FOOD - January 2015

Audio introduction

This month we managed to stay under our $300 grocery budget even though we made every single meal all month long except for the 4 days we were in San Francisco. In truth....it wasn't that hard! Meal planning for the whole month my making use out of bulk buying options from Costco makes a huge difference. Here is where the money went:

-- Groceries: $292.61 --

Fruits and Veggies: $ 140.91

Canned Goods: $13.89

Vegan 'Meat': $9.26

Meat, Seafood and Dairy: $5.48

Dry Goods: $115.59

Alcohol: $0

House Supplies: $7.63

Minus 15 cents from our bag credits. Gotta love a little extra savings ;)

-- Comments --

So obviously we eat very healthy and cook as much as possible from scratch. We mostly cook and eat vegan when at home and save indulgences like meat and seafood for when we go out. This can drastically cut the food bill.

The dry goods category was particularly high this month due to having to restock some spices, quinoa and the hubby's treats (k-cups and 5 hour energies). I don't expect it to be this high in February.

I'm happy to see that we spend a majority of our budget on fruits and veggies. The two biggest splurges in this category are our mushrooms and avocados. We eat mushrooms 1-2 times a week and the Hubby makes his WORLD FAMOUS GUACAMOLE at least 2x a week as well. Could we cut this back? Sure. Will we? No. Two healthy foods that make us very very happy are totally worth the cost in our books.

Alcohol was $0 this month. This is a little misleading. We don't drink much but we do have an occasional margarita or glass of wine.  We are still plowing through the extra stockpiles of alcohol that we kindly procured for our wedding last October.  So, we are stocked. Eventually we'll have to start buying this again but for now we'll make due with what we have on hand - and save some dough in the process.

I am thrilled that we kept to our budget! If we manage this easily for the next couple months, I may reassess and further lower our grocery goal. But for now we keep on doing what we are doing: eating amazing, healthy, and delicious food and saving money while doing so. :)