My husband and I recently bought a house, and we’d like to plump up our emergency fund just in case we have a large house expense. (Because, of course, when you have little savings, expensive things start to break. It’s the law of nature, right?)
To inspire myself, I reread America’s Cheapest Family Gets You Right on the Money by Steve and Annette Economides. One strategy of theirs that I latched onto is once a month shopping. The Economides shop once a month for their family of seven and right after shopping day, they make 15 to 17 freezer meals to help them on nights when they’re too busy to cook.
Alright, I already regularly cook freezer meals, so how hard could it be to shop once a month for my family of five?
As it turns out, very tough, at least the first month.
Breaking Bad Habits
I have a bad habit of making a big shopping trip on the weekend and then running to the store for this or that several times a week.
Do you do this, too? From all of the harried shoppers I see at the store at 5 p.m., I’m guessing I’m not alone.
The problem is that each time I run to the store, I buy more items than I initially went to the store to buy. The Economides recommend once a month shopping to avoid this kind of impulse buying that blows up the grocery budget.
Making the Big Shopping Trip
This month, eager to change my bad shopping habit, I scouted the deals and made my big, once a month shopping trip. I spent two days afterward cooking up meals to put in the freezer. I was set, or so I thought.
Turns out, limiting the impulse to stop by the store is more difficult than I thought.
There are a number of reasons why we’re struggling:
My husband likes fresh fruit and veggies. Our family wiped these out after a week, so back I went to the store to pick up some more.
I’m an impulse eater. If something sounds good to me, I want to make the recipe and have it for dinner. I don’t want to wait until my next monthly shopping trip to get the ingredients to make it. (The whim would have passed by then, which is the point, I guess.)
Eating up odds and ends at the end of the month is not fun. Sure, trying to make meals out of what food is left is fun, but the last few days, most of it doesn’t taste good.
Taking Baby Steps Moving Forward
While it would be easy to give up on the idea of once a month shopping, I haven’t yet because I know it can be a big money saver. Instead, I’m going to back up and move to twice a month shopping. This will allow me time to plan out our meals for two weeks, making sure we have all the ingredients we need. Many fruits and veggies stay good for nearly two weeks, so my husband will have the fresh fruits and veggies that he wants.
I don’t know if I’ll ever fully implement once a month shopping, but if I am successful with twice a month shopping, I will still significantly reduce my impulse shopping trips and improve my grocery budget.
How often do you grocery shop? Are you a multiple trip, impulse buyer like I am (was?), or are you a grocery store ninja?
Melissa is a writer and virtual assistant. She earned her Master’s from Southern Illinois University, and her Bachelor’s in English from the University of Michigan. When she’s not working, you can find her homeschooling her kids, reading a good book, or cooking. She resides in New York, where she loves the natural beauty of the area.
A few months ago, I went grocery shopping in the morning on the first of the month, and I couldn’t believe how crowded it was. After all, it wasn’t a Saturday morning when the usual grocery shopping rush occurs, but a Wednesday morning.
I waited in line to pay for over 20 minutes. When I asked the cashier what was going on, she said that it was the first of the month, so many people’s SNAP benefits had just replenished. These people were stocking up after possibly having had very little to eat at the end of the month when they were out of funds.
This phenomenon is not unusual. Many people who are living on a tight budget (with or without receiving SNAP), after scrimping and doing without for the last 10 to 14 days of the month, are happy to go shopping and stock up. The problem is that this stock up can consume most of their food budget, and the cycle starts all over again.
I mentioned in my last post that my family is experiencing a period of low income and a tight budget. Luckily, I don’t foresee this situation remaining stagnant for years. Within another year or two, my husband will be eligible to apply for a much better job, and as my kids grow up and become more self-sufficient, I should have more time to grow my freelance business.
However, for now, we sometimes run into this feast or famine pattern. In our high cost of living area, we budget $700 a month for groceries for our family of 5. (We have food intolerances including beans, gluten, dairy, and eggs, so we have to eat a special diet.) The last week of the month, we’re eating an odd mix of foods, and we don’t have as many fruits and vegetables as we’d like.
