Apparently, We All Need To Eat (Grocery Budgets)

Good morning everyone!

Today I'm pottering about the place doing a few little chores. The kids are outside enjoying a brief run of sunshine and - gasp! - I may even hang out some clothes. My sweet little Miss Moo just brought me some flowers (flowering weeds!) from the lawn. Clearly, it is time to mow ;)

Some randomness:

Tomorrow is grocery shopping day. I normally pay for my groceries with our credit card - don't fall over (LOL). We budget almost exclusively through our credit card and pay it off in full each month (never paying interest). If you're disciplined, this can actually be a good way to do it - with less cash on hand, there's less temptation to fritter away change. For the undisciplined, however, this can spell disaster, with no physical connection to the money you're spending. But for us, it works well. When the credit card bill comes in at the end of the month we have a handy reference as to where our money went. We do withdraw cash occasionally to have in our purse/wallet though. It's a bit of a hassle to pay for a sandwich with a credit card! The 'credit system' also works for us because the longer we keep our money in our transaction account, the better. This account is linked with our home loan and the larger the balance on the transaction account, the less interest we pay on the loan.

The one exception to the 'credit card budgeting rule' always seems to be groceries. Hubs, God bless him, has always given me free reign on the grocery spending. He says (and he means it, weirdly enough!) that he doesn't matter what I spend (!!!) at the supermarket so long as the meals are good, and there's snackfood on hand. I'm grateful for two things with this - that his job provides a comfortable income for us to NOT have to watch every grocery penny, and that he leaves it all up to me. Any grocery budget I might mention from here on out was one I gave to myself, LOL.

Speaking of budgets, when I quote a figure, remember that it is in Australian dollars. I absolutely bow down to any housewife who is able to provide wonderful meals at much less than what I spend, but I know from trial and error that there is a sort of 'point of equillibrium' with our family, and going past that in order to save a few more dollars becomes less important to us than variety, interest and convenience. Yes, I said it. Sometimes 'convenience foods' aren't dirty words!

Having said that, we only eat takeaway as a family once a month. But I do buy things like frozen chicken nuggets (and other assorted chicken 'snacks'), frozen oven fries, sometimes cans of soup, individual boxes of sultanas (raisins), individual tubs of chopped up fruit for the kids' lunchboxes, and boxes of muesli bars (granola bars) and fruit bars - amongst other things. Yes, I am working toward eliminating a fair chunk of the processed food and I try out new recipes to do that (last month's homemade chicken nuggets recipe bombed big time!), but in the meantime, I'm just not stressing about it.

So, the grocery budget. I've decided to do it like this:

My Household & Grocery Budget is $300 per week. I know, but Aussie prices. Of that, $50 will be put into a baggie as Household Petty Cash. This is money for things like excursions, pocket money, etc - the little expenses that pop up that you need cash for. If I don't spend it all, I just top it up the next week, keeping a 'float' of $50.

That leaves $250 for groceries. Yes, the idea is to come in well under that. But this amount allows for everything - all toiletries, paper products, household items (lightglobes, toothbrushes etc) AND food. With the price of dairy, fruit and veg and meat these days, the total rises FAST. It also accounts for quick trips to the store for extra milk and bread. Everything.

So along comes grocery day. My cart is filled, I go through the checkout, and I pay with the debit function of my ATM card instead of the credit function. I also take the 'cash out' option and round it out to the full $300.

When I get home, I peel off $50 and stick it in a baggie for Household Petty Cash. Then whatever is left over is Grocery Petty Cash (also put in a baggie). If I need to go to the store during the week, I take cash from this baggie. If this money runs out, too bad - n0 more till next grocery day. If I end up with extra money at the end of a week, I'll transfer it to a tin, or jar, or something. I'll probably earmark this money for a short term expense, like replacing small household items. Oh, and takeaway comes out of this money too. If there's not enough in the jar at the end of the month, no takeaway :) Having a fast-food meal at KFC or McDonald's usually tops $25 for our family of 5 (with three kids). Pizza Hut is about $12-$15 for two pizzas.

I'll report back in a few weeks to describe how I went :)

Cheers,
Lizzie