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Do you need help figuring out how to stick to your grocery budget? In this post, I’m sharing my tips and a free grocery budget tracker!
Are you having a hard time sticking to your grocery budget? Does it seem like there is never enough in the budget at the end of the month?
I made a goal for the year to stick to a $300 month grocery budget. And it honestly wasn’t working out so great.
I was spending almost all of the money the first two weeks, and going over budget every month. I had no good system for keeping up with how much I had spent and what was left.
So, I created something to help me easily track how much was spent and how much I had left in the grocery budget.
How to Stick to Your Grocery Budget: Free Grocery Budget Tracker
Real quick, are you getting free cash back yet? If not, you are totally missing out on free money! I love usingIbottaandEbatesto get free cash back when I buy groceries and shop online. It’s so easy to use and I get cash back or gift cards for free all the time!
This grocery budget tracker has helped me easily record how much I spend each trip, and calculate my remaining balance.It’s easy to see how much I have left in the budget at all times now.
How to Stick to Your Grocery Budget
Use this free grocery budget tracker to help you stick with your grocery budget. It’s so easy to use and will help you keep up with how much you’ve spent and your remaining balance.
These tips will help you stick with your grocery budget!
Make a meal plan.
Meal planning will help you know exactly what you are going to eat each week. Thus, you know exactly what to buy at the grocery store. And maybe more importantly than that, you know what NOT to fill your cart with.
Check out:Meal Planning 101: Everything you need to know about meal planning
If you are like me and have a hard time remembering everything you need to get from the store, you may want to make a grocery inventory list. This saves me from making multiple trips to the store each week. It’s a lot simpler than it sounds and saves me from making extra trips to the grocery.
Check out: How to Make a Grocery Inventory List: Free Printable
Shop sales and markdowns.
When you grocery shop, take a look at the sales ad and keep an eye out for markdowns on things you were going to buy already. This is an easy way to save without cutting coupons.
Use a grocery budget tracker.
This is my favorite way to make sure I stick to our grocery budget. When I go grocery shopping, I just record the store, date, how much I spent, and quickly calculate how much I have left in the budget. Doing this, I can easily see how much I have to spend when I make my grocery list each week.
It’s easy to use. Just record each grocery shopping trip, and calculate your remaining balance. This takes all the guesswork out of keeping up with your budget.
You will always know how much you have left to spend. Knowing this, you can adjust your meal plan and grocery list to stay within your budget.
At the end of the month, spread out all the receipts/notes, put them in stacks by location, and enter the prices into your chart. Add up the totals and look at how much you spent at each location.
Affordable and nutritious meal ideas for a $150 monthly budget include dishes like vegetable stir-fry with rice, bean and vegetable soups, pasta with homemade tomato sauce, and oatmeal with fruit for breakfast. These meals are cost-effective and can be made in large batches to provide multiple servings.
The 50-30-20 rule recommends putting 50% of your money toward needs, 30% toward wants, and 20% toward savings. The savings category also includes money you will need to realize your future goals.
The 6-to-1 Grocery Method is a basic calculation (we're talking elementary-level math, basically counting), to plan your weekly grocery shop. Here's the system: Fill your grocery cart with six vegetables, five fruits, four proteins, three starches, two sauces or spreads, and one "fun" item for yourself.
The average cost of monthly groceries for one adult on the thrifty plan ranges from $242 to $303. And when it comes to a family of four, the average cost for their monthly grocery bill is about $975. Those averages might seem low to you, spot on or crazy high.
It's up to you how much you want to spend on food per month, but the recommendation given by Dave Ramsey (I confirmed this with Paige Schmidt, a Dave Ramsey Certified Financial Coach) is around 10-15% of your income.
Average grocery cost per month for 1 person in a household
Considering the Thrifty and Liberal plan averages, the monthly grocery cost for an adult male falls between $275.63 and $434.33, while the average for an adult female ranges from $238.46 to $384.93.
This works out to about $475 per month. Grocery spending increased 8.4% in 2022, the latest data available, vs. 2021. A different measure of food prices can give you a more-recent check of how food prices are trending.
In the 50/20/30 budget, 50% of your net income should go to your needs, 20% should go to savings, and 30% should go to your wants. If you've read the Essentials of Budgeting, you're already familiar with the idea of wants and needs. This budget recommends a specific balance for your spending on wants and needs.
By age 50, you'll want to have around six times your salary saved. If you're behind on saving in your 40s and 50s, aim to pay down your debt to free up funds each month. Also, be sure to take advantage of retirement plans and high-interest savings accounts.
If you're 30 and wondering how much you should have saved, experts say this is the age where you should have the equivalent of one year's worth of your salary in the bank. So if you're making $50,000, that's the amount of money you should have saved by 30.
If you're wondering how to create a monthly food budget, another tool to use is the 50/30/20 rule. This simple and intuitive grocery budget formula suggests that you spend your net (after-tax) monthly income this way: 50% for living essentials (e.g., groceries, housing, transportation, healthcare, etc.)
What's a reasonable food budget? Many financial advisors and gurus recommend spending no more than 10%-15% of take-home pay on food, a figure that includes restaurant dining and takeout.
Introduction: My name is Lidia Grady, I am a thankful, fine, glamorous, lucky, lively, pleasant, shiny person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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