Grocery Spending Update

Once the kitchen cabinets were installed, and I stared putting things away, I realized just how much food I had in the house. So I decided to do a small challenge: eat the food instead of buying more ;)

I decided to try to limit my spending to $5 a week, which would be enough for perishables like milk and bread. And so far, so...


Not so good. As of today, I'm $9 in the hole, not counting the 10 pounds of ground beef I bought.

Yes, I know, I know. I'm not supposed to be adding to my stash. But I did need ground beef - honest!

Thus, a small rule change. $5 a week for non-stash items, and $10 a week goes to the stash. This limit doesn't include my egg CSA, which was pre-paid, and also doesn't include non-food items (like bleach or vinegar used for cleaning).

I'm tempted to include my garden seed purchases this year under the stash column - after all, it is food spending!

One thing I have done is to look hard at what I am spending money on. The biggest single item was 4L vegetable oil ($5), but that should last for a while. The next biggest?

Pizza dough. Yeah, I know. Completely non-necessary! But I'm trying to limit my takeout meals and my biggest weakness is pizza. So I figured that if I made it a habit to make my own pizza once a week, I'd be saving all that money wasted on takeout 'za. Dough is only $1.49, after all... which doesn't sound bad at all, until you realize it's 30% of my weekly budget!

Which leads me to my next largest purchase: yeast. :)

Spending to date:

Non-stash:
Oil $4.97

Pizza dough $4.47 (1.49 x 3)
Pizza Sauce $1.18
Yeast $3.99
Mushrooms $1.76
Onions $1.88
Grape tomatoes (couldn't resist) $0.88

Stash:
Ground Beef $19.85

So, balance to date: $-9.13 for non-stash, $0.15 for stash.

Must. Do. Better!