Being a cost center

...that's basically what the girls and I are. Sure, sure, we're also "in development", but as any good PM can tell you, there's always a budget ;) Dave and I have had a budget for years, and are mostly following it, but there's two areas that we are sorely lacking: grocery and household. Those two are double in expenditure what we've (generously) budgeted for. Does a family of 4 really need $1,100/month on groceries? No.

The problem is we tend to buy on impulse: "oh man I really want to make X" and buy all the ingredients, on sale or not, and may or not use them all. I'll admit to being worse at this than Dave. Amazon also contributes to our soaring household spending - 2 taps on your phone in the bathroom, and your impulse buy is complete! (I'm also worse at this than Dave.)

I think the grocery budget is the more interesting one to fix - household is basically just "buy less stuff". Grocery requires shopping smart and cooking more (which I love to do anyway so this shouldn't be a problem). Internet research says that a frugal, healthy meal plan can be accomplished for ~$600/month (without getting too extreme); conveniently, this is also what we have as our original budget. The goal is to stay at that through the next 6 months, then revisit.

My expectation is we'll eat a lot more of the foods we already have in our pantry/freezer, and start making bulk meals again. We'd stopped for a while because the freezer was full, but didn't actually eat any of the foods there - whoops. I'm going to bump up the % of vegetables too - we already eat a good amount of fruit/protein but incorporating veggies will simultaneously help with the diet (-cough-) and the cost per meal.

Also, it'll be important for me to shop more on the basis of what's on sale. I briefly considered becoming a crazy couponing lady, and I will be keeping an eye out more for applicable coupons. Ultimately though, the meal plan should pivot on what we already have on hand and/or what's on sale. Weekly mailers, here I come!

I'll post an update per month at least, it'll be good peer pressure to stay on track :) For the record, April (most recent month fully updated) came in at a whopping $1,400! Ouch.