragmatic than me, and had an actual plan. We sat down and scrolled through a year's worth of credit card statements. On our phones, because millennial. We wrote down every transaction that occurred in a grocery store. We added them all up. I felt sick to my stomach about the amount of money we gave to grocery stores. We divided that number by 12. Then we divided that number in half. That number was a guideline for the amount of money we could spend every 2 weeks. We chose to make 2 week budgets because it aligned with our pay schedule.

Because we were trying to reduce our spending, we took that average that we had gotten, and we lowered it a little. Nothing crazy, just enough to make me sweaty thinking, "ohhhh shiiiiiii- did I agree to this budget thing before I stockpiled diapers?? Whaaaaat are we doing?" But seriously. It was okay. It's not like we allocated $25 and said, "good luck. I think you can eat canned chick peas for every meal for a week without any long term medical issues."

Anyway, for us, it didn't make a lot of sense to budget only for groceries and have the rest of our lives be a credit card free for all, so we budgeted for every cent of our income. No incoming money was unaccounted for. And then, we (I) recognized that my lack of discipline and mental math skills was going to make it difficult to stick to a grocery budget if I was going to be paying with a credit card. So, we went cash only for groceries.

Let me tell you, cash only groceries is THE BOMB. So freeing. I love it. I can hear half of you (so like, 2 people) screaming "but what about my credit card points?!" at me right now. I know. I know. I collect Superstore points. I love Superstore points. Superstore points are one of the reasons I can keep a low grocery budget, but even so, I won't switch back to the credit card for my groceries. (I am not sponsored or endorsed by Superstore in any way, by the way. If you're reading this, Superstore, call me). If you have the discipline to set a digital budget and stick to it to the last penny, have at it. I absolutely do not have that discipline. When the cash is not in my hands, it's so easy to justify going over the budget for a good deal or because you "need" something. A cash only grocery budget FORCES you to think about everything you're putting into your cart, and evaluating its necessity in your life that week.

There are going to be a lot of different factors that influence each person or family's grocery budget: income, food preferences and dietary needs, family size, upcoming events, grocery store... but everyone can have a grocery budget. Working within a budget allows you to know for sure how much money you're spending, and be more mindful about the purchases you're making.

Do you have a grocery budget? If not, what's holding you back from starting one?