Cutting Our Grocery Budget by Over 60%

I just decided to do a quick look back and see just how much we've cut our grocery budget since we started budgeting.  I knew we'd cut it a fair amount just by budgeting at all, and I knew I'd been slowly cutting it down every couple of months since but when you look at just how far we've come in just a few months it's pretty amazing.

August 2010: $540 - that's what we spent on groceries (give or take a few dollars).  This didn't include anything we might have bought at the drugstore (while picking up prescriptions) and the sad part is that most of this was spent in small $10 quick trips.  It's amazing how those quick trips add up!

September 2010: This was the first month we started budgeting and started planning before we spent.  At that point our set grocery budget got chopped to $400 for the month.  My husband was initially shocked when he saw me coming home with 4 or 10 of a particular item we usually only bought 1 or 2 of but once I explained my plan, he came around.  My plan, I told him, was to get our grocery budget down to $50 a week.  This would include all the health & beauty items (not OTC drugs necessarily, as there is a small amount built into our "prescription" budget for that).

January 2011: Starting this month or grocery budget was at $50/ wk  and I'm still stockpiling.  The bulk of our stockpile is built but we are still adding to it as we realize there are items missing.  Oh and the bulk of our OTC meds are now included in that budget.

The crazy thing is that in addition to chopping our grocery cost by over 60% we've also drastically cut our dining out/ entertainment budget.  As with the grocery budget we cut that when we started budgeting (and we haven't adjusted it since) but we find that we don't go out to eat nearly as often simply because there's less desire.  We used to go out to eat just because there wasn't nothing that sounded good in the house, but with our great stockpile there's almost always something good to eat at home now, and we can make going out to dinner something a little more special, and use that entertainment budget for something besides eating