Spend the Same Amount Every Day to Avoid Feast and Famine
I’ve been researching different strategies to help with our grocery budget. One that I found is rather basic–determine how much you can spend per day on groceries. For instance, in February, we can spend $25 a day on groceries ($700 divided by 28 days), while in May, we can only spend $22.58 per day.
If I’ve not been to the grocery store for 6 days, I’ll theoretically have $135.48 to spend on that trip, based on a 31 day month.
Using this pattern, I can avoid the feast or famine food cycle by making sure I have enough grocery money, even at the end of the month.
Drawbacks to Spending the Same Amount Every Day
The biggest drawback I see to spending the same amount every day is that there is not much flexibility to take advantage of sales. For instance, if I normally buy ground turkey for $2.95 a pound, but it’s on sale for $2.45 a pound, I should stock up. Maybe I’d buy 25 pounds at this discounted rate. That right there would cost me $61.25, or almost half of my weekly budget.
However, it would save me $12.50 on ground turkey, and the stock would last us a few months.
While spending the same amount every day helps even out the feast or famine cycle, it may not be the best way to stretch your grocery dollars. Instead, I prefer to buy on sale in bulk so I pay less and get more food, even if it means at the end of the month, each meal with meat has ground turkey in it.
How do you handle your grocery budget? Do you set a fixed amount to spend each week, or do you set a fixed amount for the month so you can take advantage of sales?
Melissa is a writer and virtual assistant. She earned her Master’s from Southern Illinois University, and her Bachelor’s in English from the University of Michigan. When she’s not working, you can find her homeschooling her kids, reading a good book, or cooking. She resides in New York, where she loves the natural beauty of the area.
Over the last few months, my husband and I have lost some income. Not a little drop in income. About 20 to 25% of our monthly income. And let me tell you, we weren’t earning more than the median income for a family of five to begin with.
Our budget was already tight, so when the drop in income happened a few months ago, I’ll admit, I panicked a bit. I felt a little bit desperate. I’m sure those of you who’ve been in a similar situation know the feeling.
And then I took a deep breath, and told myself we’d be alright. And we are alright. We’re actually better than alright.
Taking Stock of the Positive
The first thing I did, after I calmed down a bit, was to look at the positive side. We had already paid off half of our debt, so we don’t have several debts to pay monthly. We’re only left with one student loan payment every month, so that is a relief. (When we started our debt repayment over two years ago, we had five monthly debt repayments that totaled almost $1,000 a month. Now, we only need to pay $315 a month.)
Secondly, we’re used to living on a tight budget because we’ve been doing so as we try to pay down debt. Our income drop, though not slight, was not going to throw us into a completely different style of living that we weren’t accustomed to. I’m used to buying my clothes second hand. I’m used to cooking all of our meals from scratch and not going out to eat. The only adjustment we had to make was buckling down even more.
Why Our Income Drop Turned Out to Be a Good Thing
While our budget is lean, we still had some fat there. We subscribe to Netflix for both streaming movies and DVD home delivery. After the income drop, I decided the home delivery at $11.99 a month could go. I had been thinking this for awhile, but I was afraid we’d miss the service. Guess what? We don’t. I can borrow most of the movies for free from the library.
In addition, I think much more carefully about purchases now. Buying something on a whim is no longer a possibility. I have to think carefully before making a purchase, which has made me realize I don’t need many of the things I’ve been thinking of buying.
I also took other frugal steps that I’d been to lazy to take previously. I had always read that making your own laundry detergent can be a big money saver. A year ago, I bought all the supplies that I needed, but I never got around to making it. Well, I finally did a few weeks ago, and it works great. Sometimes it takes circumstances to prod me into changes I should have made a long time ago.
Of course, we don’t want to live with such a tight budget indefinitely. But now I know that there are many cost cutting measures I’ve implemented that aren’t difficult. When we make more money, that just means I’ll have room for greater savings and paying off that last student loan.
Have you ever experienced a tight budget? If so, did you find it to be a good thing as I have?
Melissa is a writer and virtual assistant. She earned her Master’s from Southern Illinois University, and her Bachelor’s in English from the University of Michigan. When she’s not working, you can find her homeschooling her kids, reading a good book, or cooking. She resides in New York, where she loves the natural beauty of the area.
