As you probably already know, we budget out all of our money (as best we can) every month before it’s even in our hands.
Some (like Dave Ramsey) refer to this as a “zero-based budget.” Some call it a “goals-based budget.”
Whatever you choose to call it, the gist is that you make a plan for your money before the month even starts so you can avoid that awful question of, “WHERE DID ALL OF OUR MONEY GO???”
Have you ever felt that way? I KNOW we have.
Well, here’s the thing. Even if you’re a “budgeting expert” you aren’t perfect, and this month, we are a great example of this.
I teach women across the country how to budget for their own families so that they can FINALLY meet the (small and large) goals they have (like vacation or a home or a remodel or sending their kids to camp, etc.) and yet I allowed our grocery budget to COMPLETELY fail this month.
Let me show you what I’m talking about and then we’ll go over some of the reasons why this happened for us.
Ok. So the picture above is the exact screenshot that I just took from our budgeting spreadsheet for July 2020. It’s July 28 today, so it’s basically complete because I only grocery shop once a week, so we won’t be purchasing anymore groceries until August.
A few things I want to point out here to make things more clear for you:
The “WEEKLY BUDGET” column on the left starts out each month with a larger amount allocated to the “Monthly Haul + Week 1” so that I can complete our inventory and monthly meal plan (free printable templates and instructions available here if you wanna give it a shot).
As the month goes along, I adjust the amounts in that column to reflect what was actually spent at the close of a week, then adjust the weeks left to reflect what is actually still available in our grocery budget (be that more or less).
So, even though this month started out with me allocating $550 to “monthly haul + week 1” and $50 to each subsequent week, we ended up spending $667 that first week, so I had to adjust the rest of the weeks to a much smaller amount to account for the “over-spending” that first week.
Then, at the close of each week, I continued to adjust the upcoming weekly budgets based on my actual spending.
The problems this month??
- Overspending the first week. This one mistake threw off the entire month because I was lazy and didn’t do my inventory like I tell you all to do!I could seriously kick myself.
- NOT taking inventory of what I already had on-hand.
I mentioned this in #1, but it deserves it’s own mention because it’s a big one and it affects so much. I got lazy this month and skipped doing my monthly inventory for the first time in probably 2 years. I won’t be skipping that again. It wasn’t worth it.By skipping my inventory, I purchased several things that I THOUGHT I was low on or out of, but actually had PLENTY to last at least (if not more than) a month.A perfect example? Honey. I had 1/4 container left out by the coffee/tea station, and assumed that’s all we had.WRONG. We had an entire new bottle waiting on the shelf in the pantry that I forgot I had already bought, so I spend $18 on a new giant bottle of honey in July that we won’t even need to bust into for probably 2-3 more months. Such a waste of money this month.
And that’s just ONE example of many that I could’ve avoided this month if I had just taken 20 minutes to complete my inventory instead of being lazy about it.
- Planning meals that required main ingredients I needed to purchase instead of planning meals based on the main ingredients I already had on hand.Doing this causes problems because not only am I having to spend more on our groceries to make the meals I’m planning, but it also greatly multiplies the chances that the food I already have on hand (but am not planning to use this month) will go bad before I USE it, and therefore has a greater chance of becoming trash (which is essentially throwing the money we invested in that food directly in the trash).I HATE THROWING AWAY MONEY! DON’T YOU???
- When we decided (sort of last minute) to take our family vacation, after all (we had previously decided not to go this year), I made a spur of the moment grocery trip to load up on “beach snacks,” road trip foods, and beach necessities (like sunscreen, etc.) that weren’t planned for in our month’s budget. On that shopping trip I did a fantastically terrible job of practicing self control, and sort of let the kids pick out random stuff we NEVER get… I was swept up in the excitement on the decision to take the trip, and it overruled my ability to be responsible and stay in budget.It’s been a MINUTE since I’ve allowed myself to do that, and even though it felt super fun in the moment to just toss things in the cart, I 100% regret it. It was not worth the “high” of enjoying the shopping trip that much more to have to deal with being over budget at the end of the month.
WHY NOT?? Well, lemme tell you… Since we’re over budget, that essentially means that I’m having to take away from other things we have been working hard to save for in order to not go into debt to pay for that one grocery trip that I treated like an all-expense paid shopping spree.
NOT. WORTH. IT.
- Lastly, AP and I didn’t communicate well when he went to the store for some things that first week (which he typically doesn’t need to do).Because we didn’t discuss things well, he wasn’t aware of what I was planning and I wasn’t aware of what he was planning, so we both went our separate ways and just got ALL THE THINGS (which we didn’t need all of…) simply because of a lack of communication.Anyone else ever done that??
All things considered, it could have been worse (by a lot), but the fact of the matter is that we went over budget, and that stinks because it means it’s going to take longer to fund the other things we were saving for (since we’re having to pull money from those areas to cover this overage).
Nobody (normal) likes to have to wait longer for fun things… 😉
Moral of the story??
DO YOUR FRICKIN’ INVENTORY BEFORE YOU GO GROCERY SHOPPING.
It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but I swear to you, it will save you probably $100 or more per shopping trip.
Not even joking. I’ve heard from mamas across the country who doubted me and came back to tell me they were sorry for ever doubting BECAUSE IT WORKS!!! 🙂
How do you save money on your grocery budget each month??
