Is it so uncommon to have a strict grocery budget?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
61

That will depend a lot on how many people there are in your household, where you live, whether you have a mortgage…

I’m single, childless, and because I usually don’t work where I live, my biggest recurring item is usually the housing+transportation combo; because I work in IT and need a decent laptop, a periodic big ticket is “new laptop”. For my brother Ed (family of 4), people expenses (food, clothing, school supplies…) are higher than house expenses; for Jay a year ago (single), the highest expense was the mortgage - now that his wife (ok, legally speaking fiancée) and 2yo child are also in the house the family income has grown (her earnings) but so has the % in people expenses (the 2yo is very well-behaved but earn… nope, no earnings).

62

Then you are unusual. Here is a breakdown of spending by category. I’m not sure did has ever been a smaller portion of household spending in the US.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm

ETA I see “at the store” was specified. That’s different.

63

Even as a poor grad student I didn’t “budget” anything.

I naturally just didn’t spend a lot. If my bank account was growing, fine.

I’d watch my bank account and guesstimate a target date if I was looking to buy something big (e.g., a used VW Beetle). But that was just a vague plan.

Now, at the opposite side of the job cycle, we just take note of the amount in checking and short term savings. Making sure stuff is growing and moving some into long term investments once in a while.

After many years of living, one just gets a feel for what is a reasonable purchase and what isn’t.

So, groceries. We make a list of stuff we need. We buy that and a few other things based on sales or whatnot. No one is doing any Math.

64

My mother was a Mighty Grocery Deal Huntress. She could combine coupons and double coupons and sales and specials with a skill that I have never since encountered. I shop sales but rarely am organized enough to remember coupons and even less frequently do I manage to combine coupons with sales. I have some residual guilt about that.

My mother was shopping for eight. I am shopping for one. My food budget is pretty small in terms of my recurring monthly expenses. A while ago, I made a decision that I wasn’t going to explicitly budget food. I’m very good at living within my means, and I have no interest in examining that line item in that amount of detail. If I were living month-to-month and didn’t have a decent amount of savings, I would allocate my time differently.

The Two Income Trap made the point that a lot of money-management gurus focus on reducing or eliminating comparatively small-budget line items, like coffees and movies. (This still seems to be a main theme 12 years after publication.) The authors pointed out that saving money via a single large-scale choice with recurring repurcussions is generally much more effective and easier to implement than constantly revisiting hundreds of small decision points.

The most obvious example is buying less house, but buying less car, upgrading car less frequently, and cutting cable are all infrequent decisions that free up cash (and energy) much more efficiently than having a recurring argument with oneself over a small-ticket item.

65

I used to buy food for a living. 50K meals a week. I usually have a running tally in my head of how much I’m spending and it’s mostly within $5. I don’t have a strict budget. I operate more on a necessity vs indulgence.

I cook only for myself, but I cook 95% of my meals. I don’t buy junk food or ice cream, cookies, or candy. I pick up lunch from a restaraunt at work maybe 2x a month. I eat out for dinner about 5x a year. I’m on a diet where there are foods I MUST eat rather than foods I should avoid. So making menus that MUST have fruits, nuts, and dark leafy greens every day and fish three times a week means that my budget is going to fluctuate with the market. I usually check three local grocery store ads and divvy my shopping up that way. Sprouts has cheap produce, but $9 toothpaste. Central Market has salad greens by the ounce, but their chicken prices are outrageous. It’s not uncommon for me to go to the store 4 days a week. I go in knowing what I want and need, though.

66

BeeGee, I enthusiastically endorse your diet!

Makes sense. We own our house free and clear, and my wife’s pension is not any kind of budget item because it is just automatically provided by the school and there’s no choice or spending on her part.

I think you’re right that food used to be a much greater percentage of the average person’s income. That sounds really stressful.

67

At the end of the month - do I put money into savings or take money out of savings. If its the first, I’ve lived within budget. If its the second, next month spend less.

Since our bills tend to be much lower than our income, its usually the first. The months its the second, its often due to unusual expenses. That’s why you put money into savings more months than not.

