This year, I decided to expand my capabilities and embark on little monthly challenges. Some of them are financed-based, some are fitness-based and some are just for fun. I really have no rhyme or reason for the challenges, I just wanted something to focus on for each month.
The challenge:
For January, I wanted to see if I could keep my food spending below $350.
The parameters:
Note that I have never actually tracked how much I spend on food so $350 was kind of a random number I picked. I estimated that I spend $40-$50 at the grocery store each week and then another $30-$40 each week on lunches at work or take-out food. Also, keep in mind that I live by myself and am only paying for one person. I also don’t really drink so I rarely spend money on alcohol. I do, however, drink a lot of coffee so I knew that line item would be high.
I divided my food spending into categories – groceries, meals, snacks, and coffee shops. The coffee shop category mainly consists of getting coffee on the weekends. I do go to Starbucks a lot during the week when I’m at work however I did not track my spending at Starbucks here. That is a completely different line item in my budget. For one, I use a lot of gift cards for Starbucks (I got a lot for Christmas) so it would have been challenging to separate out what I spent using a gift card and what I actually paid for. Additionally, I usually only go to Starbucks when I’m at work. There’s a Starbucks in the lobby of my office building so a lot of times I will go down with coworkers. I consider it more of a coworker-bonding scenario so that’s why I didn’t include it in my spending.
How did I do?
Here is the breakdown:
Groceries: $176.67
Breakfast: $7.72
Lunch: $48.14
Dinner: $142.90
Snacks: $11.96
Treats: $13.84
Coffee shops: $28.16
I spent a total of $429.39 in January on food. Even though I went over my challenge, I think I still did good. I definitely found myself thinking more about prices and thinking about if I really wanted to buy something before I put it in my shopping cart. I brought my lunch to work almost every day, which did save a lot of money. I also tried to bring breakfast from home as well.
Besides my grocery spending, the category I spent the most on was dinner. I ate out for six dinners in January, which averages out to less than $25 a meal. Most of the dinners were on the weekend and I met friends for dinner a couple of other times during the month. Honestly, the way restaurant prices are, I think $25 is not a high price to pay for a meal that sometimes includes a drink.
Where I could improve:
Did I have to eat out as much as I did? No. There were a couple of times where I just didn’t feel like making anything for dinner so I opted to go get something. If I had planned better, I would have had something to grab from my freezer or something to quickly whip up. I also could have been more diligent in my food shopping to make sure I was getting the best price. There was one time when I bought cuties because the sign said they were $3.99 but they rang up for me as $8. I didn’t pay enough attention to the sign to see I needed to download a digital coupon to get the sale price.
This challenge was interesting and a lot of fun. I did have a little anxiety about making sure I was tracking and writing everything down. I have so many receipts to get rid of! I think I might try to continue to track my food spending throughout the rest of the year and I do want to see if my spending changes depending on the month and season.
I’ll be back next month with a new challenge. I think it might be fitness-related!
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