So here it is, Monday morning – the 3rd of May – I apologize for not getting this update out sooner – however I just haven’t had the chance to truthfully. To get right to the point, as you know at the beginning of last month I set a challenge for myself and Liz to go the entire month on $200 worth of food.. or $50 a paycheck each.
Next Month
Before I tell you if we succeeded or not – let me first tell you that we are going to do it again this month – but modify some of the rules. The first rule that we are going to change is that we don’t have to figure in our ‘eating out’ in our food budget. This is for groceries only. This rule obviously makes a lot of sense seeing that if I eat out once or twice.. well that’s likely 1/2 my budget blown right there (which really does go to show you how much people spend when they DO eat out all the time).
The second rule that we didn’t really have in place – it was more of an unwritten rule – is that the $200 only applies to groceries. Obviously dog food, treats, cleaning supplies, etc don’t come out of the budget.
That’s pretty much it.. so just a general budget – for groceries only for May!
And finally, I will let you know that we did not reach our goal of staying under $200 for the month of April. We were extremely close – but due to hosting a few dinners with extra people, we weren’t able to squeeze it all in. We ended up going over by $30 – or 15% for you financial types.
I actually really enjoyed (and I think most of my readers do too) doing this contest. Over the course of the month I had a few people come up to me and ask me how I was getting along, and others wanting to talk about how much they spend every week in groceries – I personally think that awareness to how much you’re spending plays a huge role in determining how you can save some money.
What did I learn?
I actually learned pretty quickly how great of an idea this was for more than the obvious reason which was to save money. Yes, I would imagine that we saved lots of money sticking to our budget and making sure we didn’t overspend on items that we really didn’t need. But that wasn’t it.
Something that I didn’t expect but was certainly a hugely added benefit was the amount of menu planning that we did over the month. It wasn’t something like I tried before where I planned out the weeks meals every Monday or anything – but it was that I looked in the cupboards for items that we’ve had for a long time but never used. Just for example – we used Shake N Bake the other night.. I don’t know how old (I shudder to think) the Shake N Bake mix we used was, but I can say that it was delicious! Certainly something that we’d never plan on having on a regular night. We made jello pudding from Milk which was a few days from expiring (yes, the milk was still very good!), we made banana bread, cookies, blizzards, did all kinds of BBQ-ing. It was a really great month for food (even if Liz didn’t think we could do it).
Unfortunately, we’re already $76 into this month from last Saturdays’ purchases and honestly it doesn’t seem like we got too much food from it (ever have those types of shopping days?). The good news is that I’m going away for 5 days to Boston this week – so that’s a bunch of days which I wont’ be eating our own food.. wait a minute, is that really a good thing ?? Ok maybe not – but hopefully I’ll be writing this post next month saying that we made it 
Hey Len
Been watching this project with interest for the past month to see how you guys get on.
Its tough sticking to a budget but sometimes it just means you have to be a little bit more creative than usual
We (a family of 3) have a monthly shopping budget of about $500 which seems like a lot compared to your $200 but that $500 includes cell phones, cleaning products and toiletries. It also includes all lunches.
We've found to best solution to be buying the things while on offer (I know that goes without saying) for example this week we bought over 3kg worth of chicken from superstore which was then bagged and frozen – its should do us about 8 meals over next couple of weeks.
We originally started by working the flyers and going round Superstore, Sobey's, Shoppers etc. every weekend to make up our weekly shop but now we stick with a once only trip to Superstore to stock up on their weekly offers and grab the essentials.
Our freezer is well stocked so if there is no great offers a certain week we buy only whats neccesary and add left over cash to next weeks budget.
All the best for May's effort
Hmm, you know that's a pretty good idea.. ($500 but include everything else you have mentioned). To be honest we're likely along the exact same lines really.. since you're a family of 3 and if we did $300 that would leave us $200 for the other items that you mentioned which would be enough I would think.
It's funny you mention chicken since I'm going to be doing up a post very shortly on the food that we've sort of bought on sale and in bulk – you really do save a lot, but then it does take a chunk out of the rest of the month.
Comparatively to you, we do a 'bit' of shopping around with the flyers – but rarely do we end up going to superstore unless it's something unbelievable. Reason is that it's not that close to us. I find shoppers has the best deals lately on every day items which is odd.
Freezers rock.. especially since I do go home every day for lunch so I'm able to grab something out of the freezer really quick and that aids in planning the nights meal (and lunches the next day
)
Again I'll be posting something soon on may's effort so far.. we're almost 1/2 way through the month and we're gonna be cutting it close to be sure.. (but we got a lot of food still too!)
Talk soon!
Len, I think you’re around what I’m coming in at for groceries on a normal month (with no challenge) – factored in for # of people. And we eat a lot of expensive seafood, have a carnivorous dog that eats a 50% BARF diet… maybe you should kick it up a notch?
I’ve read that the average Canadian family of 4 spends $590 per month on food – I’m not sure if that includes groceries AND eating out or not. So you’re at about 2/3 the norm, which is still pretty darn good.