Real Numbers: Weekly Grocery Spending Snapshot 2016

Real Numbers: Weekly Grocery Spending Snapshot 2016

For the past nine fall/winters I’ve taken some time to record exactly what I spend on groceries for a set time. I think it’s a valuable exercise in knowing the reality of spending and what is really going out of the pocket. Note, this is not my 4th No-Spending Challenge Results which will come out in March.

I’ve included how much we have spent over the years so you can see exactly how much I am spending and for the amount of people and ages of the little ones. Anyone that has kids knows that the age of the children make a difference in how much you spend.

I usually record my numbers in the fall, but this fall I plumb forgot since we I came off my 3rd No-Spending Challenge in August, and it felt like I had already tracked it. I was only tracking during a challenge which is not a good indicator of exactly how we spend. So I started recording the first of this year which is really not that much later than usual.

• Fall 2007: $ 42/week              =$168 for 4 weeks (2 adults, a 2 year old, 1 baby)
• Fall 2008: $55/week               =$220 for 4 weeks (2 adults, a 3 year old, a 1 year old)
• Fall 2009: $67/week               =$268 for 4 weeks (2 adults, a 4 year old, a 2 year old, and a baby)
• Fall 2010: $ 74.89/week         =$299.56 for 4 weeks (2 adults, 3 kids ages 5, 3 & 1)
• Fall 2011: $84.25/week           =$337 for 4 weeks (2 adults, 3 kids ages 6, 4 & 2)
• Fall 2012: $105.88/week        =$423.52 for 4 weeks (2 adults, 3 kids ages 7, 5 & 3)
• Fall 2013: $142.65/week         =$570.60 for 4 weeks (2 adults, 3 kids ages 8, 6 & 4)
• Fall 2014: $106.08 /week       =$424.30 for 4 weeks (2 adults, 3 kids ages 9, 7 & 5)
• Winter 2016 (2 months later than normal):$112.53/week =$450.10 for 4 weeks (2 adults, 3 kids ages 10, 8 & 6)

So we spend an average of $112.53/week on groceries, up from last year a wee bit, but still down from two years ago. Again, I attribute it to eating lots of soups and chilis in the winter when I can make practically free perpetual broth and supplement it with lots of beans, and vegetables.

So here are the real numbers of what I spent on groceries for the 4 weeks of recording my receipts. You may notice that when I grocery shop, sometimes I have two transactions for the same store on the same day. I do this to separate out my grocery blog expenses with my normal grocery spending (for tax purposes). We eat it all, so I count it all in my stats here. This is pretty much normal spending for us. Since I knew I was launching into a no-spending challenge starting February 1st, I did buy a little more oats than normal because I HATE running out of granola bars. That’s really what it comes down to-granola bars. It’s the one food I couldn’t stand running out of on my first no-spending challenge.

Every time I leave a store, before I am gone I make sure I record in a google doc on my phone exactly what I spent so I don’t have to do a bunch of work at the end.

Do you know how much you spend regularly? Do you have a grocery budget? Ready to record what you spend in a month on groceries? Might you need to do this for other parts of your monetary life?? Anyone else want to join me?

Other posts you may enjoy:

• Getting a Refund for Services Not Rendered
• No-Spending Challenge
• No-Spending Challenge Results
• Know Your Target Grocery Prices: Grocery Prices to Meet or Beat

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