5 Food Budget Lessons that I learned in August!
August came and went so quickly. I celebrated my birthday, anniversary, my brother’s wedding and my kids started school. Talk about a full month! Miraculously, we were able to stay within our grocery budget of $750. Was this an easy task? No, it was not easy staying within this budget, it was down right hard! I had to adjust what I spent weekly a few times. So, I didn’t stick to my initial plan but it was pretty close.
Sometimes you have to deviate from Plan A and go to Plan B
Specifically, I overspent on the first week. Yep, I totally forgot to account for our anniversary backpacking trip in our initial plan. I definitely made some adjustments as the month progressed. As a result, the last week of the month was pretty low on snack food. My kids kept asking where the snacks were. I would simply reply, “it’s the end of the month guys” and we spent our grocery budget. I was baking a lot of things from scratch at the end of August! Still, with the last week’s budget of about $130, we were able to eat well. Surprisingly, I still was able to do a Sams Club Run that last week.
If you want to see what happened in June and July? Find out Here!
How were we Able to be Right on Budget?
Are you questioning, “how on earth could we have possibly spent exactly $750 on food this month?” Well, if you take a gander at the image below, you will see that I itemize my receipts. Meaning, I divide my receipts into correlating categories. That’s one of the reasons I love “Every Dollar“! It’s so easy to divide what you spent into different categories. So, my last food expenditure of the month was $18.98. However, I only spent around $4 dollars on actual food. I was probably over budget by a few cents with tax but I just allocated the tax money to the other categories that had some wiggle room. Bam! Right on Budget!
Our 2020 Wedding Trip Budget
So, we had planned for my brother’s wedding in Minnesota for the past year and half . We felt very prepared and ready for the trip. By January 2020 we allocated $1500 for the trip. That number includes flight cost, hotel, food and activities. In February, we found a great deal on plane tickets from “Sun Country Airlines”, an airline we had never heard of. To be honest, I was slightly worried it was a scam. To my surprise, it was actually a great Airline. Also, you’ll see that since we purchased the tickets this month, we chose to not contribute any money to the “wedding trip” fund in February. That’s why it says $0 dollars planned.
Our Overall Budget for our Trip
Surprise! People Make Mistakes!
Sometimes a wrench is thrown into your plans! I wanted to use our weekly grocery allotment for some of the food on the trip which was $160. In addition, we also had money in our “brother’s wedding” fund allocated for food as well. We felt very ready.
Naturally, things don’t always go to plan. We, and I do mean all 8 of us, decided to go to a restaurant the night before the wedding. We ordered very carefully to stay within our budget which was around $40 for that meal. Well, the waiter messed up our order and brought duplicates of what we ordered. I’m sure he thought we would order food for each person. Ya know, because we love our kids. Nope, we are paying off debt and so we all share to keep costs low. Don’t worry, we still love our kids guys!
We didn’t accept all of the mis-ordered food but decided to keep one dish since it was one of the more expensive dishes. Half annoyed and half sympathetic, we decided to see it as a donation to them during these crazy times. But this donation was $20 more than we budgeted for. Puzzled, one might wonder how $20 dollars could even make that big of a difference. But when you’re paying off debt, every dollar counts.
What Budget Wisdom have I gained from August 2020?
5 Things I have learned about Budgeting!
- Take time to really think about plans for the month. We didn’t have a budget meeting this month. I just whipped out my budget for food so fast and I forgot quite a few expenses. It worked out but it was difficult.
- Don’t freak out when things don’t go to plan. Adjust your plan and carry on.
- Eating out is so Expensive! The Best place to eat out as a large family is Subway! We spent $20 at Subway to feed our family of 8 and we were all full (we load those sandwiches up!). If you order online you can get special promotions. We were able to get 2 footlong subs for $10. Four “footlong subs” later and a bag of chips from Walmart and you’re good to go!
- You can still give people grace and serve people while getting out of debt. When you’ re paying off debt, you restrict almost all aspects of life. There are more ways to give than monetary giving.
- If you put off going to the grocery store, you save money but may loose a little sanity! I feel very proud of myself that I stuck to my budget. As I mentioned before, I had to make my kiddos snacks because I had already spent most of our budget. Specifically, I made muffins, biscuits, oatmeal, bread, granola bars and who knows what else. It was hard making so many things from scratch and it was definitely tiring! However, it was worth it and I survived.
Products I love!
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