68

I don’t have a budget but these days I really keep my shopping impulses reined in. I’m always looking for the deals on meat eggs dairy produce. But only if we can freeze or consume it by the “best by” . WHen I see organic free range eggs on clearance I scoop up a couple dozen and make egg salad. We’re not big milk drinkers so I can spend a little more to buy the brands I prefer esp if on sale. Same with parmgiano reggiano or Brie/camembert, it goes on sale often enough and we make it last, well the brie never lasts. Can’t eat pasty white bread, so the bakery aisle will discount a loaf of asiago/sourdough/ and those can freeze. Pizza is a treat if Screamin Sicilian’s on sale, Im buying it! Toilet paper I like to get on sale,not buying none of those brands with bears or puppies though. I am pretty brand centric i guess.

69

Pretty much the same way I do it. There’s the deferred compensation accounts and the pension contributions , which are fixed amounts taken directly from the paychecks and then there’s three savings accounts. The way my finances have worked for the past ten years or so , I basically never take money out of the main account except for an unusual but planned expense. For example, a couple of years ago, my siblings and I threw a big birthday party for my mother - my share came out of savings. My daughter is getting married in June- her gift will come out of savings. I’m thinking of buying a winter home in a couple of years- when I’m ready, a substantial down payment ( or maybe the full price , if I’m lucky) will come out of savings.

I couldn’t tell you how much I spend a month on groceries, or restaurant meals or shoes. All I could tell you is that every month money goes into the main savings account and it doesn’t come out to pay for day-to-day expenses, or vacations or Christmas gifts ( that’s what the other two savings accounts are for). I wouldn’t say I’m living within my budget, as I don’t really have one- but I’m living within my means and saving , which is really the goal.

*over the past ten years, my income has gone up and expenses have gone down. College tuition was cheaper than high school tuition and now both kids are done, so no tuition at all. And they’ve both moved out.

70

:eek:

71

It was- high school tuition when they finished was about $7K a year and the college tuition was around $5K. Even now, the full-time tuition at the public university they attended is about $6500 while their high schools are charging close to $9K. Of course, if they hadn’t been willing to live at home and go to the public university, college would have cost **them **more.

72

I learned my means in my early teens through early 20s. After that, it’s all habit. When I do a budget today, I end up with literally your result - “so much for everything else.” I count dollars the same way professional dealers count blackjack cards “10…15…too many.” They don’t count “25,” they just say “more than 21.” In my budget, I say “Mortgage is $X, other bills are $Y, and by habit we never spend more than what’s left, so who cares?”

Not in my case. I don’t budget because I don’t overspend. If I only buy things that are worth the money, I don’t need to worry about how much money I have.

73

Huh, I think I could go through Warren Buffett’s fortune on things that are “worth the money”.

74

We had a cash budget when I was a student. We each put in $15, and that was what was spent.

My parents knwe hou much money they were going to spend when they went shopping: in those days, you had to bring cash with you to pay.

I don’t think my wife ever had any similar expereience.

75

That is the way I work as well. I have always got massive amounts of money on hand in case the apocalypse hits (or my SUV blows an engine). I don’t put things into categories or buckets because I don’t plan on spending all the money I make in the first place. I want to see my net worth, savings, investments and everything else going up rather than down and it really bothers me if the latter happens even during the short-term even though it doesn’t mean anything.

I keep $1000 as minimum in my checking account at all times that is my personal zero and I have never broken that barrier in many years. I have a whole lot more than that available instantly if I really needed it and it is growing all the time.

I strongly believe in spending less than your means because it eliminates a large percentage of common life problems. Budgeting is good for some people, especially those that are struggling with cash flow, haven’t developed an intuitive grasps of their personal finances or don’t have a strong long-term plan but it can be counter-productive as well. Look at government and business projects run by experienced professionals. They have real budgets and often blow them or race to spend money when they don’t need to because they came in under.

The best solution for personal finance is to look at everything holistically and re-evaluate constantly because circumstances can change rapidly.

76

This is my Wife and I.

[Quote=Slackerinc]
Huh, I think I could go through Warren Buffett’s fortune on things that are “worth the money”.
[/quote]
Perhaps the difference to need to budget or not. Buffett lives in a very modest house compared to his wealth. I doubt he has any gold sinks or toilets.

