family budget

New ideas for reducing our monthly food budget

Each and every day I look for areas to reduce our expenses from our monthly budget to allow more money to flow into the purchase of assets. The purchase of more and more assets will help increase our monthly passive income and allow my family to become financially independent. In the past few weeks, I have looked at different ways to cut expenses on gas for our vehicles, home energy costs, and our grocery expenses. Today I would like to revisit our grocery expenses in an effort to reduce our expenditures.

I read a very good article this week on Enginero.com called Food Budget Tight? Stretch-It-Out (Part 2), where Ralph discusses some tips on how to tighten your food budget. I agree with all of his points and plan on implementing the ones that we don’t already practice. This is actually Ralph’s Part 2 post on the subject, with the first post called Food Budget Tight? Stretch-It-Out (Part 1). In both of his posts, Ralph’s main theme is being an educated shopper, which I couldn’t agree more. If you haven’t already reviewed these posts or his site, I strongly recommend you checking them out!

Based on Ralph’s suggestions, I plan on implementing the following steps (some small) to help drive down our food costs:

• Make our food lists - In his 1st post, Ralph suggests making a list of what different food items costs before you go to the grocery store. I made an attempt to do this in the past with an Access database but never followed through with it. Now that I have a detailed monthly budget in front of me, I will be more motivated to keep track of the price of items with an end goal of reducing our monthly food costs.
• Price out our meals - An added benefit of keeping track of food item costs in an Access database will allow me to easily add up items into a total meal cost which will provide useful information when budgeting.
• Stock Up - We have always tried to do this, but I think there is room for improvement. Ralph talks about being open minded when shopping. I know we can do a better job stocking up on only sale items and using coupons to drive down the price even more.
• Take our time - While it can be difficult with children, I think we can do a better job taking our time shopping. Probably one of Ralph’s more interesting points is his suggestion to take your time shopping. I agree 100%! If you are in a rush when shopping, you are not as aware to what exactly you are paying. It can be difficult to compare prices on different brands sometimes when the size or quantities are different and you are in a hurry. I will also begin carrying a calculator with me to help with this process.

While these are a few minor steps in an effort to cut our grocery expenses, I think they will add up over time and help us meet our financial goals. I want to thank Ralph at Enginero.com for the inspiration for this post and new ideas for cutting our grocery costs! In the future, once I can start gathering enough data to track our total meal costs, I will start posting any tips I can offer to my readers on what works best for us.

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