Saturday, January 5, 2019

It's January! 2018 Grocery summary

Well, this poor old dusty blog of mine, eh?  There are things I want to write here, but with kids, running, job...it just doesn't happen.

This past year, I set a grocery goal of $7800, or $150 a week.  This goal was a bit higher than 2017 of $7000.  My kids are growing, I'm getting busier, (we all are), and I wanted to "put my money where my mouth is" - so to speak - on buying local.

Well, we were doing "OK" this year, though I noticed by running average was around $151-152 for much of the year.  About 3 weeks before the end of the year, I did some math.  We had 3 more veggie boxes to be delivered (for $125).  The math told me that besides that, we had $232 left for 3 weeks.

So I decided to give it a shot. The best way for me to do that is to meal plan - so I created a google doc, and started filling it in.  I found a decent price on a very small ham for Christmas.  I found a sale on organic potatoes.  I planned some beans & rice curry dishes and lentil soups.  We (my big boy and I) ate some oatmeal.  I made homemade bread.  My spouse bought me some gluten free bread from a local bakery for a Christmas gift, which TOTALLY doesn't count against the budget.

Apparently I haven't lost my meal planning mojo, because I found myself with $50 left the morning of December 31.  So I did what any self-respecting meal planner would do, and I spent that on meat and treats - because I'm not rolling it over to next year.

In the end, I came in at $7789.01.  Almost $11 left for the year.

Below is a graph of my grocery budget since 2001, minus a few years when I was pregnant with #2 or had a baby/ toddler, and apparently didn't give a shit.


That spike in 2014 was when I was working super hard to lose that second baby weight.  I was successful!  A lot more protein that year.  2011-2013 are completely missing.

All in all, we aren't doing too badly.  Most of the increase in the last year has been due to produce - I get two boxes delivered each week, for a total of $65 a week.  That's more than a third of the budget.