Thursday, October 23, 2014

Budgeting

This post doesn't necessarily have to do with village life, but my life, and as my life is a village life I think it relates. It relates to a lot of people, I suspect, in these trying times, and so I thought I'd post about my aspiration to budget for groceries.

I have budgeted for groceries--ie, set an amount for food shopping each week--every year of my married life. I've never quite managed to keep to it for very long, although I have been, for the most part, a thrifty spender. I think it's because my goals have been unrealistic, mainly because we didn't have a lot of money! Now I've decided to try, instead of one lump sum for food for the week, breaking it down into groups.

To clarify: I feed eight people, five of them eating adult-sized portions. All eight people have dinner; all eight people have a cooked breakfast. Three to four of us have lunch everyday. And on the weekends all eight of us have lunch, plus we have, on average, people over for a meal once a week. I also try to bake around twice a week, either a cake or cookies. So! Here is my budget, in pounds, for food per week:

Meat: £25
Dairy (yogurt, milk, cheese, butter, eggs): £20
Produce: £15
Dry goods, including bread: £10
Diapers: £5
Frozen: £5
Juice: £3
Household: (toilet paper, laundry detergent, etc) £10
Baking (flour, sugar, etc): £5

The above totals to £98. I shop at Aldi except for bagels and cereal, which I get from another supermarket, so I'll add another £8 for those items, which brings me to £106. Adding another £19 for unexpected items/wiggle room, and I've reached my hoped-for budget of £125 a week.

Do you think this is reasonable? It means no readymade meals, no extra treats unless they fit into the above set amounts, and no extras like soda or snacks. I'm going to shop on Monday. I'll let you know how it goes.

1 comment:

Mission Scotland said...

Completely reasonable to me. Aldi is our family life (money) saver as well. Also, they have some delicious granola cereals with strawberries or chocolate that our family loves. Add fruit or sweeties and were all in. I found your blog via Amazon and enjoy reading through the posts:) God bless!