Grocery Budget
The first is the grocery budget. I've established a bi-weekly budget of $150 for groceries or roughly $300 per month. Typically I spend $100 buying all my food for two weeks. The next week I've budgeted $50 to pick up the in-between stuff plus some cushion. I could probably get by on less on the in-between week, but I use the extra money to stock up on things. I intend my grocery budget to include all paper goods (toilet paper, kleenex, etc.) and toiletries (toothpaste, shampoo, etc.).
The prime example of stocking up is the chicken breasts that I bought. Those are great chicken breasts that are perfect for grilling or baking. I use this type when I'm not cutting up the chicken or putting it in something else. Typically at My Menu those 3 lb pages sell for $12.99 each. I got them on sale for $6.99 which is the cheapest I've ever seen them. We have chicken breasts about every other week. I calculated that we needed 24 lbs to carry us through the whole year. Because I was thrifty at the grocery store in the previous week (during November), I was able to fit these chicken breasts in my bi-weekly budget.
While I've successfully been sticking to the bi-weekly budget for about a month now at the grocery store, I've never included what I pick up at Target, Walgreens or anywhere else when it involves grocery items. This is my new goal.
Miscellaneous Budget
I've set this budget at $400. I've not been working on this budget and don't intend to focus on it for right now. My philosophy is one step at a time so as to not overwhelm myself. The main reason that I added this sidebar feature is to start keeping track of my spending on other items. I will include everything here except food, gas and my monthly bills. All entertainment, eating out and miscellaneous purchases. My guess is that I'll blow this in a big way. Especially this month when we've got a trip to Texas planned for the end of the month which will involve a few hotel room stays, gas and food.
This will be an interesting experiment for me. Right now I'm going to focus on bringing ALL food, toiletry and paper products purchases into the $300 monthly budget. Of course, just today I bought enough toilet paper to last us a full calendar year!!
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