How Some Other People Do It

Interested in living more frugally without commiting to a class like Financial Peace University? Clicking anywhere on this paragraph will take you to a first hand account of how one family has adjusted their budget or (what we around here call) a spending plan.

Some of the Heida family's planning might be drastic for people -like NO money alloted for entertainment and eating out. There are some realistic examples here though for anyone struggling on how to make choices on what stays and what goes. The fact that they have purchased (unfortunately using credit) a new piano for their daughter shows the uniqueness of each family when making a plan. No two families will have the same priorities ... other than hopefully keeping your actual needs (shelter, utilities, food, transportation, and actually needed clothes) in the spending plan and then prioritizing wants using what cash is available AFTER any debt payments are made.

Food Money

We are a cash only family ... this does include using our debit card for some purchases as designed by our budget. Anyway, each month we plan what we will spend for the next month. Although I wouldn't say we are stingy or are completely bare bones with our money when making the spending plan, we do try to keep it to a minimum necessary to get through the month so more money can go into savings and our (new to us) van fund.

We have been having a little bit of extra money in our grocery fund some months and are not expecting to entertain this month, so we cut that category a bit for January to see if we can do with a little less ... at least for this month.

Now when I say grocery fund, it actually refers to anything I buy at Walmart that we use on a regular basis including but not limited to toilet paper, dish detergent, laundry detergent, etc. Not all of these things are purchased each month (because I buy the BIG sizes of everything), but they definitely come up regularly and their costs can work out to be a sizable chunk of a weekly total. I also have an extra $10/month allowed for health and beauty, $20/month for dog food, and $10/month for school supplies.

Whether our monthly amount sounds like a lot or a little to others would depend on what you are comparing it to. How many people are you feeding? How old are the people you are feeding? At what store and where in the country you are shopping? How often do you eat at home?

We feed six people none of whom have hit puberty yet and live in a community with (I'm guessing) a standard of living on the low side of average. We cook almost all meals at home; although do allow $50/month for restaurants seperate from our grocery spending. Some months we use all of this restaurant allowance; some not.

As I was contemplating our grocery spending amounts for this month, I did a little math to figure out the amount of money per meal we allowed. It worked out to $1.30/meal/person. We don't often spend this much on a breakfast or lunch meal so that allows for a little bit more for dinners. We do like snacks in our house so some money does goes towards those as well. I try to serve or remake leftovers so food doesn't go to waste--some weeks I do better at this than others.

Although I could do more with coupons or driving around to shop at multiple stores to get better deals, I think I do pretty well with our food money . . . especially considering some of that money ($1.30/meal/person) does cover those other non-food items mentioned above. The total amount we spend on food each month is considerably less than what it would be if we did eat restaurant food more often.

I have read a lot about saving money on food from the planning, purchasing, and cooking sides of things. For the amount of time I am willing to spend on all of those fronts, I am currently doing the best I am willing to do (I think). I would be interested in hearing what other people do though to keep costs down or their thoughts on this.

I plan to post more in the future about our cash only - no debt life style because WE LOVE IT!!!