Cost of Food eating at home What Plan Are You On?

I am for ever complaining about the cost of food... how can it cost $60.00 to feed to adults for a week. Problem is the cost food keeps creeping up on me. I remember back to buying Campbells Tomato soup in 1966 10 for $1.00 and now I see it many times at $1.00 for one can and when I can find it on sale for 50cents I am thrilled.

Last night as I was doing my usual grumbling I wondered " How much does the normal family spend for food in a week or a month?

Does not take long to do some searching at www.swagbucks.com to find a lotof nothing posts and then this\
http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/USDAFoodCost-Home.htm.

Here we can see what the normal family sends on the cost of Food at four levels.. and it can vary from family size and child's age.
Thrifty plan
Low Cost plan
Moderate Cost plan
Liberal plan

This can give us an idea but more than any thing is what can your family's budget allow you to spend on food. Our budget is $60.00 a week for the two of us in our senior years.

By looking across I can see that the average family of (2) 51 to 70 years old spends on the thrifty plan $331.10 a month.
We are at $258.00 a month we are below thrifty or maybe that is all there is in the budget.

How does your family compare to the US adverage? I have used the June 2010 as an comparison.

Well as the year draws away from us, I want to wish you all a happy New Year and wish that next year is better for all of us in finances, health and peace through out the world.
See you next year...

Thanks for stopping by... lets keep saving together and please remember Never Under Estimate The Value Of A Small Amount Of Money... Grace

Plans To Cut Our Food Budget For Next Two Months

We decided a couple of months ago to move from Texas to Minnesota to be near our children and grandchildren. It is costly to move cross country and we have been trying to save money as we can. We have less than two months left before the move and I am going to be trying to cut back on our food budget. I hope to be able to save about $300. in that time frame.
As I have shared before eating out is our big down fall and most costly expense. I will attempt to cut our budget from $125 a week by about a third and spread the $85.00 on food in and out of the home. This will include household items.
I will share with you my progress over the next 8 weeks. This will be a saving of $40.00 a week for a total of $320 into our moving budget.
Will be a good test of our commitment and if we do this, hopefully we will continue this behavior forward.
One manner to cut back is to not eat out any where I do not have a coupon and not spend money on any item we do not need for the next two months and of course using the coupons and shopping the deals as usual.
Another way to cut our costs is to eat more meals at home. Also when we cook at home we will plan menus that can be eaten twice or more..

If you would like to join me in the cut back project let me know. I read on Love Peace and Saving she will be cutting back in June also . Watch her progress also.

Thanks for stopping by... Lets keep saving together... Grace

Grocery Cart Challenge Balancing the Food Budget

My shopping is sporatic. Some weeks I buy hardly anything and then we may have a mega shopping trip and I am there almost every day looking for deals.
I keep all receipts so I can see what and where we are spending our food money.

Part of our life is going out in the day to hunt for treasures to sell on eBay. This is always over the noon hour so on these days we eat out. I know we could cut back and bring a sandwich but to us eating out is part of the experience. Our treasure hunting is not on a daily basis, since we do part time work for my nephew and this can get in the way of hunting, but is sure money which means food and gas money.

So back to the budget. We have a weekly budget of $125.00 for the two of us for groceries and paper supplies etc and eating out..

My week runs Sunday to Saturday

Week 1 ... 10/4 to 10/10 Groceries $5.45

Week 2 .... 10/11 to 10/17 Groceries $63,64

Week 3 ... 10/18 to 10/24 Groceries 0 money spent

Week 4 ... 10/25 to 10/31 Groceries $117.19 ( Mega Sale Week)

Total for these 4 weeks was $186.28 or an average of $46.57

Week 1 ... 10/4 to 10/10 Eating Out $ 56.66

Week 2 .... 10/11 to 10/17 Eating Out $ 56.99

Week 3 ... 10/18 to 10/24 Eating Out $107.49

Week 4 ... 10/25 to 10/31 Eating Out $77.44

Total for these 4 weeks $298.58 or an average of $74.65

This averages out $121.22 a week so with in our weekly budget when averaged out.

Interesting to put in on paper and look at it. You see what really happened in this household. How are you doing with staying within your budget

Next topic of discussion will be how can hubby and I eat out at lunch time the days we hunt for treasures and bring down that cost.

I have joined in on grocery cart challenge. Take a look at how others are doing. Leave a comment here and there to let others know you have stopped by.

http://grocerycartchallenge.blogspot.com/2009/11/gcc-shopping-round-up.html

Thanks for stopping by ... Lets Keep Saving .. Grace