77

If you have so much income and/or such ascetic desires that your savings just keep “growing and growing” without needing to set any explicit, quantified limits, bully for you. But at my family’s income level, I call bullshit on any implication that our “buckets” are somehow unwise or counterproductive. If we did not use these “buckets” (actually several dozen envelopes kept in a safety deposit box, with some of them having “annexes” kept well hidden at home), I can see only two realistic scenarios:

(1) We just wing it paycheck to paycheck, grasshopper style, and at the end of the month we might struggle to afford enough food to eat. Bills might get behind, and if our car breaks down or some other unexpected event hits us, we’d be caught flatfooted, maybe have to call our parents for a bailout. Unacceptable.

(2) We go into extreme penny pinching mode until we have salted away enough in savings not to feel so vulnerable (a couple grand at least). Rice and beans for every meal, cancel Netflix (we already don’t have cable or satellite), no birthday parties or gifts for the kids, turn the thermostat way down and bundle up if it’s winter, cut off the AC and sweat if it’s summer. Then, speaking of thermostats: once we have the agreed upon amount in reserve, we relax a bit and live more normally. But then if we ever have to tap into that reserve, we go back into uber-frugal belt tightening mode again until the reserve fund is refilled. Feast and famine, like yoyo dieting.

#2 is more acceptable than the first option, but I much prefer doing it the way we do. For one thing, in a household with more than one adult, there are perverse, “tragedy of the commons” incentives attached to the “thermostat” plan. With our envelopes, if I want an americano or an IPA, I can buy it if and only if I have money left in my personal spending allotment for the month. If I blow it all three days into the month, that has no impact on my wife and children. But in system #2, my incentive is to quickly buy as many “fun” but unnecessary things for myself as I reasonably can as long as the “indicator light” is green. And her incentive is the same.

Now, hopefully basic decency will prevent us from doing this in the extreme. But let’s say one month we still drop into monetary lockdown mode anyway. That will make both my wife and me cranky, and we will start to wonder “whose fault is it that we are in this shitty predicament?” And absent the amazing coincidence of our both spending exactly the same amount “frivolously”, it will be one person’s fault more than the other, even if we can’t be sure which one of us it is. So we have a marital fight over it.

Now let’s say it’s two months later and the reserve fund is restored. I get another six pack of IPAs and pop one open. My wife gives me the stink eye, like “oh great, here we go again”. Maybe we fight, or maybe we just sit there in silence, both feeling grumpy. The next time I am tempted to buy some beer, I get a knot in my stomach. Maybe I buy it anyway and stress about what she may be thinking; or maybe I don’t buy it, and feel resentful.

That all sounds lovely, but I think I 'll pass all the same. :wink:

78

I wouldn’t… I discovered a long time ago that I’m a “two-stars hotel kind of girl”; I don’t value a lot of stuff that other people do. It helps that for example I can tell why clothing is or is not good quality based on actual fit and build, not on brand. There are some items in which I will splurge somewhat, but even on those I do stuff such as buy a car that’s new - in december and taking advantage of government aid for people sending old cars to be totalled (and I’m still talking about buying a flowerpot of a car).

79

If this is true for you, it is probably the reason you see so much benefit in being exceedingly strict with your finances. But your sentence isn’t true for most of us, so we don’t really have to be as strict as you. Some of us can well afford to be less strict, regardless of income, because we are not as tempted to spend, period.

It’s a great thing that you’ve recognized how strict you need to be with the numbers to keep your finances on track. But people are different. Some manage without so much tight control, is all.

80

I’ve been through difference phases with the grocery shopping. Looking back, our habits at each stage fit with our income level at the time.

Early on, we were on a strict weekly budget.

In the next phase, when we were doing a bit better than that, it was more about catching the sales and buying in bulk and etcetera- bang for the buck rather than a tight paycheck to paycheck spending limit.

Now, I don’t have to worry about it and don’t have much interest in it, which is weird when it used to be a rather considerable part of my life. We usually eat out or order in.